by Ilona Andrews
Release Date: March 31, 2026
2026 Tor Books
Ebook ARC; 470 Pages
ISBN: 978-1250377265
ASIN: B0F5PCSRGN
Audiobook: B0F6G5TRHV
Genre: Fiction / Fantasy / Portal
Source: Review copy from publisher
3 / 5 Stars
Summary
When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy, and naked in a gutter, it doesn't take her long to recognize Kair Toren, a city she knows intimately from the pages of the famously unfinished dark fantasy series she's been obsessively reading and re-reading while waiting years for the final novel. Her only tools for navigating this gritty world of rival warlords, magic, and mayhem? Her encyclopedic knowledge of the plot, the setting, and the characters' ambitions and fates. But while she quickly discovers she cannot be killed (though many will try!), the same cannot be said for the living, breathing characters she's coming to love—a motley band that includes a former lady’s maid, a deadly assassin, various outrageous magical creatures, and a dangerously appealing soldier. Soon, instead of trying to get home, she finds herself enmeshed in the schemes—and attentions—of dueling princes, dukes, and villains, all while trying to save them and the kingdom of Rellas from the way she knows their stories will end: in a cataclysmic war.
My Thoughts
This Kingdom Will not Kill Me was a pleasantly enjoyable book, but that's not necessarily a surprise to me as I have enjoyed most of these authors' previous works although usually in the urban paranormal genre rather than portal fantasy. So it was an interesting surprise to see them expand to this type of fantasy, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the world-building. I was not as big of a fan of the actual plot and although I did enjoy the main character, she did get on my nerves some of the time due to her reliance on the 'bestest book in the world'. I also think if you are a long-time reader of portal fantasies, you could see a lot of the twists coming, and you could definitely see the many tropes that were used to propel the story forward.
I thought Maggie was a fairly strong character and I liked her character development quite a bit. I liked how she thought things through before deciding on a mission, but didn't necessarily trust everyone around her. Even though she relied on the book-within-a-book situation, she realized quite quickly that things had changed with her entrance into this world and adapted by thinking her way through situations and strategizing. Yes, she made mistakes, big ones, but one of the things I liked about her was that she was quick to learn and didn't make the same mistakes over and over again, nauseatingly. Because this is an isekai portal fantasy, Maggie does have the ability to speak, read, and write languages in the new world. However, one of the things that did annoy me was how much the authors used the 'book' trope to get Maggie out of situations as I found it a bit convenient at times and this did get to be irritating. Naturally, when a new person enters the fray, everything changes so Maggie should no longer be able to use that when dealing with situations. The world would become more unpredictable and those little changes create ripples that cause massive changes. This was not addressed as much in this book.
This book is definitely not a cozy fantasy book as the MC does die violently several times in this book and I am not really giving anything away at this point. The world is grim, dark, and dangerous, but that is what I like in fantasy so this appealed to me. What can I say? I've been reading fantasy for over forty-five years. and have drifted to LitRPG for this reason. The authors did a great job highlighting the fact there are dangerous tyrants and petty lords who do some awful things to people, including children. But, the friendships and storylines in this book are decent and make up for some of the things that happen in this book, and the twists and turns kept me turning the pages quickly. Yes, there are parts that are predictable, but those didn't bother me, and I even figured out the identity of one of the main characters quite early on. This book is full of tropes, yes, and the authors did rely a lot on convenience (such as a person showing up to save the day or Maggie using something from the book where that should no longer be possible because the timeline changed), but they were used in such a way that allowed Maggie the time and freedom to develop what she needed in order to survive in this new world even if I wasn't necessarily a fan of how that was achieved some of the time.
Verdict
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me was a decent book and I did enjoy it. To be fair, I did listen to the audiobook at a fairly fast speed so I don't know how I would have reacted had I been reading it although I think I would have been more annoyed at the uneven pacing. I did enjoy the main characters as well as the secondary characters and thought they were the most interesting part of this book. I wasn't a fan of the tropes propelling this story forward as using a convenient event to get your MC out of trouble just speaks of lazy writing to me, but the story did move fairly quickly most of the time and I appreciated that. I don't particularly care about the ending having a cliffhanger ending as a lot of LitRPG books (here's looking at you HWFWM or DOTF) do the same thing, but at this point I will probably pick up the next book to see what happens, not necessarily to Maggie, but to another character I really like.
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