Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler is the second book in the Dark Lord Davi duology. It’s the hotly anticipated sequel to How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, a raunchy, comedic, in-your-face dark fantasy that had me tearing up at times due to how hilarious certain bits were. I obviously expect nothing less from the sequel here. Unfortunately, while the author sticks to the winning formula of the first book, I felt that the magic of what made every reader warm up and cheer for Davi has been lost. Davi is still the same Davi of old. Expect a lot of cusses, snide comments, and obviously, a whole bunch of dirty thoughts. I think what made the sequel a bit less interesting is based on how the story unfolds for our favorite Dark Lord.

The second book picks up right where the first left off. Davi won the competition to officially become the new Dark Lord of the wilders. She’s expected to lead the horde in destroying the Kingdom, but she has other plans instead. With her finally becoming the Dark Lord, she now has options to change things up and go about settling for peace instead of watching humankind be completely destroyed, as so happens in all of her previous lifetimes. I think the biggest issue I have is how a bit of the magic is lost with Davi spending the majority of her time in the palace and hanging around mainly boring humans. This kind of turned the story into your typical dark fantasy type, but of course, with a foul and vulgar-mouthed girl instead. Yes, it was still fun to read, but it lost one of the more important magical elements that made the first one so captivating.

The ending and explanation of Davi’s predicament came a bit too rushed. We don’t get answers until literally the last 20% of the book is left, and it was a bit confusing to boot. It felt extremely random, even for a story like this with all the weirdness involved. I don’t get why the author couldn’t have sprinkled in hints throughout the book instead of dropping everything so last minute. Another thing that felt a bit odd is the footnotes. I remember laughing out loud at some of them in the previous book, but here, they felt a little too bland and tiresome at times to the point that I actually skipped some of them. Irrespective of all this, I still considered myself to have had a great and fun time reading about Davi and her adventures in trying to save the Kingdom. It’s quite impossible to root against her. What also seems impossible to me is the author walking away from this world and never coming back to it again.