I liked this for the character voices, action-adventure set pieces, and how lived in the world and its cultures felt (which are basically what you can count on with a Wells book). Our hero, Kai the embodied demon, was a lot of fun to spend time with, even (especially?) though he wasn't having much fun along the way. I liked how much of it was about how defeating empire and imperialism is a constant struggle, not just a one and done rebellion.

I do think I'll like this more on a re-read, as it involved a lot of court politics, plus multiple magic systems, and it took me a while to get on board with what was happening. I'm going to get the audiobook from the library, when they get it in, and take another go around to catch all the details I missed. Also, I might have been rushing a bit because I had to see what happened.

Really fun read.