Assistant to the Villain
A woman finds unlikely employment as assistant to a villainous mage, discovering her boss is neither as dark nor as terrible as legends claim. Office dynamics and workplace romance bloom in the most unexpected circumstances. She begins to question everything she believed about good and evil.
Everything You Need to Know About Assistant to the Villain
Evie Sage needs a job, and the most feared man in the kingdom needs an assistant. So she ends up running the office of The Villain, whose lair features severed heads, a sarcastic talking frog's worth of chaos, and a shocking amount of paperwork. Her boss is dry, menacing, and far more decent to her than anyone in her old life. The complication: someone inside the organization is leaking secrets to the kingdom, and finding the traitor turns the workplace comedy into something with real stakes.
The comedy of evil-as-day-job: interoffice memos about maiming policy, hiring problems, a boss who terrorizes kingdoms but respects a good filing system. Evie's relentless cheer reads as a choice rather than naivete, which gives it spine. Trystan's fondness for her leaks out in small, begrudging ways that make the pining work. It's comfort reading with just enough plot to keep the pages moving.
Cartoonish menace alongside real violence: severed heads, blood, a bombing, character deaths, a cursed blade wound, imprisonment. Nothing sexually explicit.
The traitor plot comes to a head at a party staged to release the guvre, a dangerous captive creature. A bomb goes off in the manor, Evie hauls it to the parapet and The Villain shields them both with his magic, but much of the tower, including the library, is destroyed. Trystan is captured and imprisoned by the kingdom. Evie, wounded by a cursed blade, kills the knight Otto with it, escapes with help from a Valiant Guard, and puts Otto's head on display in the manor. She ends the book vowing to free Trystan or become a villain herself.
Perfect if you want villain romance played for comedy instead of darkness, with big grumpy sunshine energy. Fans of workplace sitcoms will feel at home, it's an evil lair run like a small business. Skip it if slow burn frustrates you, the leads spend this book firmly in mutual pining territory, or if you need your fantasy plots airtight, the tone is the point here.
Book one of the Villain series, followed by Apprentice to the Villain and Accomplice to the Villain. Fair warning: this is not a standalone. Book one ends on a genuine cliffhanger and the romance is a very slow burn across the series.
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