Witch King is a dense dark fantasy that quickly throws you into a whirlwind story of revolution and revenge.
Kai, a powerful demon with the ability to take over spiritless bodies and move through the world like that, wakes up in a watery cage. He's able to telepathically reach out to his sister, who was imprisoned beside him and after breaking out he embarks on revenge on whoever locked him up in the first place. Along the way he picks up allies and tries to figure out who betrayed him.
The story switches between the future and Kai's past, both to showcase how Kai ended up where he is now and how the world has changed.
As other reviews have already stated this is not a book that takes your hand to lead you through the worldbuilding. Instead you're expected to swim or sink under the deluge of information and character names and descriptions. For me this was a definitely problem as I had picked up the audio book, but even if I had gotten a print copy I think I would have struggled somewhat. Another issue I had was that the side characters felt a bit flat at times and unfortunately Kai's wry humor did not always land for me. I also would have liked more time in some scenes instead of immediately being whisked away to another time line and another stop in the journey. In general while you receive a lot of information that sometimes leaves you reeling, the story still feels like it moves very quickly and at points too quickly. I really enjoyed the end, but it was a struggle to get there.
I have to admit that I went into this with much higher expectations than I would another author, due to how much I adored murderbot, but I unfortunately did not enjoy this book as much as I had hoped.
TWs for death, captivity, slavery, genocide, child abuse/attempted child murder and war, as well as self harm. [Spoilers ahead to furter eloborate on the self harm] The self harm mostly takes the form of mental pain and trauma purposefully triggered, but there is also one physical self harm scene that includes cutting/stabbing. This is due to the way magic works and there is no danger of death or permanent injury for the character in question as he is immortal, but be prepared that you will have a character that purposefully triggers and hurts himself, even if it does not occur due to bad mental health.