I've noticed that Martha Wells' non-murderbot fantasy books tend to skew heavy on plot and backstory, sometimes almost to the detriment of the overall effect. In this case, there was no 'almost' about it. There were so many characters that I had absolutely no emotional connection to any of them, which was fine because the wordcount had to be split so thinly that none of them had any real character arc anyway. There was so much plot squeezed into the two timelines of narrative that it leaked out the sides of what could be contained in the book. The main antagonist in the present-day timeline wasn't even present! He was just referred to in discussions about the court politics conspiracy that he was undoubtedly engaged in, and the final climax of the conspiracy shenanigans ended up happening off page anyway: 'oh, I took care of that five years ago when I did [thing] in preparation for this exact moment.' So after trying to figure out in good faith what was going on; who were the political actors in this whole kerfuffle; and why they were taking the acts that they took as the plot unfolded, I was slapped in the face with 'yeah, none of that actually mattered; there were no stakes at stake because the stakeholders all made their decisions five years ago!' Argh!

Also, what did the title even mean? Our main character is a demon, not a witch, and he's not a king but a Fourth Prince. Like, wut? I dunno, maybe it will be clarified in the sequels, but this book is the one with this title. Anyway, I don't care, and I won't read them.