Whenever you recommend a book to someone, they will ask you two
questions: What's the book about?, being the first, and Is it similar to
any other book?, being the second.
First answer is rather easy.
This is a portal fantasy of isekai variant with a lot of meta narrative
and it's about a fantasy reader that wakes up in the world of her
favorite unfinished fantasy trilogy, that she is intimately familiar
with.
Second question is harder to answer. At first, there are
some similarities with Django Wexler's How To Become a Dark Lord or Die
Trying as well as manga (manhwa?) Omniscient Reader (or whatever it's
called), but those similarities go away by the second third of the book
and it becomes its own thing.
Now, I'm a fan of the husband and
wife author duo that goes by the pen name of Ilona Andrews. I've been
reading their books since first Kate Daniels novel and I have read most
of their work. This was in fact a handicap while I was reading this
book.
As most of their other work, this one is written as a
single POV first-person narrative, which does not always work in classic
fantasy, although it's a staple of Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance
and Romantasy sub-genres. In this case, I had a slight "off" feeling for
the first third of novel, I felt that some things are clunky, but I
couldn't put my finger on it. But by the time I reached the 50% of my
ARC PDF file, I got totally hooked and invested in these characters
almost as in those of my favorite series by the Andrews team, the Hidden
Legacies.
Now, this book is not romantasy. It has some romance
in it and some passages that are strongly reminiscent of paranormal
romance novels, but they seem inserted almost like an inside joke
between the authors and the reader who is familiar with their work,
although they will be perfectly fine for new readers as well. There are
some Easter eggs as well, but I'll leave you to find them on your own.
At first, I was confused why is this book published by Tor, of Wheel of
Time, Malazan and Cosmere publishing fame, but my doubts were blown away
by the time I finished the first half of this 480 pages long novel.
Sure, This Kingdom Will Not Kill me is not typical high fantasy fare,
but it's not romantasy - I must restate that as well - it's a
portal/isekai fantasy with a lot of elements from other subgenres, such
as a distinct magic system as popularized by Brandon Sanderson, but very
present in Hidden Legacy series by the same authors, some romantic
elements as well and a style of writing distinct for urban fantasy. In
fact, this book is sort of urban fantasy meets high fantasy meets isekai
meets Sanderson, but with a twist of its own. I would recommend it just
for the beautiful prose and excellent characterization that perfectly
blends techniques from different subgenres of fantasy.
I had
some small issues with the story, there are some elements of social
commentary that seem a bit forced, but my speculation why are those
elements included may be not only inappropriate but also quite wrong, so
I'm not going to mention them and they would probably not be noticed by
a casual reader.
To whom I would recommend this book? Well,
firstly I would recommend it to the fans of authors such as T.
Kingfisher. The novel covers some of the same themes as her The Saint of
Steel series. Than I would recommend this one to romantasy fans who
would like to get into more serious fantasy, but not full Malazan or
Cosmere. And lastly, I would seriously recommend it to all those readers
who love cozy stories about human relations but fun and engaging and
fast-paced, but well-thought-out and well-written at the same time. My
biggest gripe with this book is that it's not twice as long.
5*
***art by https://www.helenaillustrated.com/
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