Witch King (The Rising World, #1)
by Martha Wells
The fact that I stuck with it and finished an absolute doorstop of a dense political fantasy book is a credit to it. I know that sounds like damning with faint praise but it's actually the opposite, praising with faint damnation.
Witch King falls short of making a statement or a philosophy or a manifesto, and so all I'm left with is that it was written for the joy of telling this kind of story to people who love this kind of story. It didn't make much of an impact on me unfortunately.