Portal Fantasy’s Comeback: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and Gods & Comics

[alanajoli]

Within the span of three weeks, fans of portal fantasies get the treat of not one, but two excellent novels that plat with the trope: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (out today, March 31!), and reverse portal fantasy Gods & Comics by Kat Cho (April 21). To celebrate the publication of these fantastic books, walk with me down memory lane a bit to trace some of the reason I’m so excited about this subgenre’s comeback.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and Gods & Comics

When I was a young writer, first dipping my toes in the world of submitting a manuscript to publishers that would accept unsolicited manuscripts, it was a different era. In those days, you printed out the part of your manuscript you were submitting and sent it, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE), and waited to receive responses via mail. You used a huge book from the library shelves called The Writer’s Market, combing through it to narrow down your options.
My manuscript had anthropomorphic animals in it, a trope specifically called out by publishers as one they were not interested in. Another trope that had fallen out of popularity at the time? The portal fantasy.
As someone who cut my reading teeth on C.S. Lewis’s the Chronicles of Narnia and grew up on Disney films like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan (and even the animated Dungeons & Dragons), I could not fathom why portal fantasies would not be of interest. Hadn’t humans traveling to fairylands been a staple of fairy tales since forever? Didn’t everyone love the idea of traveling to another world?
I wasn’t alone. The trope cropped up over the years in books that I adored, as well as books that gained popularity in other genres. Sherwood Smith returned to this trope in her Sartorias-deles books, frequently featuring children who made their way into the fantasy world where they found themselves truly belonging. In romance, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander may have been more time travel, but the World War II nurse who finds herself out of her own time has much the same feel of a portal fantasy, and spawned a seven season television series. Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (which I called a cross between the Chronicles of Narnia and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road when I reviewed it for Mythprint) was grim and cynical enough to appeal to a literary crowd—and also spawned a television series. Neverland stories continued to abound in film and television and comics; one of my favorites that touches on not only Neverland but Wonderland, Oz, and other portal fantasies is the webcomic Namesake.

Several of Smith's novels touch on portal fantasy, but CJ's Notebooks are clearest about it; Namesake has portal fantasies top to bottom.

It’s really in comics and webcomics that portal fantasies have had their greatest heyday, especially in the isekai subgenre in Japanese manga. Isekai stories are also found in anime, light novels, and games, but I suspect that the many webcomics that have adopted isekai conventions are more inspired by their comic predecessors. (If you’re a greater isekai expert than I am, I’m happy to be corrected in the comments!) Some of the comics send the protagonists to fantasy worlds; other reverse portal fantasies feature contemporary protagonists dealing with their favorite characters from comics or novels popping into the real world.
Portal fantasies of the western sense are also getting nods from romantasy novels: Feyre’s journey from mere mortal to High Lady of the Night Court borrows plenty from those early tales of humans wandering into faerie. Jessie Mihalik’s Silver and Blood has that similar mortal-to-faerie opening. What’s missing from these portal fantasies is the modern component: Most portal fantasies begin in the world of the reader, in contemporary times.
Which leads us out of memory lane and into This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and Gods and Comics, both of which have protagonists who are very aware of the modern world and the various fantastical tropes in fiction. In the case of Maggie, who wakes up in a fantasy world, her disbelief has to fall to the wayside to ensure her survival in a gritty kingdom of novels she’s reread, year upon year, until she has many of the details memorized. In the case of Grace, the idea of a god from her own webcomic materializing in the real world goes against every bit of logic she’s ever understood—but not, perhaps, against the stories her grandmother taught her.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me owes plenty to isekei (Maggie makes a “truck-kun” joke and is pretty pissed that when she woke up in her fantasy setting, she didn’t arrive with any new amazing powers or beauty). The nods to fantasies like George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire,” with awful people doing awful things to each other as they rise to power, are also quite clear. But the best part for fans of Ilona Andrews (of which I have long been one) is that the novel owes much to the author team’s previous works. Maggie is very much her own character, but she shares traits with many of Andrews’s previous protagonists. She’s smart. She’s durable (or, at the very least, she can’t be killed permanently; she names herself Maggie the Undying for a reason). And she isn’t about to stand by and let people get hurt when she can do something about it.
Like most readers, upon finding themselves in the world of their favorite novels, Maggie spends some time geeking out about the places she’s truly seeing with her own eyes. Despite how dangerous the world of Kair Toren is, there are also places of beauty, and Maggie’s as excited as any fan to see them. But in order to do that, she has to survive, and waking up in a strange land, naked, with no supplies already puts her at a disadvantage. She’s able to put the pieces together, realize when she is in the series, and form a plan of how to use that knowledge to sell secrets that will buy her safety.
But as soon as she’s even a touch confident in her place, she starts using that knowledge to benefit others. Not because it will do her personally any good. But because for years, she waited for the author to fix the world’s injustices—and when the series stopped at only two books, with unresolved plots abounding, as soon as she’s in a position to start fixing things for the better, she doesn’t let anything stop her. Not serial killers. Not assassination plots. Not the threat of civil war. Not a sexy, brooding, dangerous man (who is equally drawn to her). While Maggie’s love interest may get a little possessive for some readers’ tastes (he certainly gets possessive enough for Maggie to put her foot down!), he, too, puts everything on the line to help others. And watching that relationship grow and shift over the rest of the series—however long it might be—will be one of the joys.
As with other Ilona Andrews novels, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me features a whole cast worth rooting for. Though Maggie leaves a family behind in the real world, she gains another family in Kair Toren—people who believe in her mission, and who believe in her. The mysteries about why Maggie has traveled to Kair Toren (and what happened to the author that he stopped after the second book) underlie the major plot, coming back to remind readers that the question is still there, and the uncertainty hasn’t been resolved. Be warned: This first book ends on a cliffhanger. It also has enough twists and reveals that it’s tempting to begin the reread immediately. Go forth with caution, because This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is about to become your newest obsession, especially if you have to wait to talk about it until your book buddies finish it. (Rating: 10.0)

Gods & Comics

Gods & Comics is very firmly set in the real world, and Grace Bak is a very normal, anxious, over-achieving teenager, who writes a webcomic about the Korean gods in honor of her grandmother. After Halmeoni’s death, Grace has been working hard to keep busy and pretend everything is fine, even after an anxiety attack made her a laughingstock and cost her the junior class presidency. She has a father who loves her, but who has even less an idea about how to process grief than Grace. The webcomic helps Grace still feel connected; she wrote the story of Haemosu, the sun god, and Yuhwa, daughter of the vengeful water god, Habaek, for herself. Casting them as gods, separated from their powers and trapped as human teenagers, was just a fun conceit. She never expected it to go viral.
And she definitely never expected Haemosu to show up at her high school, looking like a three dimensional version of her drawings, asking for her help. He doesn’t know how to get home, and he’s convinced Grace is the only one who can get him there. Grace knows gods don’t just show up as high school students, and she’s not inclined to believe—until Hae proves himself, and Grace begins to realize that if Hae made it out of her comic and into the real world, then maybe Habaek did, too…
Gods & Comics draws a lot from the reverse portal fantasy subgenre, but it also centers the idea that gods depend on the beliefs of humans to exist, and that it’s Grace’s comic that made people believe in Haemosu and the others again.
Novels like Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow, and even Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series have used this concept to excellent effect, putting Gods & Comics in excellent company. But even more, it’s a conceit that gains depth when put into the context of Korean history: When Korea was occupied by Japan in the early 1900s, there was a systemic attempt to wipe out the Korean language, Korean names, Korean religion, and more. People were forced to give up their traditional beliefs until—as represented by Cho—the gods were largely forgotten. That real-world context makes the return of Haemosu, Yuhwa, and Habeak an even more powerful story.
Cho’s novel is a fun YA romantic comedy, with hijinks and a charismatic cast and the usual high school drama (plus some vampire-like monsters). But under that, it’s also a study of grief, of trying too hard to be perfect, and of realizing there are some things more important than the dreams you thought you wanted. It’s also about creativity and how telling stories can breathe new life into things (in this case, literally). This is a solid standalone perfect for teens, but that has a depth of thought, emotion, and care that makes it an excellent read for adults, too. (Rating: 9.8)
Was portal fantasy ever really out? Is the resurgence, stemming from isekei, a mere fad or a lasting trend? I find that it doesn’t really matter, so long as this moment gives us books like This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and Gods & Comics.
Do you read portal fantasy? What are your favorite titles? Come join the conversation at the Virgil & Beatrice patreon!