Maggie is hooked on fantasy fiction. Her mother gave her a sword and sorcery book after her first boyfriend breakup to get her mind off the pain. She never looked back. Feuding royal families, wise maidens, and hunky heroes were her go-to read. Her favorite fantasy series, written by an elusive author, was about the kingdom of Kair Toren and how it was going to be destroyed. Unfortunately, Latour wrote the first two books and never the third, so she didn't know how it turned out.
One evening, she fell asleep in her studio apartment and awoke naked and face down in the mud. But she wasn't in Austin-she was in the imaginary land of her favorite novel. Reading about the fierce primitive land of Keir Toren was one thing, surviving in its harsh environment was another. She needed clothes, food, and shelter and hadn't found anything in three days of wandering, except a muddy, smelly blanket to wear. But she did have an advantage-she had read the books for so long that she knew the land and the story. She had the edge on the characters and the plot, and her inside information could be monetized to help her survive. After stealing a bag of coins from a very unwilling and dangerous character, she found one more advantage...she could be stabbed and thrown into a river to die, but she would come back to life. Thus her nickname, Maggie the Undying.
I am not a fantasy fan nor do I enjoy romances. This book has widened my reading universe! What I especially enjoyed were Maggie's sardonic observations, sending up the tropes of the genre with knowledge and humor. But the authors never let that get in the way of the story, which was an exciting tale of derring-do, nasty villains and several hunky heroes. There are so many characters linked to so many families that a key is a necessity-the reader will be going back and forth numerous times to pin down who's who. The story is a fascinating page-turner, which will hold the reader's attention to the end, but like Maggie, it doesn't end there. This is Book 1 of a series and I can't wait for Book 2.
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