Maggie wakes up one day, cold, naked and soaked to the skin in the gutter of Kair Toren, the sprawling capital city of Rellas, where her favourite fantasy novels are set. For the past decade, Maggie has read and re-read the two books in the unfinished series enough times that she knows the setting, prominent characters and the plot intimately. It’s what makes it possible for her to lie in wait, trying to rob a shady minor character just so she’ll have enough money to get some clothes and shelter. While she’s correct about when and where the character will show up, her robbery attempt ends with her being stabbed in the gut, which leads to her next discovery. She’s stuck in the world of her favourite books, and while she can be killed, she doesn’t stay dead.
Maggie is well-read and knows she’s in an isekai fantasy. She knows the rules of such stories, and unfortunately, she’s not as lucky as most characters in those kinds of stories. Unfortunately, unlike a lot of characters in such stories, Maggie is penniless, homeless and has no connections to anyone in the story. She does, however, have an encyclopedic knowledge of the plot of the world she’s been transported into, so she knows which characters may prove useful allies, and which are best avoided at all costs. She knows how major events will play out and which characters will live, or die. She also discovers that she can read, understand and speak all the various languages of Rellas. In addition, she may be immortal.
She uses her knowledge to gain some useful allies, and in a remarkably short space of time, has acquired not only a safe place to stay, but has also become responsible for two young persons whom she rescued from enslavement. She knows at what point in time she has come into the story, and as a result, knows what is going to happen to the world and several characters she cares deeply about. Maggie decides she cannot, in good conscience, let the events as they are written come to pass. She wants to try to alter the events of the books, and as a result, possibly avoid the deaths of several of her favourite characters, not to mention stop a harrowing civil war and untold bloodshed. She just needs to convince her new friends that she can be trusted, and hope that her plans don’t somehow make things worse.
The rest of my long, word-vomity review here.
