Review: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was provided an ALC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This was my first time reading from this author, and I don't know what rock I've been living under but they have a ton of fantasy works that I now need to check out. This is the first book in a new series following Maggie, who is from our world in the current day. She somehow ends up waking up in the middle of her favorite unfinished fantasy novel series. She uses her intimate knowledge of the series to insert herself into the politics and plotlines of the characters. This makes both allies and enemies for Maggie, but it also helps her put together a sort of found family to help and protect her as she moves through the story within a story.

This is full of all of the things you could possibly want in a fantasy novel. It has political intrigue, plotting, scheming, betrayals, assassins, magical creatures, mages, magic wielding families, and more. This isn't going to be for everyone. It is told in almost a flashback sort of format as Maggie often has to recap what she knows from her near perfect recall of the "books" to her allies and to prove that she is trustworthy to new people that she meets as the story progresses. She is treated as a seer or prophet since what she says almost always comes true in some fashion. The more she "helps" the more the timelines and events change, but the heart of the fantasy world she is living in stays the same. The character building and world-building suffer at the hands of continuing to tell the story within the story to set up Maggie's relationship with the world and the characters. I expect as the series continues, her knowledge is going to run out and she will experience the world organically. I enjoyed the relationships Maggie is able to build with her crew and how quickly she was able to operate in this strange land. I liked the pacing and the action and all of the political posturing and scheming. I was entertained the entire book. This does end on a pretty big cliffhanger, which sets up the next book. There are still alot of threads left to explore from the this book. We have yet to find out how Maggie got to Kair Toren and if she will ever find a way back to the "real" world. She also isn't really looking for the answer to that question.

I loved the narrator! There are a ton of characters in this book, and she was able to give each one of them a distinct voice. She narrated each character some with accents some without with emotion and tone appropriate to the scene. Fantastic job!

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