The Hundred Reigns

As of writing this, I’m caught up on the Royal Road chapters (around chapter 120, mid-way through “The Overlord of Crime” arc).

Blurb

A hundred tries to get it right. No more, no less.

For twenty years, Balzam Magnos terrorized the world as its third Overlord: conquering kingdoms, slaughtering heroes, and crushing rebels under his iron boot. None could stand up to him.

But then he died, and Simon is now stuck with his Class.

Owning the most powerful Class in the world has its downsides. The paladins? They want his head. His overpowered siblings? They want his throne. His empress stepmother? She wants both. And his predecessor’s assassin is still out there.

But the Overlord Class has a secret: its user can turn back time to their coronation up to a hundred times, reliving their reigns until death.

Simon has a hundred reigns to grow strong enough to fulfill his dreams. Not one more, not one less.

Better make each one count.

Thoughts

Void Herald doing another time loop book, how could I say no? I loved The Perfect Run and this one scratches the same itch, except Simon is not a bored demigod lazily chasing his Perfect Run, he’s a kid who got handed the world’s worst inheritance and has no idea what he’s doing.

The premise definitely hooks you from the start. The previous Overlord of the world - asshole Simon’s father - was basically an irl Sauron for twenty years. Now Simon gets the Class, all the enemies that come with it, and exactly one hundred reigns to figure out how to live long enough to matter. Each loop resets to the same starting point, but because Simon is able to doctor his father’s will to set the two feuding factions of his nation moving in specific directions, the political/global landscape can change massively one reign to the next. Arcs are structured around what Simon tries this time: dungeon-diving as a nobody (The School of the Doomed), serving under one of his awful half-brothers (In His Highness’ Service), trying to “retire” on an island (Lord of the Berwick Islands), or just becoming a bandit king (The Overlord of Crime) to infilate the Cobweb. Every loop feels properly different instead of slight variations of the same run, which is the trap most timeloop stories fall into.

The characters definitely sell the story for me. Simon is great. All the different friends/enemies he makes on different loops are fully realised. Hell, Balzam Magnos is dead at the start but still one of the best characters because of the influence of his actions (and his ability to prank Simon with acid from the grave).

That said, I think I am preferring the Perfect Run over the Hundred Reigns right now for a few reasons.

• Simon dies fast. Like, often within a couple of in-universe months fast. The blurb sells you on “reliving their reigns” and I came in expecting some proper long-running empire-management loops, but most runs are short, messy, and end badly. It’s fine once you recalibrate, but people who read “kingdom building” and expect to watch a full reign play out are going to be frustrated early on.
• Simon himself has extremely 21st-century morality for a kid raised in an evil empire by an evil warlord. He’s also portrayed as just wanting to get away from politics and live a quiet life, which is at odds with Balzam’s notes (from his set of reigns) that Simon is the number one cause of death for him. It’s a bit hard to view Simon as the highly intelligent MC he is because of the initial portrayal.
• Progression is soft. There are no stats to bump, the reigns reset gear, and Simon’s Overlord class levelling don’t exactly feel like tangible power increases, because so many of the level ups are simply a new perk which is irrelevant to the current reign, or defensive perks (You are now immune to poison) which, while useful, aren’t satisfying.

The progression system with crestones is unique, but I sort of wish the system itself was more flexible so there could be a nice metagaming optimisation approach to Simon trying out different builds / pathways / skills / etc to find something absolutely broken.

Give it a shot if you liked The Perfect Run or Mother of Learning.