Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler, Dark Lord Davi Book 2, Pub Date 05/27/2025

Davi, fully realizing that her reset button is malfunctioning, has come up with a plan to hopefully save humans and wilders alike. And it would have gone absolutely wonderfully if Prince Johann was actually in charge but Duke Aster is running the show in the Kingdom and now Davi, The Dark Lord, must pretend to be The Wizard's Apprentice and hope that her predictions of the future convince the humans that going up against the Wilders would be a really bad idea. 

Unfortunately, while Davi and Tsav are in The Kingdom trying to keep the humans from heading to their doom, Artaxes and Sibarae have taken control of The Horde. With Davi's plans completely unraveling, she is going to have to do something she's never done in a thousand years: Rely on other people. 

That's an ominous rely on other people because many of you reading this I can guarantee just thought of that gives you anxiety, hell it gave me anxiety just reading it. Honestly, this was significantly better than I was expecting especially since it wrapped the whole story up with a truly insane villain who as far as I can tell is just a sad lonely little man who probably needed someone to tell him no a few times in his life. As Davi points out at one point, he'd be a serial killer on Earth, and I think that says everything you need to know about him. 

How Davi actually gets to The Kingdom was oddly not as mind blowing as I expected, once you start hearing the bad guys backstory, that sort of takes backstage because my gods did he fuck Davi up. Although it does account for why she's got all this random 20/21st century pop culture knowledge which was honestly the *one* thing I needed to explain. 

What makes this great once again is Davi. Her character growth was phenomenonal while still maintaining her smart ass personality. And I think what's great about this little found family Isekai is that this time loop thing can truly be viewed as breaking many, many toxic cycles. Assign your own accordingly. 

Honestly, this is probably my favorite series by Wexler. Not only was much of this highly relatable in terms of Davi learning to rely on others even though it's fucking terrifying, I think it genuinely shows just how good of writer Wexler is if you've read his other books, especially doing an Isekai. Definitely recommend this one especially if enjoy Isekai of course but also if you just enjoy a found family story definitely not for children. 

As always, thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for the eArc!