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The MC lives in a kingdom occupied by the evil empire and then joins the villains.
Finally a book describing the view of the evils. and not only it is a unique view - it is an excellent way to show it.
Love the background fantasy system of Name and Roles.
In the beginning the MC is a bit know-it-all-kid everybody hates. But she grows into the story and it gets better.
I wasn't sold on that story part with the big competition at the academy - On the one hand ther is this I-read-this-kind-of-competition-one-time-too-often feeling and on the other hand it was kind too long for my taste.
But it is an excellent book and got into my favorites before i reached the end of chapter 4.… (meer)

If you want a Fantasy story about the kind of person who would take a look at the army of Mordor and then inquire about the signing bonus for joining up, this is your book. I've often enjoyed Fantasy stories like this one that focus on a villain's perspective. They tend to be light and fun even when they're dealing with apocalyptic events, and this story delivers exactly that. The protagonist, Catherine Foundling, isn't entirely evil (and neither is the Evil faction in general). However, they are fundamentally selfish, and that seems like the crux of what distinguishes Good from Evil in this setting. Catherine herself soon settles on a problem-solving strategy that boils down to escalating every conflict to the highest possible stakes while creating as much chaos as possible, and then applying dirty tricks to win. She barrels her way through every crisis, often by the skin of her teeth, and usually comes out stronger and ready to jump blindly into an even worse situation.

This is the fifth web serial I've read, and it features a lot of the typical strengths and weaknesses of the medium. On the positive side: The characters are expansive and detailed, with lots of development and growth. The plot moves along at a fast pace, occasionally slowing down to focus in on a climatic moment. The author is clearly responding to feedback, so the faults of the early chapters are addressed later on. On the negative side: No editor has ever touched the work, so there are way more spelling errors, grammatical errors, and small inconsistencies than any published book. Individual chapters can be overly wordy and include digressive rabbit trails that I would expect an editor to cut down. The work is ongoing, and as with any unfinished work there's no guarantee that it will be completed.
… (meer)

This volume of the series has continued strongly, introducing some great new characters and providing a few really pleasant diversions in addition to moving the plot forward.

This volume wraps up a few long-building sub-plots and mostly resolves some of the big conflicts that had been set up before this point. It also continues escalating both the level of conflict and the protagonist's ability to address that conflict. Granted, her usual method is to just apply more and more chaos until her opponent couldn't possibly have anticipated the level of destruction, but that's extremely fun to read so I don't mind.… (meer)