Book Review: I Become a Secret Police Officer of The Imperial Academy
Honestly, I was hesitant on doing a book review on this novel, but I'm gonna because for one, it's completed, and secondly, it's better as a whole than most.
“Almost a year since last post and it's another book review?? What happened in 2025?!” I hear you ask. Still, I plead for forgiveness. I was busy with life and IRL stuff and maintaining the site is enough work as it is (Page speed insights make me proud ;D).
Anyway, enough yapping. What's 'I Become a Secret Police Officer of The Imperial Academy' even about and why specifically have I chosen to write a review on it here?
Well, first off, it's a completed novel, so I can give my opinion on the work as a whole and not just a part of it. Who actually wants to read a review glazing a novel that was written before it had a shit ending? Not me.
Secondly, this novel, as the last two, had peaked my interest in it's unique writing. In this case, it wasn't the world building or even the side characters, these are all insanely bland.
It's the protagonist, Ellen.
Ellen is the mentally unstable spawn of two ruthless nobles she called her parents. She had two siblings, Julian, her brother and Alicia, her sister. From an early age both Ellen and Julian had been groomed by their parents to take over the family business, which was being responsible for the network of secret state police across the fictional country both she and Julian lived in.
Alicia avoided this through being just unnaturally adored by her siblings and her parents.
But calling what their parents did grooming is putting it lightly, it was basically hardcore abuse. Between fighting to the death with her brother multiple times and losing limbs since she was little for her 'training', both Ellen and Julian became extremely good at their jobs.
But while Julian managed to suppress his abysmal childhood by trying to fix his life and settle down, Ellen became explosively unstable, taking drugs to calm her worsening psychotic episodes.
In this hell, Alicia was Ellen's only crutch and escape, and also the only person that could effectively reprimand her. It kept her grounded, and so Ellen managed to continue to dance on the brink of insanity, until – of course – disaster struck.
Influenced by outside factors, corruption and general unrest, one day, demons, who have lived in the capital of the fictional country went berserk. Of course, this wasn't all demons, basically a minority, but that didn't matter. The damage was substantial. People were ripped apart alive, burned, beaten, stabbed and general chaos befell the capital.
In this chaos, on an outing with her family, Ellen witnesses her parents burning to death, but quickly processes the situation with minimal sorrow. Alicia however, oh boy. Well, expectedly, she dies. Not very horribly, but after being fatally wounded, she bleeds to death in Ellen's arms.
This is the moment Ellen is kicked off her safeguards and begins her genocide.
She might not have been as successful if Julian hadn't survived, but he did. His lover however, did not. Ellen uses this grief to her advantage to use her brother's brain to exact her own revenge. Leaving Julian to organize the process itself, while she went out on field-work.
The plan? Basically kill everything that wasn't human, full stop. And to her credit, she goes through with it. Killing, men, women, children, babies, hidden demons and their human sympathizers, executing and torturing these poor people in the worst ways possible.
To state the obvious, this novel is twisted beyond belief.
We view about 99.9% of the novel through Ellen's perspective, and it's amazing.
Not the barbaric slaughter of untold thousands of children, families and innocent farmers mind you. But her perspective of it all.
This novel exists for an unreliable narrator, which Ellen is. Her psychology is so understandably twisted, it's fascinating. It's the entire reason this worked hooked me and kept me engaged. Everything else is so mediocre I don't even want to spend time mentioning it, and I won't.
Ellen does horrible shit throughout the novel, put regression into the mix and she has probably commited the same genocidal act at least a dozen times over.
But this is where I fell for this work. As the author actually knew how to write a character that was so twisted yet so pitiful.
Through her eyes, we see how Ellen descends into insanity. Not cringeworthy insanity, but sad delusions, psychosis and eventually suicidal tendencies. How ever much she justifies her actions to herself, she still feels extremly guilty and aware of what she is doing.
Her emotional dilemma about trying to save the sister that cannot be saved, the guilt over the untold millions she has killed time and time again, and the slow realization that she cannot save her sister is soul-crushing.
Every life she lives comes to this conclusion at it's end, which is the point at which Ellen commits suicide. Of course, Julian is usually long dead by this point, either killed by the righteous hero of their fucked up world or taking his life himself.
Ellen doesn't care at this stage anymore, she dehumanizes herself for her actions and for having lost her anker to reality, her sister.
The 'good guy', Theo, is first an ignorant bastard, playing with unearned power and is dead set on 'punishing' Ellen for her crimes. He, of course being an unstoppable force, succeeds.
Unfortunately for him, the world turns back every time Ellen dies, right back to the outing where her sister dies.
And while Ellen forgets, only remembering small flashes of her previous lives, Theo retains his memory and eventually goes insane as well. The novel is pretty good at portraying how an already mentally unstable and a perfectly sane individual can both go insane, and in what way.
Anyhow, after killing all demons a dozen times over in different gruesome ways and failing to save her sister every time, eventually Theo gives up and tries over and over to plead with Ellen to stop.
Ellen of course just does as always, either going through with her genocide, getting killed by Theo or just blowing her brains out before anything even starts.
By the end, both Theo and Ellen are completely exhausted, Ellen having regressed so many times already that she started remembering her old memories. And Theo, just being torn between the urge to kill Ellen and the despair of knowing it won't change anything.
And so, after god knows how long, Ellen is persuaded to live. But she only agrees if Theo marries her, which he, in his despair, does do. Of course, they don't love each other.
Ellen reluctantly gives up on saving Alicia, suppressing her suicidal thoughts and guilt to hopefully get out of the hellish loop she's been living in.
As for Theo, knowing that after Ellen comes to that conclusion the regressions would stop, keeps her on suicide watch and ties her down in life as best as he can, out of pity, hatred and guilt for his own failings.
Of course they have a third wheel, that being Ellen's best friend Ethel, but she is not that integral to the story, even though she is probably the only person Ellen actually, romantically loves.
To be honest, the end of this novel was good. My expectations weren't ruined, the story didn't retcon anything or change tone half-way (Looking at you PDKSM >.>) and overall it managed to convey/tell the story it wanted in a satisfying manner.
Actually, kudos to the author for managing to write such in-depth and actually interesting internal dialog for Ellen. It's 90% of what makes this novel excellent in my opinion.
And also, thank you for shitting on philosophers! No, really! I love how well educated Ellen is, pulling out some philosophical quote that might sound insightful (actually well known quotes), but then goes “Do I really want to be judged and live by the words of a creepy recluse who complained about married women before blowing his brains out?”. It's fucking hilarious, resonates with my own opinions and I love it.
In conclusion, should you read this if I sparked some interest in you? Yes, absolutely, do read it, it's a great psychological novel.
Can you read it? No. It was struck down by a DMCA claim this monday...
Do I have a copy? Hell yeah.
So hit me up on matrix and I'll slide it to you for free.
Well then, until next time! :D