This thing starts in a weird place, both literally and figuratively. I questioned having picked up this book because, the book literally starts out in an orgy. The MC isn't participating, but that doesn't make it not weird. And the MC spends more time naked, or close to it, in the first 1/3 of the book than... felt good to read about. And there are some serious consent issues with another character who is mostly a disembodied voice in her head, at this point, but can also physically affect her, like when he definitely used magical foreplay when she didn't even know who it was, didn't ask for it, and didn't even actually consent. Beyond that, he literally said he was doing it to distract her from the *checks notes* orgy sex magic that wanted to pull her in. How in the absolutely opposite of "intended outcomes" did he decide that was the way to go!? And he continued being kind of that way. Even getting upset about a consent boundary from Sara Wilde (MC) at a couple of points because normally people can't keep him out of their heads at all. At one point, well after she has told him repeatedly to stay out of her head, her walls drop a bit because she is overwhelmed by something else, and he IMMEDIATELY uses that opportunity to read her mind.
But she responds weirdly a couple of times to handsy voice in her head guy (who does get a name later) and to another character that she literally KNOWS is in the actual process of betraying her... so maybe she just isn't written like a character who acknowledges things like consent and such? She is written like an interesting character as long as nothing sexual is happening. Nothing REMOTELY sexual. Otherwise she gets really dumb and acts against her own self-interest a lot. Like, I do not relate to this character in a number of ways, but kind of in that way where she doesn't totally feel like a real person. But, I accidentally read the beginning of the first book in the series after this one first, because I didn't realize there WAS a series before that one when I started. With what I read at the beginning of that book in mind, I decided to finish this book, to see where I stood on it after that. But, just based on the 1/3 of this book... it would have possibly gotten into DNF territory, if I didn't choose to push through.
I do not like the Magician character. He is problematic AF. He is too powerful for things to make much sense. He is also too manipulative, too uninterested in consent, but pretends to be once we get late in the book. I got actually offended when the MC and he were both talking/thinking about how *respectful* he is of consent late in the book, like the orgy sex magic, sexually taking advantage thing didn't happen. Or that he wasn't trying to read her mind all the time even when she kept telling him not to. A character doesn't respect consent because other characters say they do. Or ESPECIALLY because they themselves say they do. You have to show it in action, and he demonstrably DOES NOT.
Basically I like the parts of the book that he isn't really in or a meaningful part of. And the more I got of him, the less I wanted. And I got extra upset at the end of the book, where he didn't get what he wanted from the MC, so he did an end-around. Bringing someone else in to get what he wanted. And... she figured it out and was fine with that, for some reason. He isn't a good person. He is in many ways actively a bad person. And she was just going to give up on her own boundaries to let him have what he wanted at nearly every turn. I hated that. And I hated that about her.
I am going to average the parts I liked and the parts I hated, and give this book a 3. But understand that I am rounding up for that 3.