The most recommended books about villains

There is so much to love about this book. It contains 26 stories of LGBTQ horror from some of my favourite authors, including Paul Tremblay and Hailey Piper. Each story is unique, but all share themes that reflect the very real threat of homophobia and/or transphobia. I enjoyed all three of the Unspeakable Horror books, but this is the only one I read in 2023; it came out in June for Pride Month.

Hailey Piper’s “Bad with Secrets” is a wonderfully weird tale set in the 1950s that casts McCarthy (yes, THAT McCarthy) as an evil sorcerer. Honestly, I got chills reading it.

And Paul Tremblay’s story “If Dillon Believed in any Kind of Ghosts” is brilliant. Nana is an adorable side character. I love the way it mixes mundane family interactions with moments of shocking violence and terror.

This book definitely brightened Pride Month for me.

I like the way Barker takes really bizarre characters like John Mischief and makes the reader relate to them in an unexpected way. What could be more human than an experience of unrequited love. In Abarat, the lord of midnight falls in love with the princess of day. He’s a really evil guy, but his falling in love is still believable because he’s thinking about the joining of night and day. I’m glad Barker didn’t try to get me to feel sorry for him by showing how his mother locked him in a closet when he was a little boy. That is so boilerplate.

This book is dark and Calvin Cutler is not a book boyfriend anyone should aspire to in real life. If you’re a reader attracted to non-consensual romances, Marino manages to cleverly keep the trope alive throughout the whole book, without resorting to sex slave scenarios. I couldn’t flip through the pages fast enough.

I like all of Maria Savva’s books because she has great insight into how people think and why they act as they do. She creates worlds that are ‘normal’ and yet pitches her characters into unusual situations, which make the worlds strange and eerie; especially in The Spider stories.

What happens when Charlie Fitzer, a former journalist and divorcee down on his luck inherits his great-uncle's evil empire?

Hugo Award-winner John Scalzi (Redshirts, Old Man's War) had me at his knowing depiction of cats and their ways of communicating. His other characters aren't bad, either, including the viewpoint character who receives an unexpected and highly daunting inheritance, and most especially Matilda Morrison, a woman of extreme agency. Known for his humorous take on various literary genres, Scalzi here provides action that is laugh-out-loud funny,

 It's worth the price of admission just to read his dolphin scenes or the peculiar behavior of mourners at his uncle's funeral, but there's much much more including a clever satirical treatment of deep-state private clubs belonged to by so-called masters of the universe. Light, funny, heart-warming, and inventive.

Lift the flaps and take an intimate peek inside the villains and find what really makes them tick. Through a twist in classic fairytale storytelling and a sophisticated design, this book has reimagined the inner workings of the iconic fairytale witch, giant, and wolf. Pull levers and tabs, discover objects on strings, and open flaps to discover the real truth about the villains. Brilliantly creative and exploratory.

This is a great read for those die-hard dark fantasy fans. If you finish Salvatore's book series and find yourself needing more of the world, you need to pick up this reader's guide. A

As a fan of the series, it’s hard not to want to peek behind the curtain of the world of Salvatore. Readers gain insights on each character, their past and origin stories, as well as a look into the eyes of the villains. No one is spared here, in a good way.

The book is not a story as much as it is a tour into the mind of my favorite author, R.A. Salvatore, offering a point of view you cannot find in the novels. Why did the main characters do what they did? Why not? It really is a unique way to learn more about the 40+ book series.

This is fun, easy to read, has lots of characters, and the author gives each one a distinctive voice. He’s always asking for the next in the series.

A blend of humor and Chinese fantasy, The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System was my first brush with the Chinese sub-genre of transmigration novels, similar but different from Western portal fantasy or Japanese isekai. The main character ends up in a world not his own, and in the process of trying to make it better, comes rather close to destroying it. That dissonance between intention and results is something I absolutely love in my heroes. Competence is boring. I want to see (and write) messiness and complacency and efforts made that perhaps weren’t thought out all the way. That, to me, is not only humor but true heroism.

Awaken Online: Catharsis was actually the very first LitRPG/GameLit book I ever read, and from the opening chapters, I was hooked.

It follows the story of Jason, a player in the VRMMO Awaken Online who becomes a powerful necromancer and is positioned as the game’s villain. I think what drew me in the most was how Jason explored his various abilities, always seeking new ways he might be able to modify or use them to his advantage.

He’s also not afraid to push back against what seems to be the established order within the system, utilizing his powers in a variety of awesome and surprising ways. I definitely drew inspiration from how the magic is described here for my own story, even though my story features less overt game elements.