Reborn as the Villain's Lackey Volume One

By: Twoony

Narrated by: Nancy Wu

After dying, Faith awakens in a fairy tale world from a book she read as a child.

With no memories of how she died, she has to survive in a new body that once belonged to Kaeda, one of the lead villain’s lackeys. But in the novel, Kaeda is destined to die!

To avoid dying again, Faith uses her knowledge of the novel to survive a fantasy world at war and avoid Kaeda's fate. But as the story unravels from a new perspective, she finds unexpected love—and realizes that the villain and hero are not what they seem. Who is the true villain of this story? And can Faith find her own happily ever after in this fairy tale?

©2021 Twoony and Tapas Media (P)2022 Recorded Books

Decent but... (mild spoiler)

Overall a decent story set in a fantasy world. MC has biases ingrained by the book the world seems believed from, however... she seems to blatantly and willfully cling to those biases through pretty much the entire book regardless of the mounting evidence the book wasn't the whole story, at one point refusing to act because she wasn't sure it was "her right" to change things despite her existence already doing so, drastically.

Love it

I love this book, I’m almost done with it at this point so I decided to write a review already. It is definitely a slow burn for sure but it’s a good story overall. I was so excited to find a Isekai romance, since I’ve been addicted to manwha of the same genre and want to listen to books about it during my drives to work.

Fun listen, loved it!

Fun and entertaining. The story never felt like it was dragging. Good comedyis well.

Narrator inhales sharply before every sentence

I honestly don't know if this is just a me pet peeve but the narrator breathes in quickly before every sentence so the story goes: *huh* The maids were talking on the other side of the wall, *huh* It's such a shame the wedding was delayed. *huh* Those fools shouldn't be asking for a wedding at a time like this anyways.
And on and on. I don't know what other narrators do to get around this but it's so hard to listen to the story with these gasps every sentence.

Did AI write this? Was there no editor?

First the good. I read a lot of fantasy romance and the main romance is well written. if that's what you are here for, just skip the alternate POVs.

Now the bad. Major elements are not well established. Are elves an important part of the story? Can same sex couples have children? I don't know! I should know with how much I have listened, but these world building elements are neglected.

Let me give an example. Henley is a lady knight who is attracted to a seamstress. Her parents encourage the romance because they want grandkids. If that's a thing in this setting, the author has to establish it. Even an offhand mention of some magic would be fine but there's nothing. What I think happened is that after the story was written, the author changed the character's gender and didn't read through to clear any confusion. A beta reader would have helped.

As far as the voice acting, it's not completely terrible, but it's not great. She does a reasonable job of making the characters sound different. I would have chosen someone else. I feel that the voice actor could do better. The MC isn't well voiced, but many supporting characters are.