Strang is simpler and clearer. Axler is more advanced in the sense that it doesn’t tie it to matrices. Strange is a “first course” book, Axler is a second course.

Depends how you think. I found Strang impenetrable and Axler simple and lucid. Some people seem to find abstract vector spaces weird and unmotivated without doing a load of stuff with lists and grids of numbers first. I find determinants weird and unmotivated without learning exterior algebra first. I wish Axler had been my first course.

Axler does limit itself to vector spaces over real and complex fields, though.

That‘s fine, but I would have appreciated notices, which proofs and theorems do not hold in the general case.

It‘s an exercise for the reader.