Otto Von Trapezoid and the Empress of Thieves

After the emotional pummeling I took from Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life, I needed something light and funny. Otto von Trapezoid and the Empress of Thieves, by Jesse Baruffi, was just what the bibliotherapist would have ordered. This supervillain romance has: sentient and not-so-sentient robots, an indestructible super spy, poison, airships, family snark, thefts of entire museums, and much, much more! And, unlike most superhero/villain satires, the one has emotional depth enough to keep the whole lot from collapsing under its own silly weight.

Otto von Trapezoid, who attempts to take over the world from his orbital station the Quadrilateral of Doom, is a socially maladjusted genius who has just met his match. Esmerelda Santa Monica is the eponymous Empress of Thieves. On the day she steals the entire Louvre, Otto has perfected his doomsday weapon. They both hack into the UN’s announcement system to reveal their plans for the world. At the same time. Their squabbling ruins their plans and they each swear revenge on each other. Funny enough, they each independently hatch the same plan to kill the other. Esmerelda plans to seduce Otto and then kill him. Otto dusts off an old dating advice book from the 1930s and pomades his hair to seduce Esmerelda before killing her.

When they actually meet, the realize they have more in common than they realized. Their first date is accompanied by explosions, floods, and a mechanical T-Rex. Otto’s sincerity appeals to Esmerelda’s jaded sensibility. Her emotional savvy is just the thing Otto has been missing in his life. Together, they are the perfect team, if only they can keep Jake Indestructible at bay.

Baruffi pulls out every superhero/villain trope from the playbook and manages to make them all work in this book. I would have marveled, but I was too busy laughing at the antics of Otto, Esmerelda, and their various allies and enemies. I really hope there are sequels.

I received a free copy of this ebook from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This is a story about two villains that have similar demands for the UN. They begin to plan to kill one another but when the time comes they find out that hey have a lot more in common and they fall in love. There are a lot of geeky scifi and fantasy references and a lot of goofy humor that made me smile. The mechanical robot t-rex was one of my favorite things and I was sad to see him depart so early. I really wanted to love this book 100%. I really liked the underlying story but there was just too much going on for the length of the book. The acronyms were really cute and funny for the first half of the book but they got a bit old after a while and there were so many that I would suggest maybe a glossary of acronyms for those of us who struggle with it. All in all, I would recommend this for fans of scifi and humor and would love to get a YA audience to review it as well as I think many teens would like this too.

This book was so much fun to read! I was literally giggling my way through most of it. This book is the perfect satire of all superhero and supervillain types there are out there.

It has been more than a few years since I was into reading humor fiction. This is after having cut my teeth reading Douglas Adams early on. So I thought I would give this super villain rom-com a try and I was not disappointed.

The novel starts out with some over the top villainous panache as Otto Von Trapezoid and the Empress of Thieves bumble into either other with their respective dastardly plans. Von Trapezoid lives on a space station and is overly fond of acronyms for the gadgets he develops. Esmerelda Santa Monica is a master thief who steals anything she can to relieve her own boredom.

After meeting and subsequently trying to murder each other a few times, they of course fall in love. They begin a love affair fueled by their having finally met someone on their own level.

Their relationship then takes the usual ups and downs any relationship will (murderous friends/family, killer robots, self-destructing space stations). This is buoyed by Baruffi's ability to flip traditional relationship experiences into something numerous and unique.;

Overall this book is more than just a fluffy comedy. Baruffi has more than enough tricks and meat in the story to sustain it.

Additionally I got a chance to review three different epilogues for this book. The first two were proper Douglas Adam's inspired asides. Good for a chuckle but didn't add too much to the book, but would have distracted from if in the book proper. The last epilogue detailed what became of Otto's super villain friends and functioned as a nice end-cap.