I enjoyed this one overall. It was a fascinating dive into consciousness, magic, prejudice, rigidity, and also slices of life at times, all set in the simple framework of military scifi. You are dumped into the magic with no exposition. The author trusts that you'll follow along. And I loved that - being trusted that I could handle a foundational difference in the universe without needing my hand held was pretty cool. Unfortunately, there were some left turns in the narrative that could have used a little more hand-holding. I kept thinking I'd skipped a paragraph or so. I found this distracting enough that it detracted from the narrative. Still, it was quite a good effort by Lee, and I'd read more by him.