All of Us Villains

Ultimately this book failed to deliver what it promised. It was marketed as ‘The Hunger Games but bloodier and with magic'. The Hunger Games set up was there but felt horribly contrived. It just felt like such a lazy construct and has been done better in multiple other books. The bloodier aspect doesn't hold true - in reality it was fairly tame. For a Battle Royale style fight to the death this was mostly a lot of nothing. The magic system was confused and contrived as well. The biggest let down was the world building. It was effectively absent. When you have such a contrived fight to the death concept you need to have a world that makes this make sense. The world building here was so cursory as to basically be nonexistent. Also, a comment on the title and the constant allusions to villainy - a properly well balanced and written villain is extremely difficult. They need to have a motivation and a believability to generate the necessary sympathy. The characters in here are barely villainous at all despite their preaching on it, and what villainy is present is often not really rationalized properly to generate the necessary sympathy for the action. Grimdark this is not. The book does pick up a bit towards the end and leaves us on a bit of a cliffhanger. It avoids some of the more annoying YA tropes but the prose is somewhat lazy and dumbed down. Overall a 2.5 stars for me. I can see some potential, particularly based on the last 3rd. I just wish there had been more effort on the world building to give the context that is extremely lacking.