How Does Adversary To The Villain End?

If you read ‘Adversary to the Villain’ – oh man, the ending is so tense. Instead of an epic battle the downfall of the villain unfolds slowly like a house of cards collapsing. The adversary defeats the villain by exploiting the villain’s one blind spot: their lingering humanity. One of the most brilliant scenes in the book is where the villain, in the middle of a monologue, suddenly realizes that he lost because he cared too much about one person. The rest of the book unfolds in a significantly quieter tone. Instead of following the main characters of the story, we get to read about the aftermath of the battle from the perspective of side characters that we only heard about in passing before.

I love how the author sways perspective in the final chapters between the decline of the villain and the exhaustion of the adversary. In the end, it’s not a triumphant party but a chaotic attempt to come to terms with the damage that was done. And then there’s the final line. I won’t reveal any spoilers but it’s both a huge gut punch and utterly ambiguous. I think what I love most about this book is that the author never attempts to make his villains completely despicable and in the end, even in defeat, one of them comes to a hauntingly beautiful realization of who the real adversary was.

I was entirely swept up in the rollercoaster of emotions in ‘Adversary to the Villain’ and couldn’t put it down until I had read the very last page. After having read the whole book the main character finally gets his comeuppance in a way that seems at once inescapable and unexpected to read. The huge showdown with the Adversary was a very ideological conflict and actually forced the Villain to think about the real consequences of his actions. The whole book is full of very grey morality and it was great to see that neither the Villain nor the Adversary were any the worse for wear at the end. It was a great ending and made me want to go back to the beginning and pick up on all of the foreshadowing that I had missed along the way. The last chapter is especially beautiful as it is left with the main character in a very quiet moment of contemplation of his actions, leaving room for redemption if he so chooses, but it is not something that is freely given to him.

It was also really great how the author flipped the ‘chosen one’ script and created an adversary that is just as flawed, but in different ways. So instead of a typical good vs. evil story, it was a really great exploration of two broken people trying to justify their actions. And the epilogue? Oh man, the epilogue was just amazing. It doesn’t wrap up every loose end, but it gives you this really bittersweet sense of loss, like you would feel if you left behind a friend who had changed you in some way. I have re-read this three times now, and each time I have picked up on even more layers of the dialogue and of the symbolism in the story.

Adversary to the Villain is one of those rare stories to give me chills at the end. It doesn’t follow the good vs. evil narrative in which good wins in the end. Instead, after a long and brutal fight, villain and adversary come to some kind of stalemate. Yes, the villain’s empire falls but at a terrible cost to the other party as well. The final scene of the story is set in a starry night sky. There, the two uneasy opponents engage in a subdued but deeply honest conversation, ultimately concluding that they’re two sides of the same coin. No happy ending, no deaths, no declarations. Just two people, with deep wounds, coming to terms with each other. The silence is crushing and it’s a beautiful ending that will stay with you long after the story is over, just like a dark shadow.