In general, I love the story. I think Mr. Bagwell manages to create a really compelling world, with an interesting and natural system for magic in his game. The narration is great too.
My biggest complaint is the phrase “like a living thing”. Bagwell uses it quite often and once I started noticing it being used over and over, it brought me right out of the immersion. It’s a fine description if used once in a story, but every single book seems to have this phrase used multiple times, and I sigh every time. The story is so good, and the best description he repeatedly comes to is “like a living thing”.