Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy (Villains #4) by Serena Valentino
309 pages
3/5 stars
Mistress of All Evil is the fourth installment of the Villains series and picks up where Poor Unfortunate Soul ends. Maleficent’s story is intertwined through the larger work as past characters have been, but I felt that her story shone through a bit better than the last two books. For most of the story, I felt like I was going to end up giving it 4 stars, especially when Maleficent’s story actually picked up steam. But then the end left me feeling really disappointed and, frankly, a touch confused. Enough so to want to give it 2 stars. I’m going to split the difference and call it 3.
Maleficent has an intriguing back story that gets lost in the tumultuous throws of the overarching, and sometimes convoluted, story. This is especially true towards the end of the book. Her story offers an interesting twist to her relationship with Aurora, but one that was…well…pretty lame to me. Her relationship with the other fairies was more interesting and developed, but the snowballing (and slightly confusing) story of the odd sisters and Circe overshadow it at the end.
I want to step away from this series for now, but I just found out that there is a sixth book coming out that will focus (I assume from the name) a great deal more on the Odd Sisters–which is a little funny as all of the books have progressively sidelined the main character for the Odd Sister’s story. Until then, there is Mother Gothel’s Villain story, but I have never watched (quickly Googles the name) Tangled, so I will have to build myself up to that*. The execution and writing in Mistress of All Evil were better in regards to the main character’s story, but the series arc feels like it’s grasping at straws to be pulled together with all of these other stories and characters.
*Because the only reference I have to go on is the episode of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where her therapist says that Rapunzel’s hair turns brown and looses it’s magic after she cuts it, which, to me, is a quintessential quality of many Disney re-imaginationed stories that have such poor messages to boys and girls alike.
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