Genre: Portal fantasy (also elements of epic and romantic fantasy)
Published: March 31, 2026
Print length: 480 pages
Links: Goodreads | Author Website ! Amazon
Kindle Unlimited? No
Series: Maggie the Undying (book 1)
Warnings: Besides the usual fantasy violence, there’s child abduction and captivity, a serial killer, and a pretty brutal torture scene described in excruciating detail.

Synopsis:

If you ever wanted to live inside your favorite fantasy novel… be careful what you wish for.

Maggie Haley went to sleep in her Austin, Texas apartment and woke up in a rain-soaked gutter in Kair Toren, a city in the fantasy series she’s read obsessively for years. Starting out naked and alone, she uses her wits and her exhaustive knowledge of the books to survive and begin building a life in this strange yet familiar world.

But as Maggie navigates the perils of treacherous royal houses, enigmatic mages and a shadowy crime syndicate, she finds herself caring about the characters who’ve come to life around her and trying to influence their fates. The plot keeps getting ever more tangled from her interventions, and oh, there’s a dashing swordsman she might be falling for but doesn’t quite trust. She’ll need to save the kingdom, sort out her feelings, and avoid getting written out of the story in the process.

What I thought:

Wow, what a ride. I thought I knew what to expect from an Ilona Andrews book—I’ve read and loved several of this husband-and-wife writing team’s other series—but this one took me by surprise. Same great writing style as always, great characters, meticulous world-building, but a very different reading experience. I couldn’t put it down, I enjoyed it, but now that it’s done, I’m still working out exactly what I think.

The plot feels dense and tangled, largely because as the reader, you’re getting multiple books in one: the fictional book series (a 2/3-finished trilogy) that the world is based on, and the actual book you’re reading with Maggie dropped into that world. You get snippets of the underlying fictional books but with tantalizing gaps, and the stories from multiple levels intertwine in complex ways. It works, mostly, but it’s a lot to follow, and can be a bit exhausting at times.

There are roughly a metric ton of characters with involved, interrelated backstories. Some appear, then vanish for several chapters and resurface at a critical moment, making me think, “Wait, who was that again?” I almost started a spreadsheet to keep track. I did occasionally use the Kindle app’s search function to look up who someone was and where I’d seen them before.

Maggie herself is an intriguing main character, and I enjoyed watching her maneuver her way from the literal gutter to a position of influence in Kair Toren using only her knowledge, daring and smarts. I found it a little hard to believe she was delivering groceries and clerking at a storage facility in her former life; she should have been handling strategy for NATO. Then again, plenty of people are underemployed. It also felt a little strange that she had a half-dozen noblemen falling over themselves to court her, but as someone from another world, she must have seemed mysterious and exotic in medieval male eyes.

Speaking of mysteries, the plot is full of them, which helped keep me turning the pages; but fair warning, not nearly all are resolved by the last chapter, and there’s a giant cliffhanger at the end to make sure readers mash the preorder button on the sequel as it soon as it comes out.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me was a terrific read, even though at times it was a challenging and even frustrating one. I’m waiting with bated breath for the next volume, while also hoping this new series doesn’t hold up progress on the other Ilona Andrews series I’m following.

Who will love it:

• Portal fantasy readers wanting to watch a smart modern woman adapt to a classic fantasy setting.
• Lovers of complex plots with Game of Thrones-level intrigue but with some actually likeable characters.
• Fans of will-they-or-won’t-they romance featuring a strong, handsome, protective duke and a fiercely independent heroine.

Favorite quotes:

"Three hours after we met, you sold yourself into slavery and then died." Well, yes, it sounded bad when he put it that way.

Apparently, Lute didn't just hold grudges, he cuddled them and tucked them in at night.

“Bless your heart,” I said.
“And that means?” Solentine raised his eyebrows.
“‘Eat dirt and die.’”

About the author:

From Ilona-andrews.com: “Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for the husband-and-wife writing team, Gordon and Ilona. The couple are the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors of Urban Fantasy, Sci Fi, and Paranormal fiction.”

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