This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (Maggie the Undying #1) by Ilona Andrews

Ilona Andrews is a husband and wife writing team. They wrote the Innkeeper Chronicles, an excellent series about an innkeeper attempting to find her family while intergalactic politics keep diverting her from her mission. So when I heard about This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me coming out this year, you better believe I was excited to read it. I listened to the audiobook, which may or may not have been a mistake. 

Maggie, a Texan working multiple jobs to pay the bills, wakes up and finds herself transported to the “fictional” kingdom of Rellas, the setting of her favorite unfinished fantasy trilogy. She finds herself on the streets of Kair Toren, the capital city. She uses her knowledge of the plot of the books to find herself shelter and food, but each time she acts, she changes the future and her knowledge becomes less and less useful. There's a threat to the kingdom and she's attempting to save the realm. Basically, Maggie wakes up in A Song of Ice and Fire and has to avoid being beheaded while meddling in the affairs of royalty. 

Meanwhile, her party is created. There's the hot noble, the mercenaries, the ragamuffin orphan, and the best mage in a generation who had been trapped in a spell created by another mage for years until Maggie came along. The setting is pretty cool, with different creatures and a magic system that is not too well-explained, but doesn't seem to have no rules at all. 

This book was frustrating because the pacing was just off. We spent a really long time figuring out how to get Maggie and some kids out of a dungeon and very little time when the king was nearly assassinated. We spent what seemed like hours talking about scents of soaps and very little about how Maggie is going to pull off being a member of a family when she's never met any of them. If it was going to be like A Song of Ice and Fire, then I needed much more detail. If it was going to be a cozy fantasy, I need way less fighting and serial killers and weapons training. 

So, hey, I might read the sequel. But I might not. 3/5 stars

Lines of note:

I've tried every genre under the sun since, but fantasy was my vice of choice. There was something about blades and magic that did it for me. Deadly sword masters, thieves prowling through moonlit streets, dark magicians, warrior princesses, ruthless nobles, majestic dragons, hideous monsters. I loved it all. Put a hot dude in armor with a sword on the cover and my eyes glazed over while my hand crept to the buy button, budget be damned. (Chapter 1)

I'm less interested in ruthless nobles, but I always want majestic dragons in my books. 

I had been rereading those two books for the last ten years. Whenever life got to be too harsh, I would grab them off my bookshelf and they never failed to pull me out of whatever funk I had going on at the time. (Chapter 1)

Rereading for the win!

I graduated, went to college, grew up, and learned that life wasn't always fair. Sometimes there was no third book, no resolution, no matter how many times you reread or how hard wished for it. (Chapter 9)

Over Labor Day, one of my husband's aunts asked me how things were going. I thought for a minute and said, "it's been tough" and she said "sometimes you have decades like that." I didn't want to hear that, but I was reassured that it's okay if you consistently think that maybe life has it out for you for multiple years in a row. 

...a vendor was selling little beasts that looked like tiny Pomeranians crossed with miniature foxes. (Chapter 18)

I WANT ONE.

...didn't lose his war on the battlefield. He lost it weeks before when he failed to adequately equip his troops, neglected to put together a functioning supply chain, and chose the wrong place and time to engage his enemy...it's no substitute for proper planning and strategy. (Chapter 22)

Nothing like hearing about infrastructure for pages and pages in a book. 

"What did you study?" he asked.

"Power - how to acquire it, how to keep it, how not to abuse it, how to exercise it for the greater good of as many people as possible." (Chapter 22)

Her major was political science. I like her description of it. 

If there was anything a liberal arts education taught you how to do, it was to read a bunch of different sources and vomit all the information in an organized and structured manner. (Chapter 42)

PREACH IT. 

Things I looked up:

 isekai - a popular subgenre of Japanese fantasy and science fiction where a protagonist is transported to, trapped in, or reincarnated into a parallel universe, fantasy realm, or virtual video game

Hat mentions (why hats?):

looked a little like a witch's hat (Chapter 25)

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Did you know the term isekai? Do you enjoy portal fantasies? Do you also want a tiny Pomeranian crossed with a miniature fox?