A Review of THIS KINGDOM WILL NOT KILL ME, by Ilona Andrews

4 out of 5 Stars

Format: Audiobook

Twenty-five-year-old Maggie Haley delivers groceries for DoorDash, applies for jobs that will require her political science degree, dates intermittently, and reads widely. Her favorite books are a series she read back in middle school, THE RISE OF KAIR TOREN, a Tolkien-esque trilogy of which only the first two books were completed. She knows its world, Rellas, backward and forward.

And one day she wakes up inside it and is suddenly stuck in a world of royal intrigue where magic is real; she doesn’t know why she’s there or how to leave. She is just one person, alone and powerless, but she has some advantages: she knows powerful people’s secrets because of the books she’s almost memorized, and her transition to Rellas has made her fluent in all this world’s languages.

So she sets out at first to find a way back home, and when she can’t, she resolves to save this world from the deadly disaster she knows is on the horizon.

This story is an isekai, or "portal-drop" fantasy – meaning a human from our world is thrown into a fantasy-magic setting. However, it improves on most of its kind because its vibe and tone are pure urban fantasy. Maggie – from whose point-of-view the story is told -- is in this world, but she’s an articulate, educated, somewhat cynical, well-read 21st-century American woman. She’s rational, self-possessed, decisive, stands up for herself, and does not suffer fools. So you get this blending of what I think are the best elements of both sub-genres.

Maggie cannot die. (I’m giving nothing away; it's in the title.) Andrews explores the logical results and ramifications of this in a sometimes amusing, sometimes gruesome way. Also, in Rellas the magically gifted are what we would call superheroes. They are a minority who are also the ruling nobility – some honorable, some psychotic, most just venal. Maggie sees this, as does the reader, and her plans and tactics take the ‘overpowered meta-human’ factor, well-known in our world from comics and movies, into account while most in this world simply don’t look at their society that way.

The book’s plot follows a familiar yet entertaining pattern -- by showing character and smarts in tough situations she slowly accrues found family. Because she is constantly underestimated, she builds a power base, acquires a defensible home, and gains enough knowledge to help her achieve her short-term goals. She moves—strong, self-possessed, and mysterious—among these elite empowered beings who cannot fathom her depth of knowledge nor how she seems to prevail when she needs to.

It’s a compelling read, sometimes funny, sometimes exciting, with people you care about. It’s well paced because it balances character development, exposition, and action well, leaning just a bit more toward action, which keeps the plot moving in this almost 500-page novel.

This audiobook is performed by Kristen Sieh, an American actress known onscreen for HOUSE OF CARDS and ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. She hits just the right notes of emotional desperation, determination, and wry humor. Her generic California-bred American accent is transparent, which is good – the book shines through. She does exposition particularly well—in those paragraphs she stretches out sentences a bit in a sort of down-tone relative to the book’s main narrative; it’s analogous in music to a minor key, and this makes the background material entertaining, not boring. The reader finds themselves absorbing the necessary details of the world without feeling as if anything’s being explained.

I have only two criticisms, one plot-driven and one of structure. First, Maggie knows she has magic; she can feel it in her body as an inchoate thing, and at one point she casts a spell by reading it aloud phonetically. However, events happen where she clearly shows specific magic abilities, and she doesn’t see them as such. She thinks she’s merely her Earth-self, transported to this magical world with only the one trick of resurrecting. One has to wonder why her keen intelligence, applied so well to other plot elements, is absent when she assesses herself.

Second, Andrews made the choice to start the book in medias res with Maggie having already arrived and already figured out where she is, which in itself is fine, but we are introduced to the character when she is sad and desperate, without any context. Andrews chose to minimize initial exposition and got straight to the story, but it took thirty pages or so to warm to Maggie.

Nevertheless: Highly recommended.