When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy and naked in a gutter, it doesn’t take her long to recognize Kair Toren. It’s a city she knows intimately from the pages of a famously unfinished dark fantasy series – one 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 encyclopaedic 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.

Maggie joins 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 return home, she finds herself enmeshed in the schemes – and attentions – of duelling princes, dukes and villains. This all while trying to save them and the kingdom of Rellas from the ending she’s seen on the page: a cataclysmic war

In the end, ’This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me’ brought me a lot of pleasure and left me keen to read the next instalment of Maggie the Undying. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure I’d finish it.

Why didn’t I fall in love with the book from the start? 

A small part was the slow pace and the effort needed to set up Maggie’s situation. 

A bigger part was the clumsiness and passivity of Maggie constantly having to summarise two huge fantasy tomes that give her the basis for what appears to be an oracular knowledge of the world she’s found herself in.  These summaries, huge infodumps, doled out piecemeal to move the plot along, often killed the pace of the story. 

The biggest part was that the publisher’s summary didn’t prepare me for the kind of book this turned out to be. I expected the kind of Ilona Andrews fantasy that I’m used to and enjoy, with a kickass heroine with magic powers taking on Gods and Monsters while falling in love with someone everyone else is afraid of. It’s not that kind of story. It’s dark, depressing, laden with deception and splattered with scenes of extreme violence. In other words, it’s a well-told GrimDark story with an innovative twist. 

There were points, especially at the start, when I considered setting the book aside. I carried on because some of the scenes were spectacular and exciting, and I immediately liked Maggie and wanted her to succeed. I liked the depth of the story and the application of a present day mindset to Maggie’s fantasy-become-reality experience. It also helped that Kristen Sieh’s narration was wonderful. 

It was the violence that made me wonder if I would finish this book. The nobles in the Kingdom made the factions in ‘Game of Thrones‘ look like gentle pacifists. The violent acts, especially the detailed description of terrible things done to Maggie, were hard to take. There was nothing here that I’d have been surprised at in a GrimDark novel. I just didn’t expect it in an Iona Andrews novel.

I stuck with the story, and I’m glad I did. Here’s what I wrote when I was 90% through the novel:

“When you’re twenty hours through an audiobook, and you’re going ‘No! There can’t be only 90 minutes left. I need more.’ you know that the authors have worked magic to enthral your imagination.

I’ve just read a scene where Maggie forces a powerful man from her house with the force of her words and personality. It was wonderful and very different to the kind of scene this sort of fantasy normally offers.”

The ending was spectacular. It managed both to tie up the many threads of the story and lay the foundation for the next book.