There’s a question that pops up frequently among the bookish folk I follow on social media. The question is a variation on what would happen if you suddenly found yourself inside a book you love or a book you just read. Depending on the genre, you could find yourself in the middle of a love story or a war. The protagonist of Sarah Rees Brennan’s amazing new book, Long Live Evil, finds herself in the middle of both when she is transported from her hospital bed to the city of Eyam, inside the Time of Iron series.
I trust Sarah Rees Brennan to take me on a ride with her books. So, even though the beginning of the book is a little rocky with the tonal shifts between high fantasy and our mundane world, I trusted her with the wild premise of a character who receives an impossible opportunity. Rae is dying of cancer in our world. There is no hope of a cure or remission and it’s only a matter of time before she dies. One night, a mysterious woman visits Rae and offers her a way out. If Rae travels to the world of Time of Iron (her sister loves these books) and retrieves the Flower of Life and Death within a year and a day, she will be cured. The offer is completely bananas but Rae, despite her cynicism, is never the kind to refuse a chance to live. The next thing she knows, Rae finds that she is now one of the leading antagonists of the series…and that her character is supposed to be executed the very next day.
Time of Iron is high, epic fantasy, full of characters with destinies and tragic backstories. You can’t swing a cat inside these stories without it becoming part of a prophecy or fate. At first, Rae uses her vague memories of the first book in the series to start manipulating events to her advantage (with plenty of snarky commentary as she does so). Long Live Evil really takes off when Rae starts scheming to save her character (and herself) because it appears that Rae’s machinations are having an effect on the story around her. Things start happening out of order. Characters start behaving in out-of-character ways. I loved the chaos Rae unleashes. Stuffy old Eyam and its denizens could definitely use some shaking up.
I was having a grand time reading Long Live Evil. I’m a sucker for books that play around with genre, using it for commentary on narrative and social mores. But then something magical happened: I fell in love with Time of Iron and its characters like Rae and her sister did. I got completely caught up in the drama of the story—so much so that the climax and astonishing cliffhanger ending absolutely punched me in my bookish gut1. Even though it’s been years since I took a literature class, it’s hard for me to lose myself inside a book so completely that I stop paying attention to the structure or the author’s craft. I lost myself inside Long Live Evil and feel a bit crushed that I have to wait until next fall to get my hands on the next book in the series.
- I was so moved by the ending of the book that I had to message the author on Bluesky and let her know that her book devastated me. ↩︎