Top Five Wednesday | Favourite Villains

Hello! Welcome to another Top Five Wednesday! This week's Top Five Wednesday is my top five favourite villains. Now, the trouble with favourite villains is that the best ones you end up hating, but the ones with some humanity can kind of become anti-heroes (which can make them not the same as traditional villains?). But I've chosen the first five villains that came to mind as the most memorable for me and they are a mixture of the two.

1. Count Olaf from A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

I just have to put Count Olaf on this list because he is equal parts ridiculous and terrifying - similar to how I would describe this series as a whole. This series holds a special place in my heart since I read it repeatedly throughout my childhood. A Series of Unfortunate Events follows the Baudelaire siblings who become orphans very early in book one. Each book shows them being sent to live with different people while Count Olaf appears in various disguises to try and steal their large fortune. The entire series is ridiculous but also hilarious and cleverly written. Count Olaf's schemes are very mustache-twirly and absurd, but he also has moments of terrifying villainy when he murders people or even when he just sits outside a room at night with his shiny, shiny knife. Overall, a great villain for a children's book series.

2. Kyle Haven from The Liveship Traders Trilogy by Robin Hobb

Now this is a villain I actually hate. Robin Hobb is fantastic at writing unlikeable characters. I genuinely spent the first two books of this trilogy seething in anger at this character, and he's not even the main villain of the story. The Liveship Traders is the second trilogy in Robin Hobb's series and is an adult fantasy trilogy following a large cast of characters. Ship of Magic is the first book of the Liveship Traders series and it tells the story of the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Vestrit family. A liveship is a ship made of Wizardwood, a mystical substance, giving it magical properties. When three generations of a ship's owners die on board, a liveship "quickens", meaning that the ship awakens and becomes a sentient being with all the memories of the ancestors who have contributed to the ship's quickening. When the Vestrit family's ship quickens, arguments break out between the daughter who thought she would inherit the ship (Althea) and her brother-in-law, who actually inherits the ship (Kyle). Kyle is just so cruel and uncaring from the very start of the first book, and his unwillingness to listen or understand anyone else makes him so unlikeable throughout the whole series. And while I hate him, I really appreciate that it takes a good writer to create such a realistic villain.

3. Trin from The Greatcoats Series by Sebastian de Castell

Trin is another character who is just so evil throughout the series that it's hard to read sometimes (especially when it comes to the torture scenes in these books). The Greatcoats series follows... the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike. Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission. We follow three of the remaining Greatcoats: Falcio, Brasti and Kest, in this politically intriguing, humorous, and well-written set of books. There are many villains in these books who I love (including Duke Jillard) but Trin is one that especially stands out as particularly memorable.

4. Light Yagami from Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata

Now Light is a weird villain, because you see pretty much all of Death Note from his perspective. You even start rooting for him, even when you know everything he's doing is wrong. Death Note is a manga series that follows Light Yagami, a teenager who find a book at school called a Death Note. When he writes someone's name in the book, they die a few minutes later (although there a lot more rules to using the Death Note than just that). Light decides to use the book to kill criminals but is soon hunted by the best detectives in the city. As I said, I really like this character because he's so obviously in the wrong, but he's so clever and manipulative that you actually want him to pull through so many times. I highly recommend this series to anyone new to manga if you enjoy horror/thrillers.

5. Adrius au Augustus from the Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown

The Red Rising trilogy follows Darrow, a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars liveable for future generations. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. All of the Reds are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Adrius aka The Jackal, is one of many villains in the Red Rising series. He is a complicated character and sees little value in anything other than achieving his goals, yet he still longs for his father's approval. He is needlessly cruel throughout, always trying to prove himself to his father. I found him to be so interesting and he always keeps the reader on their toes whenever he appears.

So, those are my top five villains! Let me know what your Top Five are below, or if you have a blog post then link it! Just in case anyone is new to this, Top Five Wednesday was created by Lainey (Gingerreadslainey on YouTube) and is now run by the Goodreads Group so that people can share more of their favourite (or sometimes least favourite) books in an interesting way. The people in the Group create weekly topics each month so Bloggers and YouTubers alike to discuss books. The group can be found here! And if you want to see more of my previous Top Five Wednesday Blog posts, you can click here!