Book of the Day

From the review

The best joke in Adversary to the Villain is administrative: the plot shows up dressed as paperwork, complete with a promotion nobody asked for and a job title that keeps rewriting itself out from under her. Evie Sage has spent this series being the most reliable person in a magic system built on prophecy and self-interest, and book after book, Hannah Nicole Maehrer keeps making that reliability the joke and the plot engine at once. Here it curdles into something with real consequences, and the humor gets sharper for it. Evie doesn't want the job of villain's adversary. The job wants her, and it isn't taking no for an answer. The prophecy threatening Rennedawn's magic has picked Evie as its adversary, and the villain's own power keeps answering to her whether she wants it or not. King Benedict is chasing the same magical artifacts she needs, which gives the book its clock: two competing scavenger hunts layered over a political mess big enough to swallow a kingdom, dressed in cozy fantasy's favorite trick of keeping the stakes enormous and the tone light. It works because Maehrer never lets the plot machinery outrun the joke. Every twist in the artifact hunt loops back to Evie's real problem. It's her own reputation, and what she's willing to let people believe about her to keep the people she loves safe.