Review: 'Dreadful' by Caitlin Rozakis

Imagine waking up without your memory and coming to realise that, although you don't remember it, you are actually a super evil villain with a bad taste in home decor. And imagine further, if you will, that this is somehow not the last of your trouble. If this sounds like fun to you, you'll love Dreadful, which is a delightful time of a book. Thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 28/05/2024
Publisher: Titan Books

It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something.

It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you.

Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. 

But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be?

A high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, an evil wizard convocation, and a garlic festival. All at once. All in all, Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.

The twenty-first century has really been the century of the antihero. While we absolutely had antiheroes before, I think the past few decades have seen a real rise in how interested we are in them. This is in no small part probably due to the growing disenchantment with traditional or stereotypical heroism and with a growing suspicion of people who hold power. Antiheroes are good story material when it comes to asking questions about who we are and who we become in a complicated world where absolutes and black-and-white thinking are nearly impossible. In Dreadful we get a sort of cozy discussion of this, with the main character needing to figure out whether he can leave his evil past actually in the past and if he is still responsibly for the things he has done if he can no longer remember them. Are we more than our past actions? Can we take accountability for things we cannot imagine having done? And how do we forge a future when the past is unclear? Dreadful approaches these questions with a sense of humour and does not necessarily provide answers or go very deep with them, but it does provide an excellent avenue to start thinking about these things while having a good time.

Gav cannot remember why he woke up on the floor of some creepy-looking wizard's workshop, but he does know this is not good. Slowly piecing together who he is meant to be from how his goblin servants and slimy assistant behave, Gav has to realize that he was, or perhaps is, a very bad person indeed who is currently keeping a princess locked in a dungeon for some evil plan. To make matters worse, this is not even his evil plan and now he needs to not only figure out who he wants to be but also try to prevent the end of the world. While Gav is unsure of himself, the princess, Eliasha, very much knows who she is and what she wants. While she is not without her own insecurities, she is a delightful departure from the damsel in distress-stereotype. Alongside her, the goblins are very fun as are most of the other characters so that reading Dreadful is a mostly uncomplicated matter. As it is a more cozy kind of fantasy, it won't get as dark as some people might want, but it also doesn't overly stray into the saccharine. Sometimes it does feel a little self-helpy when it comes to Gav trying to figure his own feelings out, but I'm willing to forgive that because we should have more books with male characters attempting emotional self-regulation and selfawareness.

I think this is Caitlin Rozakis' fantasy debut and for that it is a very confident novel. I like the world she establishes, how she weaves various themes into her characterisations, her humour, and the pacing of the novel. While not everything in Dreadful is necessarily entirely my thing I do think it is a very fun book and a promising start for Rozakis. One of the things I didn't entirely love is the potential relationship hanging over Gav and Eliasha. While age gaps don't have to be problematic, Eliasha is just such an interesting figure on her own that it does feel somewhat undermining both to her and Gav's own characterisation to play with the "he changed for her"-trope. However, there is a lot to enjoy about Dreadful, from the goblins and the heavy presence of garlic to the brief suggestion of cosmic horror. The whole novel picks up various fantasy tropes and shuffles them around, giving us fun alternatives to consider. For fantasy lovers who don't mind a bit of sweetness, I would definitely recommend this novel. I'll also be keeping an eye out for any future books from Caitlin Rozakis.

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

I had a great time with Dreadful, it was fun and inventive and engaged with interesting themes without going too deep into them.