Fanfic Recommendations Go Hawaiian

[classicdrogn]

I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire! is actually an original light novel rather than fanfic, and the link is to a google search rather than a specific archive site as there are multiple translations available for that matter, but it's a relatively unique take on the generic issekai format. The usual sword skills and magic (and MC's prodigious talent for it) are in effect, but the overall tone is actually more in line with classic space opera as the MC is left to take over management of a heavily indebted backwater territory (nominally an entire galaxy, but for practical purposes just the one planet) from an early age and is continually frustrated by how he has to fix the economy before there's anything there to squeeze dry, modernize the military and secure the region from raiders before he could embark on any campaigns of conquest, etc., and just generally by how his self interested and indulgent intent ends up making him look like an ideal lord and leaves both the higher officials in the imperial bureaucracy and the population at large singing his praises at every turn. (Enlightened self interest is really quite something!)

Just, skip the first chapter, as it's nothing but your bog standard miserable death after an unfortunate life with the only even slight twist being that the annoying chatty ROB is "secretly" (from the MC, it's made all too obvious to the reader) malicious. Seriously, the times it shows up again to ineffectually attempt diabolus ex machina plots are consistently the worst scenes. Skipping over them and applying a bit of the ol' perception filter to use in character justifications instead greatly raises the strength and quality of the narrative, though it is reasonably decent as it stands.