By the Sword: A World Conquest Isekai

Empress, Book 2

De: J. V. Simms

Narrado por: Hollie Jackson

In this follow-up to the hit isekai, a villain continues to find her power—and develop her sadism—even as she's haunted by her ex-love.

Seventeen years after her rebirth into a magical medieval world, Everly Vae Balsar, the Empress, has made it. With her exceptionally potent earth magic and powers of spiritual manipulation, she stands poised to conquer a kingdom that lives in fear of her and her dangerous servants: Carter the goblin assassin, the marauding General Grail, and her elementals, the sadistic Eris and ditzy Titania. She's a villain and proud of it.

Well, she's not a fan of cannibalistic monsters. Villainy is her domain, not the presumptuous Mister Whisper's. But at the moment, Everly is experiencing something she's never felt before: genuine regret over killing someone. Specifically, her mage maybe-love Fenneth.

As she reconnects with her conniving father and impetuous sister and continues to grow her power, Everly's schemes slowly become more complex. But she's still haunted by her actions—and maybe by Fenneth as well . . .

The second volume of the hit portal fantasy series—with more than 400,000 views on Royal Road—now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!

©2024 J. V. Simms (P)2024 Podium Audio

MC got to strong

the story gets really sidetracked at some point and it feels like the writer made the MC to strong by the end of the first book and is now throwing in op characters to add balance ig but it's just confusing

If you liked the first book you'll like this

same stuff as the first, very enjoyable. only down side would be the 1 1/2-2 hours at the end that set up the next book and has an extended story made by Tatiana. Not saying I didnt like the story but it felt like padding to increase the Length of time shown on audible.

Love the new and storylines, but…

Tons of new ideas and characters, but definitely felt more like episodic events brought up and resolved in tv-show like installments, instead of one big escalating adventure like the first novel.

Also, Asher SUCKS. Please god let future segments with her be less brain-meltingly repetitive and uninteresting.

And the new “Big Good” looming threat seems to be really dragging their feet, just a minor story issue, but they really could have been doing what they set out to do instead of playing around all book.

Meh. Starting to get boring halfway through.

Pretty much stop listening to it with four hours left. Started out strong. Too bad.

Seems to have lost what little thread it was holding on to

I don't get the point anymore? Not sure even the author knows what genre they want to write now. The scifi elements were random, unnecessary and nonsensical. Combined with the random litrpg part from the first book it seems like the authors just trying to check boxes now, and the long tangential side stories surrounding these scenes add nothing to the plot except distraction. Add on the random bursts of the future we see and the story is a horrible mess that somehow manages to go nowhere while also spoiling itself.

It doesn't help that most of the story is just random slice of life nonsense, with entire chapters dedicated to rambling pulp culture conversations between Everly and her duplicates, which is just grating since one of her was already a lot. Slice of life is fine, I love slice of life, but the plot to nonsense ratio in this book was VERY skewed away from plot. Also, any rules, which were BARELY explained and even more rarely followed before are now completely nonexistent. Everly just does anything she wants with no effort, restrictions or limitations or even getting a little tired after, whether it be magicking literally anything out of thin air or dirt, from living humans to tempered steel forged into mastercraft weapons, to mind controlling a whole city. The things she does are only impressive if she does it within the bounds of the established rules, but does it so well it seems like it's godlike powers. That's not this. She just thinks about something and it happens without any effort at all required. It's extremely boring and lazy. Especially when there's now multiple forms of handwavium in the book with the litrpg and scifi nonsense. They literally need to make up entirely new books to merge with this one because she already didn't make any sense in this setting by the time she was 1 year old. That's the problem with making the MC too strong too fast. It leaves you with nowhere interesting to go from there.

Honestly at this point it seems more like a fun creative writing project or short story that someone liked and tried to stretch into a full book series. It's gone so far past degenerate wish fulfillment that's it's just become nonsense. It's too bad since I love good villain stories and they aren't done often, but this is just sloppy. 2 star story because there are interesting things buried deep below all the bull, I'm just afraid nothing will ever come from them and there's not much chance of a surprise outcome that's usually possible in this type of story since we keep seeing the future. 3 star overall since the narattor is good, though she likes the mob villain voice a bit too much