Voices weren’t super different, but I never had trouble knowing who was talking. He has a very pleasant voice to listen to, with an English accent, and sounded natural.

The audiobook narration by Eric Mok was enjoyable. Think of this as less of an action-filled rescue mission story about a demon, and more of a slow-paced story about some important periods in a character’s life and the politics of the fantasy world he lives in, with just a touch of found family, and maybe you’ll have the right expectation and therefore a better experience.

The demons are sort of trans or nonbinary by our definitions, since their gender doesn’t always match the gender of the human body they inhabit. They can take over mortal bodies to exist among the humans, but it’s not a constant body jumping thing, and they can drain life from living things.Īnd there are lots of queer characters! Nothing that I would call romance, but Kai and some of the other men seemed to have feelings for each other. There’s also magic and demons, though the demons are not quite how we think of them in terms of Christianity but just a different species from a different plane with different abilities. Different groups vying for power or going to war or killing each other or working together. I also think Kai was an interesting character, or rather he could’ve been, but he was a bit too closed-off to me, the reader.īut if you like complex fantasy worlds, I have good news! This story is, in large part, about the world. But it seemed like, aside from the way he and Zeide interacted in the present, we really only got glimpses. There was friendship and found family and maybe romance. I wanted to see more of Kai’s relationships with people, how they grew close in the past, more moments growing close in the present, etc. This is both compliment and complaint-I wanted more of those small scale things. Even when they got the answers they spent the story looking for and some things were revealed, it felt like, “Oh, ok.” Half the story was in a past timeline too, which is already more difficult to make readers interested in because we sorta know how things turn out, and there just wasn’t enough personal stakes and relationship growth and those small scale sorts of things to make me invested regardless. Then when things did happen, I just didn’t feel that invested. There were scenes of action, but somehow they didn’t make it feel any more exciting for me. It started out so strong, with Kai taking over a new body and being all badass. The description makes this sound a lot more interesting and snappy than it turned out to be for me. *I received an audio copy of this book via NetGalley.

The witch king martha wells