The Dark Lord's Handbook

By Paul Dale

To become a Dark Lord is no easy thing. The simple ambition to hold dominion over the world and bend all to your will sounds straightforward but it's not. There's armies to raise, fortresses to build, heroes to defeat, battles to be fought, hours of endless soliloquy in front of the mirror – it's a never ending job. Not to mention deciding what to wear. (After hours, days, even weeks of consideration, it will be black.)

After many spectacular failures, Evil decided to lend more than inspiration to these would be tyrants. He wrote an easy to follow Dark Lord's Handbook. And yet the next Dark Lord that came along screwed up like all the others.

It had been hundreds of years, and the Handbook was seemingly lost in the annals of time, along with all that was mythic and exciting in the world. Then one day a randy dragon had a chance encounter. Nine months later a Dark Lord was born.

In time, the Handbook found its way to this new contender, Morden.

To become a Dark Lord is no easy thing. Morden had better be a quick study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Dale
• Release date: May 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476235943

Book preview

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Reviews for The Dark Lord's Handbook

[mtmcguire · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I lived in London, I used the tube every day and pretty much every day, I would look at the bottle-shaped diagram on the wall of the train and reflect that Morden (which is at one end of the Northern Line) would be a great name for a baddy in a book. Sure enough it is.This book is great fun. There's a strain of subversive humour going on throughout which I really enjoyed but never at the expense of the characterisation. No typos that I noticed but some laugh out loud funny bits and a deftly handled sexual tension between our hero, or at least, our dark lord, Morden and the fundamentalist, mentalist, hero's potty-mouthed girlfriend. On the humour front, one particular chapter from the handbook about the dark lord rising and suddenly coming forth had me guffawing with Sid James like laughter. The book operates on more than one level though, with our own world situation intelligently parallelled.However, to me, and face it, this is all pretty subjective so take it with a pinch of salt - it does slightly rush to the end in the last chapters. The ending wasn't dissatisfying exactly but an awful lot happened rather suddenly in a short time and it didn't seem to connect as smoothly, or flow as seamlessly as what had gone before. And in the last pages, the sexual tension suddenly ceases to be an issue which sort of feels... odd. Undoubtedly, that has more to do with me than the quality of the writing, which was excellent throughout.So, I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting Paul Dale's next book and if you're looking for a funny, but thoughtful, read I thoroughly recommend this one.

[aula_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to like this book - the tongue-in-cheek humor in a fantasy setting, regarding a Dark Lord rising, a less-than-dashing hero to oppose him, some capitalist-minded aristocrats, and a damsel who's not in distress as much as she's pissed off. However, I found it difficutl to get into it - I think that what bothered me was that it was a bit rambly. Some editing to cut out unnecessary and wordy sentences, as well as more concise characterisation would have made this a book I couldn't put down.At this stage, I can't see myself reading any sequels... maybe I'll come back to, because, as I said, I really do want to like this.