Villains Are Destined to Die (novel) Volume 1 Review

After publishing the manhwa version of Villains Are Destined to Die, Ize Press brings the novel to its English readers as well, both in paperback and digital editions. How true is the manhwa to the novel? Let’s find out!

A 20-year-old college student becomes addicted to a game her friends introduce her to: Daughter of the Duke’s Super Love Project—a dating game where the heroine has multiple love interests and can choose the ending she’d like. Our protagonist finishes every single love interest route in normal mode, so she tries the hard mode where she plays the character of Penelope, the villainess who keeps on dying at the hands of the love interests. It doesn’t matter what she does, she ends up respawning over and over again because someone is killing her. How can it be that hard?

Well, after she goes to bed, the protagonist wakes up as Penelope Eckhart, the villainess in the dating sim she was playing. It’s still a mystery how that happened but with death flags around every corner, the new Penelope needs to find a way to increase the affection rate of the male characters of the game—her older brothers Derrick and Reynolds, the Crown Prince Callisto, a noble who is also a magician, Winter, and lastly, the slave Eckles—to stop them from killing her for every little thing. She doesn’t even have enough time to do so as the storyline of the game will start in a few months’ time when the real daughter of the Eckhart family is supposed to reappear. In fact, Penelope is an orphan from the slums who got adopted into the family when the Eckhart’s real daughter disappeared without a trace.

Penelope has always been mistreated and ignored by her ‘new’ family, with the servants following through with their own mistreatment. Penelope won’t stand for it as she had the same experience in her real life, being the illegitimate daughter of a rich man. The only problem is that her actions are limited by three-option choices that appear like a video game window. She must act as the villainess, at least until she figures out how to stop the choice prompts from interfering with her life (and survival!)

As with its manhwa counterpart, Villains Are Destined to Die is able to grab the reader’s attention thanks to its prose and story setting that make it stand out from the myriad of isekai stories present in the market. The story has a more serious tone as Penelope will experience death from the most random thing (like death by a fork!), so she’s trying to avoid the death flags, but it’s not easy as she can’t avoid meeting all the male characters. She’s conscious of the consequences of her actions as there is no respawn button in this new life compared to the video game, so she might not get another chance at life. And dying doesn’t necessarily means that she’ll go back to the real world!

All the male characters seem to have some sort of negative affection if not disinterest toward Penelope, starting with her adopted brothers who either bully her or punish her, even when it’s not her fault. Penelope knows that things need to change so she tries to live with her head down and accepts whatever punishment comes her way, even if the culprit is someone else. Throughout the story, readers can start seeing Penelope grow as a person taking her fate in her own hands, whether it means challenging her brothers, the staff who mistreat her, or even accepting death because she can’t remain silent anymore.

Callisto, Winter and Eckles make an appearance in this first volume as Penelope either voluntarily or involuntarily has to interact with them. While they might not hate her as her brothers do, they don’t have any interest in her until she finds herself in front of them. Now it’s only a matter of deciding who can give her the best route to end the story and focus on increasing that character’s affection rate. Winter and Eckles seem to be the better options, but while Winter has a secret to hide, Eckles could become her protector as a former slave turned into bodyguard, However, he might not be as easy to manipulate as she originally thought.

The author Gwon Gyeoeul makes sure to describe locations and characters’ thoughts in a way that readers can get a sense of how everything looks without having read the manhwa in which the dark colour palette helps to enhance the grim atmosphere of the story. The first volume of the novel covers a few volumes of the manhwa, but having read both, I think they are pretty much true to each other, and readers are treated to a couple of full colour illustrations of some characters in the novel as well. Compared to the novel for Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint that also has game-like setting, the typeset of this novel shows the video game settings as part of the text so that the narrative flows continuously, without interruption.

Villains Are Destined to Die is written by Gwon Gyeowul. It started as a novel before being adapted into a manwha, both of which are published in volume format by Ize Press in the English language. Volume 2 of the novel is already out.

Our review copy was supplied by Ize Press