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Buy This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me
Read Mihir's Review!
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: While waiting long years for the third and final book to come out in her favorite dark fantasy series, Maggie has had plenty of time to obsessively read the first two books in the trilogy. Which is why when she wakes up in an unfamiliar city, it doesn't take her long to realize she's in the world of Kair Toren - and the events of book one are just beginning to happen. With no clues as to how to return to her own world, Maggie decides she might as well try to help Kair Toren out and prevent a deadly civil war that will destroy the city and many of her favorite characters. Of course, Maggie's knowledge only helps her figure out things written in the books...and as she quickly remembers, this is a series with an unwritten ending....
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is a smart and engaging portal fantasy that grounds the story by taking the stakes of its fantasy world seriously. When we meet Maggie, she's been in Kair Toren for a few days, and has already come to terms with the fact that somehow, some way, she's in a fantasy setting, one that is every bit as brutal as it is portrayed in the book. Maggie doesn't try to carelessly pull shenanigans or run off to romance a tall dark handsome hero. Instead, she decides that if she accepts that this world and these people are real, then she has to do everything in her power to stop the deadly future that will destroy countless lives.
One thing I really liked about the approach to this story is that Maggie doesn't set herself up in the castle in the middle of the limelight. She decides to work from the shadows, hoping to nudge events while staying unnoticed. She rallies a crew, establishes some connections, and tries to become a credible source of information without drawing too much interest. In this game of intrigue, Maggie knows all the story threads; it's just a matter of figuring out which ones to pull.
There were a few times I felt like Maggie's "trick" of knowing things about people or events was a little overdone, occasionally making her feel like a one-trick pony as she rattles off another monologue detailing intimate knowledge of a character's backstory. But there's enough other things going on that those were minor bumps in the road. There's still so much skullduggery, blackmail, and tense negotiations that I frequently found myself forgetting that Maggie was from our world, until an occasional throwaway line would reference Netflix. It does genuinely feel like another gripping dark fantasy novel, which is key to making this story work.
The other slight hiccup was the romance subplot. While there were many parts of the romance in this book that I liked, it also started to veer into a trope that isn't my favorite. Time will tell how things play out in the long run, but I definitely preferred some sections over others.
(For those curious, this is a no spice story, and the romance subplot IS a subplot. This is not a fantasy romance.)
For a story featuring a protagonist who should know how everything is supposed to go, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me had plenty of twists and turns. The more Maggie meddles, the more unexpected things become as events unfold differently. I have a feeling we'll be fairly off the rails when the second book comes around, and I am absolutely dying to see where things go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark Lawrence was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. After earning a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College London, he went back to the US to work on a variety of research projects, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program. Since returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He never had any ambition to be a writer, so he was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight. His first trilogy, The Broken Empire, has been universally acclaimed as a groundbreaking work of fantasy, and both Emperor of Thorns and The Liar’s Key have won the David Gemmell Legend Award for best fantasy novel. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Butcher is the author of the Dresden Files, the Codex Alera, and a new steampunk series, the Cinder Spires. His resume includes a laundry list of skills which were useful a couple of centuries ago, and he plays guitar quite badly. An avid gamer, he plays tabletop games in varying systems, a variety of video games on PC and console, and LARPs whenever he can make time for it. Jim currently resides mostly inside his own head, but his head can generally be found in his home town of Independence, Missouri.
Jim goes by the moniker Longshot in a number of online locales. He came by this name in the early 1990′s when he decided he would become a published author. Usually only 3 in 1000 who make such an attempt actually manage to become published; of those, only 1 in 10 make enough money to call it a living. The sale of a second series was the breakthrough that let him beat the long odds against attaining a career as a novelist.
All the same, he refuses to change his nickname.
Publisher: Ace (January 20, 2026) Page count: 463 p Formats: audiobook, ebook, hardcover
The competition continues! This is my first year as a judge and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.
A few notes on my review process: for a semifinalist, I wanted to find a book that I'd personally rate 3.5/5 or better. To me, that rating signifies a book which has some notable flaws, but whose flaws (for whatever reason) didn't stop me from enjoying the novel. In general, a novel isn't a 3.5/5 for me unless I'm actively interested in reading a sequel. If and when I bounced off a book in the opening pages, I typically put it down for a few days before giving it another try. I didn’t set any hard rules for myself about when or if I could drop a book, except that I wanted to give every book a fair shot on its merits.
