What to read next
Books Like Starter Villain
Funny books about running an evil empire (badly), from the boss’s chair to the bottom of the org chart.
Charlie wanted to run a pub. He got his uncle’s supervillain business instead, along with spy cats who know more than he does and dolphins who would like to discuss their working conditions. The fun of Starter Villain is watching a man with no plan discover that an evil empire is mostly a workplace, with staff, overhead and a long list of people who want the new boss dead.
That’s the thread we followed. Some of these books put you at the top of the evil org chart, some at the bottom, and one retires from it entirely. A few run darker or more romantic than Scalzi, and we’ve said so where it matters.
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01Dreadful
by Caitlin RozakisStart here. Gav wakes up with no memory and learns he was a cruel wizard, with goblin servants and a kidnapped princess who expect him to keep acting like one. So he bluffs. Before he answers a call on the magic mirror, he rehearses looking casually busy.
The farce does make him reckon with what his old self did, kidnapping included.
02How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying
by Django WexlerDavi has died saving humanity more times than she can count, and the world keeps resetting. So she switches sides. Her theory of leadership is practical. A Dark Lord’s charisma, she figures, depends mostly on how many armed followers show up, and her footnotes argue with every grand speech fantasy has ever made about power.
This is the darkest book here by a wide margin, with graphic torture, suicide, self-harm and constant swearing.
03Assistant to the Villain
by Hannah Nicole MaehrerIf the dolphins were your favorite part, read this one next. Evie Sage takes a job as the Villain’s assistant because her family needs the money. Her office comes with severed heads, a frog who registers his opinions on tiny signs, and a boss she has a growing problem with. When she finds a corpse on her desk, she asks about it politely, as if it were a scheduling issue.
Romance drives this one more than anything in Starter Villain, and the violence is real.
04The Demon Overlord's Retirement Plan
by M. H. FosterCharlie is learning the villain business. Galornus Prime wants out of it. The demon overlord hides in a village as a turnip farmer named Willem Porter, where his goat Prometheus shows him no respect and a neighbor’s roses start a feud. He describes his many deaths at the hands of heroes like bad performance reviews.
The tone is cozy, but the body he’s hiding in belonged to someone who didn’t agree to the arrangement.
05I Ran Away to Evil: A Cozy LitRPG Rom-Com
by Mystic NeptuneHenrietta is sent to assassinate the Dark Lord Keith. She would rather bake, he would rather do research, and she keeps eating lunch with his guards. When Keith can’t believe how courteous she’s being, she wonders if he’s hard of hearing. The gentlest book on the list.
06Redshirts
by John ScalziSame author, opposite end of the org chart. Ensign Dahl notices that officers come back from away missions and junior crew don’t, and that his crewmates have quietly made dodging those missions their real job. Scalzi asked who pays for the boss’s adventures here first, on a starship, with plenty of profanity and some grisly deaths.
07Cat Core
by Dean HenegarFor the spy-cat fans. Florence dies on her way to buy cat food and wakes up as a dungeon, so she demands to see the manager. The system administrator responsible becomes her assistant, Doug, in the body of a kitten. They argue about everything from the furniture to who’s allowed inside, while her house cats fight off adventurers.
The cats can die in battle before coming back, which may still bother some readers.
08Throne in the Dark
by A. K. CaggianoDamien announces that his life’s work is complete, and the narration points out that he is twenty-seven. He’s a demon’s son with plans for world domination, magically bound to a cheerful thief named Amma who keeps getting in the way. The romance takes its time, and so does the journey.
09Off to Be the Wizard
by Scott MeyerMartin Banks finds the computer file that controls reality, makes a few personal improvements, and flees to medieval England to pose as a wizard. Other hackers had the same idea, and they arrived from different points in the future, so even their pop-culture references don’t line up. A regular guy holding absurd power and winging it is the Charlie connection.
10Bob's Saucer Repair
by Jerry BoydA wildcard. Bob is a mechanic, Nikki’s flying saucer is broken, and first contact turns into a repair job with auto parts and a cutting torch. It shares Scalzi’s small-business feel more than his villains. Light and quick, though readers who kept going with the series found it repetitive.
11The Humans
by Matt HaigThe other wildcard. An alien takes the place of a Cambridge mathematician and reports back on us. Eyebrows puzzle him. The rules about clothes seem endless. It’s warmer and more reflective than Scalzi, and the philosophical stretches will suit some people better than others.
If you only try one, we’d start with Dreadful. If you want the cozy version of the same joke, go to I Ran Away to Evil.
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