Seize the Day: A World Conquest Isekai

Empress, Book 1

When an ambitious teenage girl from Earth finds herself in a magical realm, she could be the hero—but she'd prefer to be the villain.

When power-hungry Everly is reborn into a medieval world where elemental magic rules and she receives her elemental servants—the oddly sadistic Eris and the fun-loving Titania—years earlier than one typically would, she knows she's destined for a command of necromantic magic the likes of which her peers can only dream.

Though she's the bastard daughter of a count and a precariously positioned concubine, Everly is determined to be a conqueror, warlord, and queen. She could be the hero of the realm, the person to save everyone, with her protectors—the Silver Lance—and her beautiful mage lover by her side.

But Everly's no hero. She's an aspiring villain, seeking the freedom that comes with doing wrong. And before long, she'll make everyone fear the name of the Empress . . .

The first 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

Great narration with extremely dark content

Ok, so as other reviews have said it's not ironic, it's not trying to romanticize evil characters, and it's not trying to redeem the evil mc. The main character is evil, she doesn't care about anyone beyond what use they have for her. She does seem to like her mom but that wasn't really explored in book 1 and it's extremely likely she just likes the idea of a mom. She's cruel, sadistic, and entirely self serving, For those people who are excited by that let me disillusion you, it's boring.

She doesn't have any conflicts of character, she doesn't have any sort of viable protagonist that could go against her although it's hinted at heavily that one will come later. She just kind of reincarnates, lays low for a few years while she power levels, and then kind of walks around doing whatever she wants. Spoiler, she just wants to kill people and break 'honorable' types. It's kind of interesting at first but it doesn't really change so by the end it's a rather rote reading and listening experience.

what in the wackadoodle!?

the prologue didn't catch me a bit but as soon as ch1 started it hooked, can't wait till Aug for the second book cause from start to finish this was a rollercoaster of primal feelings and terrible but greatly placed nerd humor and grusom visuals in word.

A True Villain Story

One of the rare “true” villain stories I’ve come across that made it into the audio format. What’s better is it doesn’t go in the “I do evil stuff because I’m evil” direction. MC has a reason for the things she does even though those reasons make little sense to a rational person, but if you’re able to view things through a complete psychopath’s point of view you’ll understand why she does what she does. MC both kills, saves, and sometimes kills those she saved because it benefits her in some way or she just felt like it for whatever reason. MC is a complete psychopath but like I said she has reasons to do what she does (usually).

There is no revealed leveling system but there is a system that hasn’t been revealed to the MC as far as I understand. The system is seen as a god type being.

The story isn’t the best but the characters are actually some of the best especially when compared to most other True Villain main character stories. I’m not particularly enthused with stories that start 10 years in the future (or however far it is for this story), I prefer stories to start at the beginning.

It’s good enough I’ll buy book 2 and it’s unique enough I’ll remember it exists which means something in a library of over 1,400 books. The narrator was fine, she pronounces a few words incorrectly but it was only a handful of times. The narrator is one of the better female narrators who can actually manage a male’s voice however many of her male voices boil down to the “whiny weak male” types despite them supposedly being warriors and whatnot

this book was batsh!t insane

all hail Everly. all hail the empress. all hail the empire! (jebus this book was fun. might be better than the eminence of shadow)

The MC is irredeemably evil.

Consider me surprised, MC is legit evil. and the narrator was great, I'll most likely listen to the second book as well when it's out. Pretty intimidating story though when I linger on it.