Listen to an exclusive from Ilona Andrews’ new isekai fantasy

Husband-and-wife duo Ilona and Andrew Gordon, writing together under the pen name Ilona Andrews, have repeatedly been on the New York Times bestseller list for their urban fantasy Kate Daniels series. Now they’re getting into the isekai genre with This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, the first book in a planned epic fantasy series called Maggie the Undying. The book releases on March 31, and Polygon has an exclusive excerpt from the audiobook version.

Maggie wakes up naked in a gutter in Kair Toren, a city from a dark fantasy series she’s been rereading while waiting for its long delayed final novel. It’s the sort of scenario fans of Game of Thrones and The Kingkiller Chronicle have likely dreamed of. Maggie uses her knowledge of the setting to navigate the kingdom of Rellas. Once she learns she can’t be killed but the characters she loves are mortal, Maggie postpones trying to get home so she can protect them from a cataclysmic war she knows is coming.

“The city of Kair Toren was inspired by the collective anxiety of every fandom waiting for a finale that never came,” the Gordons told Polygon in an email statement. “We built a world that teeters on the edge of a catastrophe, waiting for someone with enough outside knowledge to step forward and change a tragic future.”

Check out a preview of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me below: