Ishura
This is a really impressive book that I'd recommend to everyone, and I'll be buying the second one--but I'm not at all sure I'll ever read it.
It is as demanding and frustrating as it is compelling and surprising.
And this volume is 100% a prologue to the real story.

I kinda went over the 'demanding' aspect in an earlier thread, but books trying this hard to do new things can be sort of draining to read. The last book I read like that was Bisco, where I never actually read the second one (hence my fear I'll repeat that.)

And this is essentially a Death Game, and one trying to be unpredictable. That means it gives everyone a set up like they're the lead, and it's hard to tell who to root for--and when characters die, it feels like their setup was wasted. (I may be salty about one in particular.)

And structurally speaking the entire first half of this is some DQIV short stories setting up different characters and factions, and they only come together in the backhalf. Some reviews suggest there's a ton of added content for the print version that kinda wrecked the pacing.

But this book also a revenant with an instructable tank made from a giant spider that she controls with spine mounted headphone jacks that also let her jack into people's bodies, taking control of their nervous system, and turning them into her puppets.

And a musket wielding wyvern adventurer, a mandrake with 42 poison arms, a skeleton whose spear can break the sound barrier, a thief who can open any lock with his feet, a woman in her late forties, a dude with a guardian angel that murders anyone who means him harm...

And a 14 year old elf from the forest who's just a typical mouthy teenager except that her magic is so innate, anything she wills comes true. At one point she stops light. At another she says, "I don't care if anyone's mean, I can just tell them to drop dead, and they will."

And the author excels at quickly sketching in characters, and building in a nest of relations for them to play off of. The elf kid is with a spy with a shady history, who thought herself long past having a conscience, and is wrestling with that and what this omnipotent kid means.

I feel like on a moment to moment basis, I loved the hell out of this, and from a big picture perspective I didn't know what to make of it yet. There's a tournament to decide the world's hero coming up, and that starts in volume two, so I guess I'll have to actually read it.