This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me – Ilona Andrews

An excellent novel. I look forward to the sequel, which I understand to be in the works. The author/s navigate a difficult balance between having Maggie continue to make progress and having things continuing to go wrong. Also the difficult balance of not letting the latter be wrong enough to throw off the reader. The milieu itself is moderately horrible, which introduces another balancing act: Some characters are good, but very few characters are nice. Nice characters finish last - or perhaps get eaten.

All this balancing demonstrates considerable technical writing skill. The step beyond that is that all this balancing supports a good story - immersive, fun to read, hard to put down.

The romance subplot is irritating. That’s unusual for these authors; fantasy with well-realized settings, competent characters, and romantic subplots is practically their brand. In this case the standard tropes are applied too-mechanically: There is something very close to love at first sight, and the obligatory obstacles feel like rocks being tossed into a pond because the tossers needed waves.

The protagonist keeps displaying or discovering new powers. I can’t complain, because they are needed to keep the story moving, and they are not used more than they are needed. I wish they were needed less.

If you’re familiar with Ilona Andrews, and you enjoy a good fantasy novel, you’ll expect to enjoy this book and you’ll be right. If you’re not familiar with the author, and you enjoy a good fantasy novel, you’re likely to enjoy this one.