On the benefits of the mustache-twirling villain
Note: This is going to include spoilers for Blood of a Fae by Briar Boleyn, and for Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. You've been warned. As I'm reading the Blood of a Fae series and currently fairly early in book two, it occurred to me that outside of our love interest, there's very little in the way of shades of moral gray. It's very much a world where the bad guys are sadistic evil bastards and the good guys are their antithesis in every conceivable way. This occurred to me because I know one character I'm already just waiting to see die. I don't have many hopes for her to be redeemed. This author excels at making horrible villains who you're excited to see die, and then excels at the payoff. It's like a slasher movie without the horror. Right on the heels of this thought, I was listening to Fourth Wing on my commute home, and Jack Barlow died horribly. Fourth Wing excels at making villains you hate, but up until this point, most of them hadn't had t...