by Martha Wells
First sentence: “Waking was floating to the surface of a soft world of water, not what Kai had expected.”
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Content: There is violence, and some swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

If you read the jacket summary of the book, you don’t get a whole lot of information. Kai, a demon, has just woken up from being entombed, to find the government coalition he helped form falling apart. This is all true, but the plot is so much more than that. It’s part mystery: Kai and his friends have to figure out why he (and his witch friend, Ziede) was entombed and where Ziede’s wife, an Immortal Marshall is also missing. It’s partly a telling of colonial conquerors and how Kai helped (almost accidentally) overthrow them. It’s a friendship story, one of trust both made and broken. And it’s an adventure story, as you get to see more of the world that Wells has created.

I’ve only ever read the Murderbot series by Wells, but I trust her writing. She’s an excellent world-builder (I could see some of the same elements that I really enjoyed in the Murderbot books) and I liked the magic system she created. She’s got great characters – both main and secondary – and she knows how to make readers care for them. There are Stakes here, and people could die at any point (well, not Kai, since he’s a demon). It was a really great book, and I appreciated that it stood on its own, while leaving threads open to follow, if she chooses to write more.

I don’t know if I’ll go back and read some of her older books, but I quite enjoyed this one.