The Dark Lord Clementine

Thank you Algonquin Books for this gifted copy!

Rooting for the bad guy (or girl in this case) has never been so much fun. While Clementine is still a Dark-Lord-in-training, her father has been attacked by a curse and it is up to Clementine to find a way to break the curse as well as perform all of his required dastardly deeds.

This is a magical, quirky, whimsical, and humorous story. At the same time, it deals with very real feelings and challenges that many children and young adults face: the weight of parental expectations, conflicting feelings of love and anger; the challenge to know and be true to yourself. There’s fear, deception, and betrayal in these pages, but also courage, honesty, love, and loyalty.

Clementine is a wonderful and very relatable heroine. From the start, it’s clear that she’s not really Dark Lord material at heart, despite her best (or worst?) intentions. But then, her father doesn’t seem to be quite as evil as you’d expect a Dark Lord to be, either. Dark Lording, in Clementine’s world, is apparently a hereditary job and Clementine is determined to do it well. As the story progresses, more and more of her best qualities begin to shine, but it’s not that her own nature changes so much as that her horizons are expanded, her beliefs challenged, and her true, best self begins to break free of her conditioning.

I also found myself growing fond of the other characters particularSebastien, the would-be knight, and the black sheep. And there’s Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake, fond of putting swords into heroes’ hand, and the Gricken, Clementine’s enchanted grimoire-in-the-shape-of-a-chicken, which grants her new spells in the form of eggs, and… but I should really stop there, for fear of spoiling all your fun!

And fun you will have, despite the seriousness of the curse affecting Clementine’s father. Did I mention the laugh out loud moments? There’s plenty that middle-grade readers will enjoy and adults too!

💬When’s the last time you read a YA book?