I've been looking at stories of evil overlords lately.
There's
Overlord, the game, where your minions do all the work. It's comedic, cruelty is mostly optional. "Evil Pikmin the game".
Then there's
Overlord, the anime. Protagonist is hilariously OP and his powers are all evil-themed, but his goals are so far benevolent. "Protagonist is an OP undead the anime".
There's also a manga and light novel called
Re:Monster, but it's bad.
Scene 1: SciFi world, protagonist dies. Scene 2: protagonist is now a goblin in fantasyland, forget scene 1. Also he can eat anything to get powers. Scene 3-infinity: " i killed a thing and ate it. I am more powerful. My goblins are more powerful. Also look here's some wominz."
It's told in a bland way, there's no tension, no proper world building. Then it's raining women who all have sex with the protagonist. I mean, in Overlord the anime the first action of a guy-turned-undead is to grope a woman, and it's the pillar of tastefulness compared to this. I've read fan fiction where the hero gets op powers and all the women that's better than this story that has been published on multiple different media.
As far as books go, if you have even a passing interest in Star Wars, the books about Bane, a Sith, may be of interest. The trilogy starts with
Path of Destruction. He's a cruel, big, strong man in a crappy situation. The books take place hundreds of years before the movies, when both Jedi and Sith have whole armies and are fighting for the control of the galaxy. It takes weird ideas from the movies like there only being two Sith but hundreds of Jedi, and makes them work. The characters are interesting. Bane is evil, in that he will do anything to further his goals - which means he will not do evil if it opposes his goals. Still a murdering bastard.
Further on the literary side of evil, we get to comic book -esque novels.
Soon I Will Be Invincible is a fun book. The protagonist is an evil mad scientist. His mental illness is that he's a supervillain. He knows it's not his best option, but he will still try to build a death machine to take over the world. If he's caught by the heroes and panicking, he'll barely pay attention to the quips and evil monologue coming out of his mouth. He can't kill until he has finished gloating, etc. Has one of the most amusing viewpoint switches I've read, showcasing a fight from both sides.
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain was a bit amateurish story, but enjoyable on the whole. Basically, the protagonist worked for the book's Iron Man expy, got angry, turned to crime... and some years later mind control bugs got everyone not wearing a suit of full-body armor. Oh and of course his love interest is literally a love goddess. But since only one goddess wants to jump his bones I guess it's more or less par for the course.
Then there's
Worm the web novel. Oh boy. Superheroes, psychological trauma, clever powers, insane twists and turns... Supervillains and heroes battle. Villains are allowed to exist because there's these three unstoppable monsters that need to be slowed down so people can evacuate. And by unstoppable, I mean Japan is short an island or two. "Then it got worse, the story".
There's some on my list I've not gotten around to, yet, like Villains by Necessity, and maybe Elantris.
There's some which are about people pretending to be evil, but not. Dark Lord of Derkholm is one of those.
Thief stories aren't really what I'm looking for now. They are about the underdogs, mostly, and I'm on an evil three-headed top dog spree ATM.
Sorry about the rant. Thought Randomness could use some stuff it hasn't seen before.