Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World

• Author: Mark Wadell
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: October 7, 2025
• Publisher: Ace

Thank you to NetGalley and Ace for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

WARNING! Under no circumstances must employees strike a deal with unauthorized personnel on Dark Enterprises property. Such behavior could result in death…or the end of the world.

Colin is a low-level employee at Dark Enterprises, a Hell-like multinational corporation solving the world’s most difficult problems in deeply questionable ways. After years of toiling away in a cubicle, he’s ready to climb the corporate ladder and claim the power he’s never had.

The only problem is, he’s pretty sure he’s about to be terminated. Like, terminated. That’s tough, because his BFF has just set him up with a great guy. In fact, maybe he’s a little too great. And asks a lot of questions…

When Colin meets a shadowy figure promising him his heart’s deepest desire, he can’t resist the urge to fast-track his goals. In return for a small, unspecified favor, he asks for the one thing that will improve his life: a promotion.

But that small favor unleashes an ancient evil. People in New York are disappearing, the world might be ending, and Management is starting to notice. Getting to the top is never easy, and now it’s up to Colin to save the world. It’s the ultimate power move, after all.

I have a confession. Upon seeing the title of this book, I laughed a little but also requested the read strictly because of the title. Fortunately, the description sounded really good when I read it. It’s one of those books that is quirky and unique and straddles genres and wades through deeper themes while incorporating humor. It reminds me of books by T. Kingfisher that I like to call horror-lite, or cozy horror; but somehow it also reminds me of the That Time I Got … and … series by Kimberly Lemming, which was such an out of the box read and I loved it. Clearly I was completely ready to adore this book.

For me, this was one of those books where I already knew it was going to be a great read before I even finished chapter 1, and I was always excited to find out what was going to happen next. The story is told through the perspective of Colin, who manages to be humorous even when facing the most dire of circumstances—at least in his thoughts, which tend to be a bit inappropriate and therefore funny. We quickly learn that Colin is gay, he shares an apartment in NYC with his best friend, and works for a really shady company. In addition, he is pretty far along the spectrum of moral grayness, but is more like the kind of guy who gets bullied until he snaps. 

In this job, employees don’t get written up—they get terminated, as in the firing squad comes to terminate you. Colin comes across as the kind of employee who is usually stuck in a low-level position on the fast track to nowhere, at a job where cutthroat ambition is highly prized. Luckily, things are going better on the romantic front with Colin and the guy his bestie set him up with from a shared yoga class. So when he becomes convinced that he is going to be terminated, he grows increasingly more desperate. Ultimately, this leads him to make a concerning, open-ended bargain, where he agrees to do a small favor for a terrifying shadow being in exchange for a promotion.

“‘But how does he manage to make the exact wrong choice in every situation? Like, how is that even possible?’”

This is where Colin’s morally gray characteristics come up—while he’s vulnerable and emotionally invested in his love interest, while showing a ruthless ambition streak, where he is determined to get some power however he can so that he can get revenge on the people who have wronged him. It impacts the way that he treats people, and I found it really interesting that he can be sweet and kind outside of Dark Enterprises, yet his relationships with others are dramatically different at his place of employment. Their location on the corporate ladder and their usefulness to him strongly directs how he interacts with others. I especially liked Lex, and how they weren’t afraid to call him out on any of his selfish ideas, behavior, or treatment of others. 

I couldn’t stop laughing while reading this, and fell in love with the pure quirky delight that is Colin and his end of the world team of ride or dies—after he is the one who released a threat to the world to get promoted from Human Resources to executive assistant. Once he ascends to the 13th floor, that is where the limited brakes on the brilliant imagination of Waddell come off, and things just keep getting weirder yet things seem perfectly logical in this fantastic and beautifully rendered alternate version of New York. 

While this verges on horror, it makes me think more of dark humor threaded through a really quirky type of fantasy, combined with a queer romantic subplot. Honestly, all of this was a delight, and while I have some trouble summing up my thoughts on this, I know that I’m going to date myself here, but it’s kind of like Clark Griswold from National Lampoon gets an elaborate villain origin story in an alternate version of Manhattan, but make it queer. Honestly, there wasn’t anything about this book that I didn’t enjoy, and once things got moving with the exponentially progressive consequences of his actions, I couldn’t put it down. If there’s one thing you take away from this review, it’s that if this is the kind of book that sounds like its right up your alley, check it out and enjoy!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase through my links.