I wanted to like Witch King so much more than I did. It’s got some good characters (maybe a few too many though), good premise, but the pacing and sense of time are so off. Demon prince and witch pal awake to find a mage trying to syphon the demon’s magic (doesn’t go well for the mage) and then go on a quest to 1) find out how/why they were trapped (and for how long), and 2) find the witch’s spouse. Demons, including Kai, are mostly able to manifest in the human world by inhabiting dead bodies; they have an agreement with a specific people (and thus it’s presumably/sort of consensual) but as it turns out, body hopping can happen by accident too.
Kai and Ziede also have to figure out what to do with the orphan Sanja whom they sort of rescue, as well as the ragtag group they put together over the ensuing mission/s. There’s a lot of politics going on in the background, and some of it is not explained very well. We get parts of the story told back and forth between Kai’s past (but how back is not clear) and present, and the purpose and connections are really just not there all that much. The whole Rising World thing could have a little more detail; I kind of get what that is (basically what happens if the Rebels were beating the Empire but with more magic and seafaring) but still am guessing a good bit, same for the Hierarchs (bad guys/gals mostly of the past? Unclear on that), and I likewise am not sure what exactly makes the Immortal Blessed special, and the Lesser Blessed less but still pretty special. If Kai’s a demon, then the Immortal Blessed seem sort of, vaguely like angels, but rather in the sense of Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett.
Throw in quite a few characters, several of whom have similar names, and I had a hard time of keeping track of who was who, and when. Because I’m not entirely sure why we needed to know so much of Kai’s past life before he got imprisoned, I can’t quite see why much of that is relevant beyond character development, and if that be the case, why is there so much more than there needs to be. I get that the political scenario, which is connected to both time frames, but the resolution for that is so abrupt and kind of pointless that, again, why bother? Even Kai recognizes that, and he’s kind of done with the whole situation by the end, and ready to go find something else to do.