349 pages
Published 2024
Read from June 15 to June 18
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Lately there seems to be a fashion for characters stumbling their way into the role of supervillains. On the Bond villain end of things, there’s John Scalzi’s Starter Villain, which I hope to read soon. Here on the dark wizard end, we have Dreadful. There was a third book along these lines that I saw in the local bookstore the other day, but I’ve already forgotten what it was. It reminds me a little bit of how the 2010s saw a fad for stories about what happens after the big adventure.
Dreadful opens with Gav waking up with no memory, on the floor of what proves to be his chamber of dark wizardry. What follows is generally Pratchett-esque, a droll spoof of old high fantasy clichés and escalating problems, as Gav discovers the depths of tyranny, insecurity, and petulant cruelty his old self inflicted on the world around him, and must race to mitigate (or halt) the dark plots in which his past self was embroiled.
Rozakis adds depth by explicitly linking this impotent lust for power to contemporary incels, who take their dissatisfactions with late stage capitalism and patriarchal expectations and channel them into misogyny and blaming the powerless. Dreadful is a fun and sprightly fantasy built upon a foundation of heavy topics: toxic masculinity, the necessity of deprogramming before growth can happen, and how difficult it is to disentangle from real-world brainwashing. Thoroughly of the moment, it centers an urgent examination of the modern condition.
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