📔 A Practical Guide to Evil〈Erratic Errata〉

Title: A Practical Guide to Evil

Author: ErraticErata

URL: see below

Date: 2015-03-25 (started)

WARNING! Spoilers Alert: Following post contains unmarked spoilers to all of the books in A Practical Guide to Evil. You have been warned.

I highly recommend you to check out this work before reading further, starting at https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/prologue/.

The story begins rather slowly, therefore I also recommend to read at least 10 chapters before deciding to drop it.

2025-03-18 Introduction & Tropes

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I believe that eventually this note will become one of the most entertaining to reread. I wish I’ve started writing my thoughts down (and publicly) earlier.

In short, “A Practical Guide to Evil” (PGtE for short) is an epic fantasy novel. Of course, this “definition” doesn’t describe it fully.

One of the most peculiar things about this work is that it’s extremely long – 600+ chapters already divided into 7 books in the web version, which might be redivided into 15 books in print – and knowing about PGtE length made me geniunely surprised about how dynamic the plot feels despite diving deeply into the world’s lore from time to time. I simply didn’t expect, given such a volume, that many plot points would be developed so early on.

Ah, I totally forgot. I’ve read 23 out of 600+ chapters by now. I bet my description will change in the future.

As for now, the story follows Catherine Foundling, an orphaned 16-ish years old girl, who wants to infiltrate the Empire of Praes’ army to set her home kingdom of Callow free. However, for some not-very-clear-yet reason she becomes an apprentice of Black Knight – the very guy with eerie green eyes who had a significant role in conquering Callow in the first place.

By the way, Good and Evil exist and sometimes grant to those who seem worthy Names – way-more-than-ordinary abilities. Named people should fulfill their Roles, which are extremely similar to character archetypes and their purpose in fiction in general. Incredibly tropey stuff.

(I wonder how reading “Morphology of the Folktale” by Vladimir Propp or “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell would affect my future interpretations of what’s going on).

Another interesting thing about “A Practical Guide to Evil” is that it’s not very practical, compared to other rational fiction works, though sometimes it provides more obvious lessons similar to those found in “Evil Overlord List” (basically “Things I’ll do if I ever become an Evil Overlord” aimed to avoid numerous mistakes of fictional villains). Also it’s not a guide (i.e. an instruction manual): PGtE – at least so far – doesn’t lecture the reader.

2025-03-22 Catherine

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It should be noted that at first I didn’t care about PGtE too much. My partner begged me to read it together, and we went through the first 10 chapters or so, but then my migraine showed up once again, with headache overshadowing all my other plans.

After a few months I caught myself thinking: how’s Catherine doing, given that we stopped reading right at a cliffhanger, when she is surrounded by other Name claimants and it seems to be “kill or be killed“ kind of situation?

It also should be noted that after the pause I was so interested that I simply couldn’t wait to read with my partner (who, by the way, has already read the whole story). I’ve read about 13 chapters in a week despite me being a really slow reader.

Additionally, I grew fond of Catherine and started rooting for her. Smart, agentic, strong, sharp tongued orphan girl who fights for a greater essentially Good cause using the resources and knowledge of Evil. Neat! While I don’t think “Oh, this is so me”, I see a few similarities between us, and some of her qualities I’d like to foster in myself as well.

2025-03-29 Webtoon

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You can also read PGtE in a webtoon adaptation, thought it’s based on an a freshly edited, getting-prepared-to-be-printed version of the book, not the one which is available online for free.

While reading the webtoon, I have noticed that if you try to open chapter 2, you’ll be redirected to some other site which doesn’t even open. I believe that it’s a “subtle” way to convince readers to either log in or create an account. Fortunately, there’s Webtoons MIM Blocker, a Firefox plugin which allows to bypass that.

To be honest, I prefer the book over the webtoon. While I truly adore the artstyle, the omission of many, oh so many events, thoughts, lore descriptions makes me sad. Reading the webtoon might be easier, but webtoon-only readers are going to miss soooo much.