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Review - 4.5/5⭐ - Portal Fantasy 📑 "A witch who curses you is just telling the future you don't want to hear."
📑 "If enough people believe in something, doesn't it become real?" "No," said Rae flatly, "reality doesn't require faith." Rae is dying of cancer, when a strange woman shows up and offers a chance to save her life: Enter the world of the fantasy book she is reading to get a magical cure. Out of options, Rae does - only to wake up in the body of the villain of the story ... on the very day of her own execution. 📑 Rae had never been to Eyam. She had never been to Peru either, but she still believed in Peru. This one was way more fun then I expected (and darker then I thought)! Rea was so relatable, I loved how she navigated herself through that (not so) fictional world she didn't pay enough attention to while reading about it. How she turned herself into an unreliable future teller to explain how she knows what (might) comes next. And the thoughts about story-structure and character traits she had in her head while interacting with people she only knew from reading about them. 📑 Rae had a hard enough time without inconsistent world building. 📑 He was tall, dark and handsome, which Rae found suspicious. Normally, when fictional characters were good looking, they turned out to be important. Were side characters allowed to be randomly handsome? My favourites where The Golden Cobra and The Last Hope (Marius Valerius)! 📑 The ministers laughed. It was well-known Marius had no sense of humour, so he didn't have to. 📑 "Please, do not attract the attention of the narrative. Let's escape the burning city with a train of terrified refugees in a low-key way. In a way that should be told in a paragraph. Better yet, a footnote. If you think of any dramatic speeches, keep them to yourself." Unfortunately these two were written in a way that I constantly feared they might sacrifice themselves. Don't. You. Dare. 📑 "I thought you had a getaway plan. You have a getaway bag." I'm not at all worried about Lia, I'm absolutely confident she won't die. 📑 Rea had scuffed a thousand times at characters racing to lay down their lives for the perfect heroen. Who cared about saving Lia? As it turned out, Rea did. A confidence I don't have regarding Marius or The Cobra. None of the other main cast members have a sacrificial tendency ... Well, apart from Key, but he is not one an author would kill off ... right?! 📑 Rae and Key got lost on their way to cheat death. I like the snippets of the actual book at the beginning of every chapter but I remember none of it if I'm honest. There is also some romance, but that's a sub-plot. 📑 Nobody could ever be as hot as characters in your imagination. Book characters were dangerously attractive in the safest way. You didn't even know what they looked like but you knew you liked it. I'm not so keen on Octavian - when you follow the villain of the story, the roles of hero and villain kind of reverse. Naturally. 📑 Clearly, the emperor was problematic. When you murdered half the people you met, you had a problem. Stories lived on problems. That ending had a twist in store, I didn't see coming. Well, half of it, at least, was completely unexpected. I am very intrigued. Give me book two!
Jul 2, 2026
Review - 4.5/5⭐ - Portal Fantasy 📑 "A witch who curses you is just telling the future you don't want to hear."
📑 "If enough people believe in something, doesn't it become real?" "No," said Rae flatly, "reality doesn't require faith." Rae is dying of cancer, when a strange woman shows up and offers a chance to save her life: Enter the world of the fantasy book she is reading to get a magical cure. Out of options, Rae does - only to wake up in the body of the villain of the story ... on the very day of her own execution. 📑 Rae had never been to Eyam. She had never been to Peru either, but she still believed in Peru. This one was way more fun then I expected (and darker then I thought)! Rea was so relatable, I loved how she navigated herself through that (not so) fictional world she didn't pay enough attention to while reading about it. How she turned herself into an unreliable future teller to explain how she knows what (might) comes next. And the thoughts about story-structure and character traits she had in her head while interacting with people she only knew from reading about them. 📑 Rae had a hard enough time without inconsistent world building. 📑 He was tall, dark and handsome, which Rae found suspicious. Normally, when fictional characters were good looking, they turned out to be important. Were side characters allowed to be randomly handsome? My favourites where The Golden Cobra and The Last Hope (Marius Valerius)! 📑 The ministers laughed. It was well-known Marius had no sense of humour, so he didn't have to. 📑 "Please, do not attract the attention of the narrative. Let's escape the burning city with a train of terrified refugees in a low-key way. In a way that should be told in a paragraph. Better yet, a footnote. If you think of any dramatic speeches, keep them to yourself." Unfortunately these two were written in a way that I constantly feared they might sacrifice themselves. Don't. You. Dare. 📑 "I thought you had a getaway plan. You have a getaway bag." I'm not at all worried about Lia, I'm absolutely confident she won't die. 📑 Rea had scuffed a thousand times at characters racing to lay down their lives for the perfect heroen. Who cared about saving Lia? As it turned out, Rea did. A confidence I don't have regarding Marius or The Cobra. None of the other main cast members have a sacrificial tendency ... Well, apart from Key, but he is not one an author would kill off ... right?! 📑 Rae and Key got lost on their way to cheat death. I like the snippets of the actual book at the beginning of every chapter but I remember none of it if I'm honest. There is also some romance, but that's a sub-plot. 📑 Nobody could ever be as hot as characters in your imagination. Book characters were dangerously attractive in the safest way. You didn't even know what they looked like but you knew you liked it. I'm not so keen on Octavian - when you follow the villain of the story, the roles of hero and villain kind of reverse. Naturally. 📑 Clearly, the emperor was problematic. When you murdered half the people you met, you had a problem. Stories lived on problems. That ending had a twist in store, I didn't see coming. Well, half of it, at least, was completely unexpected. I am very intrigued. Give me book two!
Jul 2, 2026
