Is a practical guide to evil finished?

Q: Who is ErraticErrata?

Hello and welcome, I go by ErraticErrata on the web and Im a web serial author. In February 2015 to 2022 I wrote the series A Practical Guide to Evil and as of August 2022 I will be launching my next series, Pale Lights. The books update weekly on Fridays, both on the public site and for the Patreon advance chapters.

I quite liked the First/Second Book and even enjoyed a good amount of the Third. Its when the Crusades happened (and the subsequent Dead King/Drow stories) that I feel Guide took a plunge to the negative for me (though there was already some issues like Catherine's sudden fae power up breaking Guide's power balance and forcing a constant escalation of foes + Masego constantly magicing up whatever bullshit Catherine needs to win with no real limit on his power)

Unfortunately as Thojusbru and dptullos said Guide suffers from a really bad case of protagonist centered morality and author favoritism. I feel like the author just really likes villain's and just doesn't like Heroes, but I just found the Villain side to unsympathetic to really root for them. The Calamities are almost always portrayed as competent and always having the upper hand whenever they fight the Heroes (or Good Nations in general), Even other villain's like Tyrant, Hierarch, and Akua also feel like they were treated with may more respect then any of their other numbers in the Hero side, despite doing some real horrible shit. The Legion of Terror is wanked to hell, even when logically other nations should have already formed equivalents to them long before Black did.

On the Good side? Procer the biggest nation in continent who constantly terrorized its neighbors is a paper tiger, with shitty magic schools, no Heroes, and a terrible military. Good Nations in the League of Free Cities? Worthless. Ashur had one trick where they could summon a freaking God to smite down Warlock (and even then that didn't stop him from killing them all back) and then never used that again. Levant was really the only Good nation to actually pull its own weight. The Heroes themselves never feel as big a threat as they were in Book 1/2 with William, since after those books the plot was almost always focused on villain-on-villain fighting with the Heroes as a side show and occasional annoyance. Which is a shame since the very first chapter's focus (and tone set for the series) was on the heroes being a threat (and not sudden Dead King coming out of nowhere and taking the main antagonist role for half the series).

The Woe I feel suffers the opposite problem of the Calamaties (who are too hypercompetent its annoying), as it seems like Catherine manages to bumble and bullshit her way into success even when making stupid choices that should bite her in the ass (Fighting a massive crusade and the two strongest heroes on the continent rather then cutting a deal, trying to enslave the Drow, rescuing Black even by all rights he deserved to get put down for actively weakening Procer's defense while the Dead King is waging war to kill everything, etc). Which I'll grant is pretty common in MCs, but for Practical Guide to Evil which criticizes the Hero side for their own plot armor it rings her as being hypocritical in the meta-narrative (Black is bad in a different way, were he just had so much ludicrous luck with his allies it boogles the mind). Also frankly I didn't really like Catherine or any of her groupies in the later books enough to excuse the bullshit they pulled or enabled too. Especially this whole idea that Black and Catherine pioneer that there should be 'balance' between Good and Evil, when logically from what we've seen of Guide-verse, Good having the advantage is much more preferable to everyone.

Guide was at its strongest with the worldbuilding and the Interludes (especially the Heroic ones) where we shift perspectives away from the main cast and explore different places are some of my favorite parts of the series. Seeing White Knight's origins from Ashur, or William breaking in and freeing the Stygian slaves was top notch. This might be more of a personal opinion, but I really think that Guide would have been much, much better if it had been a Practical Guide to Good with a Hero protagonist, rather then what we got.

Anyway I'd give it 4/5 for the First two Books, 3/5 for the 3rd, and 2/5 for 3 after.

Table of Contents Show

How long is a practical guide to Evil?
Do Wrong Right Practical Guide to Evil?
Who is ErraticErrata?
Who wrote a practical guide to Evil?

People complaining about Good and Evil in this story, or calling one side or the other 'overpowered' are kind of missing the point.

The is no Good or Evil in this setting. There is only Above, Below and the poor bastards trapped in the middle.
Both groups of gods are just as alien and amoral as each-other. One just has better PR than the other.

That should have become obvious to any reader when Contrition's brainwashing plan was explained. It's literally the exact same tactics that are used by a Demon of Madness. Altering the mindstates of an entire city worth of people to turn them into fanatical zealots/mindless berserkers to use against the other side.

It's a pair of jackasses playing chess, except the board is the mortal world and all the pieces are real people.
It doesn't matter if you're following the Black King or the White King, at the end of the day you're still a piece on a board set to die for the amusement of some 'greater power'.

The Accords isn't about 'tolerating evil', it's about not letting the gods kill people for fun in their stupid forever-wars.

iamnuff said:
People complaining about Good and Evil in this story, or calling one side or the other 'overpowered' are kind of missing the point.

The is no Good or Evil in this setting. There is only Above, Below and the poor bastards trapped in the middle.
Both groups of gods are just as alien and amoral as each-other. One just has better PR than the other.

That should have become obvious to any reader when Contrition's brainwashing plan was explained. It's literally the exact same tactics that are used by a Demon of Madness. Altering the mindstates of an entire city worth of people to turn them into fanatical zealots/mindless berserkers to use against the other side.

It's a pair of jackasses playing chess, except the board is the mortal world and all the pieces are real people.
It doesn't matter if you're following the Black King or the White King, at the end of the day you're still a piece on a board set to die for the amusement of some 'greater power'.

The Accords isn't about 'tolerating evil', it's about not letting the gods kill people for fun in their stupid forever-wars.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, instead, people should kill each other!

...So, uh, in case it needs to be said, the reason this argument doesn't work is that, even excluding the Gods and their relatively limited intervention, the forces of Evil still really suck and prove it at every turn. The Gods on either side made very few people do anything in this series.

Xicree said:
Above are basically Communal Unity while below are Self interest.

I would not be surprised to find that the Wager is about crafting something beyond themselves. Unity gets farther usually because it's harder for self interest to see past it's own nose... thus breeding Monsters more easily.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It also needs to be mentioned that on the short list of definite divine intervention in this series without, e.g., Bard intervention, the first we ever see is...Hanno's mom sacrificing her life to the Gods Below, because a bunch of politicians were going to leave her husband's body to rot in a collapsed mine. In response, they went 'Damn, you gonna do our girl's man like that?' And pimpslapped them until they dug him out.

The Gods in this series are almost surprisingly chill; people keep making demands that are kind of wild, and they just 'uh, sure, why not?'

For all it matters, the Gods could be off playing Mario Party this whole time.

How long is a practical guide to Evil?

The average reader, reading at a speed of 300 WPM, would take 1 day, 3 hours, and 29 minutes to read A Practical Guide to Evil V by ErraticErrata. As an Amazon Associate, How Long to Read earns from qualifying purchases.

Do Wrong Right Practical Guide to Evil?

A Practical Guide to Evil is a YA fantasy novel about a young girl named Catherine Foundling making her way through the world – though, in a departure from the norm, not on the side of the heroes. Is there such a thing as doing bad things for good reasons, or is she just rationalizing her desire for control?

Who is ErraticErrata?

Hello and welcome, I go by ErraticErrata on the web and I'm a web serial author. In February 2015 to 2022 I wrote the series A Practical Guide to Evil and as of August 2022 I will be launching my next series, Pale Lights. The books update weekly on Fridays, both on the public site and for the Patreon advance chapters.