Read time: 5 minutes
🎧 Listened in audio 📢 Narrated by Em Eldridge ⏱ Duration: 12 hours
Genre: Romantic Fantasy (Romantasy) 🏷️ Publisher: Entangled: Red Tower Books
Book Blurb:
HR Update: the position of “adversary to the villain” has been filled, and Evie Sage doesn’t remember applying. With a dangerous prophecy threatening Rennedawn’s magic, and a race to claim the kingdom’s most powerful artifacts before King Benedict does, Evie’s job as loyal (and only mildly treasonous) assistant keeps getting more complicated. The Villain’s magic keeps choosing her, and if she’s going to be accused of evil anyway, she might as well commit to it. Meanwhile, her boss Trystan is getting closer than is professional, looking at her like she’s already picked a side: his. If Evie can’t save the kingdom’s magic, she might become its greatest threat instead.
Let’s talk about the book:
I was with this series since the beginning. I think I started listening to the audiobook because of some Goodreads Challenge way back when, and got hooked on the storyline. Romantasy wasn’t my genre before, but I started liking this Evie-Trystan thing and was curious where this story was going. For some reason, I thought this was going to be the last book in the series, so I was even more excited for August 4th to come and for me to grab my copy.
Come August 4th, I realized this is actually the penultimate book, and there’s one more coming, which will be the finale. That made me happy. More time with Evie-Trystan and the gang. With that excitement, I started to read/listen. Em Eldridge is a wonderful narrator. She brings the magic in Romantasy with her voice. The enunciation and the pitch fluctuations based on the mood of the scene is beautifully to the point. She hasn’t failed to deliver in the previous three books, and she nails it again in this one too.
I have to say though, this one was underwhelming. The storyline itself is engaging, and I enjoyed the adventure they’re on right now. The change of hands for the magic, the way the gang around Evie and Trystan support them through the inevitable prophecy, is really intriguing to listen to. What threw me off is the humor inserted into serious situations. Someone from the kingdom is standing in front of Evie and Trystan wanting to kill them, and the two of them are busy romancing each other instead, with the gang waiting around for them to finish. I don’t follow that logic. I understand humor, but it has its place. Not just when something critical is about to be revealed. The people involved in the scene would choose that moment to get horny instead.
Having said that, the overarching storyline is good. If you ignore the humor and romance (which is unfortunate for a romantasy), the story makes more sense. There are moments of genuine levity, and even some brilliance, which fascinated me. Kingsley switching between a frog and a naked man really made me laugh. The twist in the end blindsided me. It was definitely not something I expected even in my wildest imaginations.
Still, I’ll be going into the next book only because it’s the last in the series. If this were going to be a longer, ongoing series, this is where I’d give up. Romantasy clearly isn’t for me if this is how other books in the genre are written too.
Would I recommend it?
Adversary to the Villain kept me hooked on plot alone. The prophecy, the magic, the found-family dynamic around Evie and Trystan, all of it is genuinely well done. But the constant cutaways to romance right when tension should be peaking wore me down fast, and by the end it felt like a formula rather than a choice. I’m sticking around for the finale because I’ve come this far with these characters, but this one is a three-star read for me, not the series high point I was hoping for.
⭐⭐⭐
5 Book Recommendations:
- Assistant to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #1) by Hannah Nicole Maehrer: Start here if you haven’t already, or revisit it to remember why Evie and Trystan hooked you in the first place, before the humor pacing became a pattern.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper: If what you actually want out of this series is the witchy, banter-heavy chaos and less of the constant romantic interruptions, this one leans into the humor without losing the plot thread.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Bride by Ali Hazelwood: Another case of a fantasy-adjacent romance balancing danger and comedy, if you want to see a different author’s take on tension-versus-humor pacing done a bit differently.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen: For when you want the prophecy-and-artifacts stakes of Adversary to the Villain played completely straight, with none of the comedic cutaways, this delivers the epic romantasy tension instead.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett: If the found-family warmth around Evie and Trystan’s group is what you loved most here, this gives you that same cozy, character-driven magic without the pacing issue.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
Your Turn: Talk Prophecy, Politics, or Poor Timing?
Have you read Adversary to the Villain yet? Did the humor land for you, or did it pull you out of the tension the way it did for me? And for series veterans — where does this one rank against the first three for you? Drop your thoughts in the comments, I want to know I’m not alone in this.
Book Links:
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Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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