When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favorite fantasy series.She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.
Time of Iron series. Book 1
I start from the very end. Acknowledgments. Where I found that Sarah is a cancer survivor and this explained Rae's character a lot to me. And secondly in the list of inspiration I found that author mentioned The Founder of Diabolism by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and mentioned her wish for more works to be translated. And this is where it hit me why the novel felt so close to what we've all seen in many Chinese novels before. Those stories with travelling into the plot, where the world revolves around hero and heroine, where plot it seems makes the characters puppets of its' will (about in detail later).
Our FMC - Rae - is a cancer patient. She knows she is on the very edge with no hope in sight. While she's treated she is visited by her little sister, who is a big fan of Time of Iron series and to pass the time her sister reads the books. Rae might not remember much of them, because her memory fails her and her health doesn't allow her full concentration.
One day she is visited by a mysterious woman who offers her to open the door and travel to the world of Time of Iron, where she can find the flower of Life and Death, which will allow her to revive back in this world, heal and return to normal life. Rae thought the woman was crazy, but as any desperate person she grabbed this straw and the plot point she landed was the evening before her character's execution. She was now in the body of lady Rahela Dimitia, the evil step-sister of the heroine (in our beloved lingo, the cannon fodder character).
Rae used all her knowledge of the plot (which wasn't much) to drag herself out of this dire situation and the gears started to shift. No matter her conviction in her own knowledge, no matter her desire to change things, the plot started to shift.
By the end of the book you had the feeling of "uh-oh, what have you done".
A bit about feeling close to some parts. First of all Rae's absolute belief in the plot and characters as if they were set in stone. This is so familiar, that oblivious behavior :) At other times it felt so familiar when Rae took it upon herself to charge forward and do heroic things actually, but others still saw it as a frame-up, her own design in elaborate attempt to hurt the heroine (who by the plot took the attention of the king and she was the favourite before), so everyone still considered her evil. All her actions, all her deeds, she was like an embodiment of evil for others in stark contrast to the kind and good-natured heroine.
Many times characters did not believe Rae at all and went on making their own conclusions that felt out of proportion.
Even the rhethoric how others serve as a foil to the main characters and others are easily discarded, but why should they.
It felt too close because of those many novels about travelling to the plot, waking up as a plot character etc. that had same thing going on.
But the closest must be the FMC.
Rae is the one who went through so much, but she still couldn't understand why some people are loved, while others feel like they don't deserve it. So was her past life, so was her new life. She was hurt, but others blamed her instead. Eventually she was tired to get justice and gave others the reason to dislike her, she became the "villain" others saw in her. In her new role she didn't even bother to be good, because she knew how hard it was to be good.
Don't listen to stories encouraging you to be good, telling you to shine in a filthy world and patiently endure suffering. Screw suffering. It's too hard to be good. Do the evil thing. Grasp whatever you desire in your greedy boodstained hands.
But through the book you can feel her desire to matter, to leave a mark. Her life was so short and full of weakness and sickness, so many people left her after she fell ill, as if she doesn't deserve love, she felt she will be forgotten, she did not enjoy so much before she realized she had to leave.
Most people die without mattering at all. If they curse your name, at least they remember it.
When we were young, we told each other stories. When I got sick, I was scared to sleep, in case I never woke up. I could only sleep when I told myself if I died, she'd tell her kids stories about me. I wouldn't be anything but a story then, but that's better than being nothing at all. Nobody lives forever, but a story can. Stories are how I survive. When I'm fighting to live, I think to myself: what a story to tell my sister. I will be her favourite story. I will be the greatest story she ever heard.
Although the book did give her the second chance, but I think there was a hook in her approach to the story and characters. The hook proved to be true, since when she initially started she did have a feeling of playing (like noted by her maid Emer aka the Iron Maid) she did not realize how devastating the feeling will be when the realness will hit her. How it will influence her choices. How her conviction will wrong her.
I'm not a person who likes to analyze everything I read, maybe someone will say - the book was obvious. I stay in the zone of certain obliviousness and mainly live on instinct with books. Because I simply like to be impressed (even if sometimes even instinct predicts things quite accurately).
This is why I did not overanalyze the dissonance that is present in the book, that followed you like a shadow and whispered - this doesn't seem to fit, something feels off. It also involves characters who we find a bit different from how Rae remembers them. But it's more about what overall she remebers.
And by the end of the book you realize - oh, so this is where the dissonance lied and this is why I felt it starnge, even though some things felt pretty obvious when you think about them.
This is why I'm giving only the general feeling, the rest should be found by the readers.
It's action-packed, a lot of events happening, I think it's quite upbeat. A lot of pretty descriptions. The world is quite imaginative and lore is present. It's more plot-driven instead of being a romance, though you could feel the feelings sizzling.
You can feel author's eagerness about this book.
The possible dissatisfaction. Some of the lingo. Rae goes a lot about evil plans, evil schemes, villains, vipers etc. in her daily speech. Maybe some attachment to describing everything in a pretty way, though I think it's intentional. But I gave all these a pass, since I liked the book overall :)
Let the evil win~.
RATE: 5/5. It was fun.
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