Seize the Day: A World Conquest Isekai

Empress, Book 1

De: J. V. Simms

Narrado por: Hollie Jackson

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

Unhinged self aware villain

The MC is mentally unhinged, but is also aware of that fact, she’s just too narcissistic to care. In this book she is figuring out what kind of villain she wants to be, and therefore there is some inconsistency in her thought processes and decision making. Some of the side characters are so unabashedly evil that they make the MC seem like a halfway decent person while other side characters are genuinely good. The author does a fantastic job of making you hate some of the characters and cheer for others, but make no mistake this is a book where good does not triumph over evil, greater evil does.
Be aware that there is extensive brutality and torture depicted in this book as well as some foul language. Finally, this is a book about a villain not an anti-hero, not someone who’s forced into villainy, but rather someone who chose it; so If you are a particularly empathetic person or are particularly religious you likely will not enjoy this book.

this was excellent

oh my God I love this so much I don't want to give too many spoilers but the main character is excellent and it's very different

Pretty good overpowered villain MC isekai with a few issues

I'm a sucker for villain MC isekai. It's complete trash, we all know it, but I eat this stuff up when I want something to read, watch, or listen to that doesn't take much brain power to process. This is my reality TV, my soap operas, and this one is pretty good. The closest thing I could compare it to is The Eminence in Shadow, the differences being that the MC in that one wants to be the puppet master behind the scenes as opposed to a conquering warlord and that he mostly goes along with or is ignorant to the machinations of his followers, whereas Everly is a more active character who creates plans and pushes things forward on her own or in conjunction with her underlings.

The characters are mostly good (I'll address the "mostly" part in a moment.) Everly is delightfully petty and psycho, and the other characters are fun and, if not anything you wouldn't expect from the genre, they're good examples of their archetypes and consistent.

World building is also better than typical for the subgenre. Places have actual names instead of being called things like "the Northern Kingdom, the Southern Empire," etc, and there are references made to religious schisms and civil wars and the reasons why they happened. A lot of world building and exposition is delivered through the trope of being explained to Everly, which is pretty standard for the genre, but I can excuse that a little more than I usually would due to Everly both not having been in a position to be worldly and to learn these things naturally and her narcissism. Some of the exposition is a little heavy handed even for the genre, though.

For negative points, there are three main ones I have. I'll be talking about some very light spoilers ahead, specifically discussing an event that happens very early in the story as part of how the MC gets isekai'd and discussing a fairly important character who appears partway through the story without mentioning anything they do, so be warned.

First is a personal peeve. Immediately before the MC is isekai'd, she deflects a bullet with a sword, which personally broke my immersion. I'm not opposed to a pre-isekai character being quite strong, but something as blatant as this without an explanation makes me say, "oh, come on!" People doing things like that pre-isekai is not a convention of the genre that I can just accept. It's clear that Carrie (Everly's pre-isekai name) is quite mad, so I honestly would have preferred her attempting to deflect the bullet and failing, because of course she would, and complaining that her death wasn't as cool as she wanted and that now she just looked like an average crazy person. I would have even accepted the implication that some sort of magic existed in the regular world, and that Carrie's madness had allowed her to briefly tap into it. Without some explanation, it's a moment that stands out to me.

Second and third is a character named Sarah (that's how it's pronounced and I'm assuming how it's spelled) who is a paladin of the church. She's a young, psychotic girl, which is stepping on Everly's toes a bit even if she is much more obviously deranged and differs in her goals. The trope of "insane religious figure who doesn't at all care about the people" is also incredibly overused. The other negative point is about how the person reading the book choose to voice her. I understand that there are a good number of speaking roles in this book and that finding an appropriate voice for each is difficult, but the voice actress made Sarah sound like Harley Quinn from the old Batman cartoon. You know the one. It's not a passing resemblence, either; every line sounds like the VA was trying to say them in "the Harley Quinn voice." It's very distracting and a little annoying.

Overall, an enjoyable listen and I'll happily pick up the next novel to see where it goes.

Excellent!

Love the plot! The narration was top tier! Can't wait for book 2 to follow the MC on her way to become The Empress.

the book

what did I just listen to. keep it up, I was on my toes for the whole time.

Eh

The MC is basically just 'Evil for Evil's sake' no real motivations or even thoughts beyond that. Literally just take any generic evil concept character and attempt to make them into a MC, but dont flesh them out any.

Additionally, a fairly large chunk of the time is not even focused on the MC, but on random side events just seemingly thrown into the story to discredit any 'good guys' or to paint a dark scenario with little to no pay offs.

If you dont mind being hit over the head with concepts repeatedly, and you like your characters as Mary Sue as possible, this ones for you.

there are saying interesting moment, but overall the story is sick

Don't recommend it for people that are easily influenced and children. The story promotes suicide, and normalize cruelty.
Pros: has some interesting world building.
Cons: main character is OP from the starts, if she wishes something it just happens. No challenges or character development.

Golden Princess from overlord Iseaki

Self aware yandrae MC makes her way to another world to become a villian with style. Lots of pop ref and humor crossed with an Isekai power fantasy, Very enjoyable!

So brutal, but so satisfying.

What a savage tale. Brutal and satisfying. Sadistic and a great plot twist at the end.

Solid story- just dark

I should have expected it from the synopsis but the storyline was just a bit too dark for me for my leisure reading. The performance was excellent and the plot progressed nicely - I just can't stand the main character's circular logic and psychotic tendencies.