Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World announces its register immediately, on page one of the employee handbook: dealing with unauthorized personnel on Dark Enterprises property may result in death or the end of the world. The workplace-as-hell metaphor has a long comic pedigree, but Mark Waddell does something specific and useful with it, he makes Dark Enterprises an actual Hell-adjacent corporation and then commits fully to the consequences of that premise. This audiobook, narrated by Pete Cross across just over eleven hours, maintains the tonal balance between satirical wit and genuine emotional stakes that the premise requires, with Colin's disaster unfolding with the slow-motion logic of a very bad performance review.
The Verdict, Briefly
Colin is a low-level employee who has been toiling in his cubicle long enough that a promotion feels less like ambition than survival. When a shadowy figure offers him his deepest desire in exchange for a small, unspecified favor, and Colin asks for the promotion, the resulting unleashed ancient evil is both logically inevitable and somehow genuinely surprising in its specifics. Waddell is good at the comedic timing of consequences, at setting up a premise and then making the fallout worse in precisely the way you feared but did not quite anticipate. People are disappearing in New York, Management is starting to notice, and Colin's new romantic prospect, set up by his best friend, possibly a little too great, asks a lot of questions, is now entangled in a situation that was already precarious.
The romance subplot is carefully handled. The queer framing, Colin is explicitly gay, the love interest is male, is integrated rather than spotlighted. Colin's identity is not the source of conflict or the subject of explanation; it is simply part of who he is while he tries not to get fired, terminated in the permanent sense, or held responsible for ending civilization. That integration is both a representational choice and a tonal one: the book is too busy building its comedic premise to pause for explanatory asides, and the audiobook is better for it.
Why Listen to Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
Pete Cross's narration is well-matched to the material. Corporate satire in audiobook form requires a specific quality: the ability to read bureaucratic language, HR-speak, and sinister corporate boilerplate with a straight face while conveying the absurdity underneath. Cross has that capability. He plays Colin as someone who is aware that his situation is ridiculous, which is the correct read of a character who knows he made a catastrophic deal and is trying to fix it with the same low-status energy that got him there. The nearly eleven-and-a-half-hour runtime is on the longer side for a comedy, but the pace generally justifies it.
One reviewer notes the book really is full of dark humor and really unique takes on a lot of situations. Another is more critical, observing that after a certain point she needed Colin to really step it up, noting that he spends a lot of time making poor decisions before acting. That observation is both fair and interesting: part of Waddell's design is that Colin's passivity and reactive decision-making are character flaws rather than narrative choices, but they do create passages in the middle of the book where momentum slows. Listeners who prefer their protagonists more agentive may feel the drag. Listeners who enjoy watching someone dig themselves deeper before finally acting will find it consistent with the overall comedic logic.
Points to Consider
The Dark Enterprises corporate-supernatural worldbuilding is the book's most original element. A Hell-like multinational corporation solving the world's most difficult problems in deeply questionable ways is a premise with rich satirical potential, and Waddell extracts a great deal of it without exhausting the concept entirely. The novel works as a standalone, no prior series knowledge is required, and the audiobook format suits the workplace satire particularly well because Waddell's prose has a rhythm that benefits from being heard rather than read silently.
Ex-minion demon Taj Sekani is a character worth flagging. Running a dance studio and trying to maintain a low profile after leaving his old master's service, Taj represents the book's other major tonal register: the supernatural entity trying to live a normal life and being repeatedly thwarted by his own history. His dynamic with Colin, both the physical comedy of their early interactions and the romantic tension that develops, gives the audiobook its emotional center. Waddell's best choice may be making the love story genuinely sweet rather than purely comic. It anchors the novel's wilder elements and gives Colin something worth protecting beyond his own career prospects.
The Right Listener for Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
Listeners who enjoy queer-forward speculative fiction with a comedic sensibility will find Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World a satisfying listen. Fans of the Good Omens sensibility, the supernatural world intersecting with the mundane in ways that are simultaneously funny and emotionally real, will recognize something similar operating here, though Waddell's corporate framing gives it a distinct flavor. The audiobook is well-suited to listeners who want representation woven into genre fiction rather than centered on it as its primary subject.
The book is less suited to listeners who want fast-moving plot without tonal complexity, or those who need their protagonists to make good decisions throughout. Colin makes bad decisions for most of the book. That is the point, but it requires patience with a protagonist who is, for long stretches, his own worst obstacle. If you can meet that requirement, the payoff is genuine, both the comedy and the emotional resolution earn what they ask of you across the eleven-hour run.
The Short Version
- Performance: Pete Cross leans into the dry corporate absurdism with a deadpan delivery that suits Colin's hapless but self-aware voice throughout eleven hours.
- What it covers: workplace ambition gone catastrophically wrong, queer romance under existential pressure, demonic bureaucracy
- Feel: Darkly comic and propulsive, with genuine sweetness underneath
- Our call: Mark Waddell's debut is sharp, inventive, and funny in the specific way satire is when it clearly understands what it is mocking.
Do I need to have read other books in a series before this audiobook?
No. Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World works entirely as a standalone. The Dark Enterprises corporate-supernatural setting is self-contained and fully explained within the audiobook itself. No prior series knowledge is required.
Is the queer romance central to this audiobook or more of a subplot?
It is genuinely central without being the primary conflict. Colin's relationship with the new man his best friend sets him up with develops in parallel to the apocalyptic workplace plot. The queer framing is integrated naturally rather than treated as a premise requiring explanation.
