Book 1 in the Maggie the Undying Series
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 5/5 | Steam: 🔥 📖
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
Not ready for spoilers yet? Go read the tame version on Plot Approved first. We’ll wait. 😄 Read the spoiler free version
Opening Hook
Okay so remember when I said on Plot Approved that there was “one scene” I couldn’t talk about? Buckle up, because we’re talking about it. This book has a woman who cannot die, a war hero who’s secretly the most feared man in the kingdom, and a kidnapping via dragon. This book has everything, and I mean that in the best possible way. Like at the beginning of The Princess Bride movie when the grandpa is telling the boy how great the book is? That’s me right here and now telling you the same thing.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
So Maggie wakes up naked, filthy, and in a ditch in Kair Toren, the fictional kingdom from her favourite book series, except now it’s real and she’s in it. First order of business is to figure out when in the story she’s landed, because if you’re going to be stranded in your favourite fantasy world, you at least want to know which plotline you’re working with.
Turns out she’s landed right before a rich nobleman crosses a bridge with a literal bag of gold. So obviously, she tries to rob him and she gets that money. She wraps her arms around that bag and holds on for dear life — right up until he slits her throat and dumps her over the side of the bridge. You know she’s not going to die, that’s the whole premise of the book, but when it actually happens? Holy shit. There’s no amount of narrative that prepares you for reading “he slit her throat” in real time.
She wakes up a couple hours later, throat completely healed, still naked, still filthy, still clutching the money bag like it’s a security blanket. Finds a corpse nearby, steals its disgustingly stinky cloak (no notes, exactly the kind of resourceful gross-but-necessary choice I want from my protagonists), and heads off to find a safe house — the kind of place that’s not quite a brothel and not quite a shelter, but does what needs doing for the right price. She knows exactly where to go because she’s read this world like scripture.
Along the way she crosses paths with a man in the street — didn’t see his face, just clocked the emblem and colors — who tosses her some coin. Filed away as a nothing moment. It is not a nothing moment. Remember him.
Maggie’s whole survival strategy from here is leveraging what she knows about how this story plays out — because she’s read the books, she knows where the plot goes, and that knowledge is currency. She tracks down Reynald, a legendary warrior, and together they take down a household of slavers who’d been kidnapping and selling children. Genuinely vile people, righteously dealt with. And then — because nobody questions people horrific enough to take down other horrific people — they just… move in. Squatter’s rights, essentially.
This is where the found family fully assembles: Reynald brings in retired warrior friends he trusts, his wife, their two nearly-grown sons, plus a teenage girl and a younger boy who were already living in the house when the slavers went down. Everyone finds a role — running errands, gathering intel, managing the household — and it becomes this genuinely lived-in, trust-each-other-completely unit. This is the part of the book that had me the most, honestly. Every little heist and errand peels back another layer of who these people are to each other.
And that’s exactly why the reveal HURTS. There’s a killer terrorizing the town, Reynald goes to save Maggie from him, and he’s too far away to get there in time — so he uses his power. Dark green lightning. And there’s only one person in this entire kingdom who wields that power: Ramond Everard, the Duke of the North. The infamously murderous one. The one everyone is terrified of.
Reynald has been Ramond this entire time.
The real Reynald died right around the moment Maggie got zapped into this world — which wasn’t supposed to happen in the original story at all. Maggie had noticed little inconsistencies (he was younger than she expected, a few details didn’t quite match) and just… wrote it off. The kind of thing that’s mild enough to explain away. Except it wasn’t her imagination. It was a man wearing a dead hero’s identity the entire time she was falling into found-family love with his crew.
And if that’s not enough, there’s a second reveal cooking in the background: a missing royal, presumed dead, who keeps surfacing in Maggie’s political maneuvering — and turns out to be very much alive. He ends up kidnapping her. On a dragon. Which, deeply terrifying, sure, but also — if you HAVE to get kidnapped, doing it via dragon is genuinely top tier. And that’s where the book leaves us.
Best Part of This Book
Impossible to pick one. Every heist, every small errand, every quiet moment in that house reveals something new about this crew and how they fit together. It’s rare that a book makes me care this much about literally every side character, not just the leads.
Worst Part of This Book
Nothing. Genuinely nothing. I finished it and immediately wanted to reread it. The pacing gives you enough without ever overloading you — nothing felt like a slog, nothing needed untangling. Beautifully balanced, no notes.
The Twist We Didn’t See Coming
Reynald is Ramond Everard. The most feared man in the kingdom has been living inside a found family’s daily routine, wife and kids included, this entire time. And Maggie fell for the found family before she had any idea who she was actually falling for.
The Character We Loved to Hate
Ramond Everard — because you don’t even know you’re supposed to be hating him while he’s sitting right there, being a genuinely good found-family dad figure. It’s deranged. It’s fantastic.
The Moment We Screamed at the Book
The throat-slitting. You know going in she’s not going to die — that’s the whole premise — and it still hits like a truck. There’s just no version of “and then he slit her throat” that reads as anything other than horrifying, premise or not.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥 — one flame, barely. A kiss or two and that’s it, no hinting, no build toward anything more. This is a found-family and political-intrigue book first, and the romance is a quiet background thread between two people who are, for most of the book, just deeply dedicated friends.
Content warnings: child slavery/trafficking (dealt with, not lingered on), throat-slitting/violence, dragon kidnapping.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
It ends on the dragon kidnapping — a full cliffhanger, but the kind that makes you want book two immediately rather than the kind that makes you want to throw the book across the room. Nothing about the pacing here disappointed me; it’s just clearly setting up round two.
Would We Reread It?
In a heartbeat. I already bought a copy on a friend’s recommendation before I’d even finished — that’s how confident I was this one was going to be worth owning twice.
Who Is This For
- Fans of political fantasy who still want something fun and accessible
- Found family lovers — this is some of the best found family dynamics on the page
- Anyone who wants a slow-burn romance thread that never takes over the plot
- Readers who don’t mind a cliffhanger ending because you’re getting a sequel
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
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🎧 Audiobook
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📱 Ebook / Kindle Unlimited
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📚 More from the Maggie the Undying Series
Book 1 — This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥 — Read the Review
Book 2 — Coming Soon
Ready for more reviews from CJ? Find More Here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
📖 | Series: Maggie the Undying, Book 1 | Genre: Fantasy | Steam: 🔥