Witch King

Hardcover, 432 pages

Published May 30, 2023 by Tordotcom.

ISBN:
978-1-250-82679-4
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4 stars (67 reviews)

3 editions

Witch King by Martha Wells

4 stars

Like many other people I discovered Martha Wells via the Murderbot series. Until I saw the press for this book I had no idea she was also an accomplished fantasy author. I guess I have more stories to go back and read!

I really loved the characters in this one. This is one of those stories that flips between the Origin Story where everyone meets amidst a crisis and Current Day where they are reunited to face a new crisis. I thought the characters' relationships in the Present Day flowed well from how they met in the Origin Story, and their interactions were both natural and entertaining.

I thought the plot in the Origin Story timeline was more exciting, even if there wasn't much tension since you knew certain characters appear in the Current Day and hence couldn't have died. It's a story of war and defeat and desperation which …

reviewed Witch King by Martha Wells

Witch King, by Martha Wells

5 stars

It’s definitely a sign that you’re going to have a bad day when you wake up dead. One would think that Kai, the protagonist of Martha Wells’s electrifying novel Witch King, would be used to it. This isn’t the first time he’s woken up dead. He is a demon, after all. But waking up dead this time portends a lot more than just a bad day. It might mean the end of everything Kai, his friends, and his allies have worked for...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

Didn't love it

2 stars

Content warning Mention to certain parts of the plot (not big big spoilers)

Read: Witch King, by Martha Wells

3 stars

I really wanted to like this more, given how much I just love the Murderbot series. But for me it started confusing, got more confusing, and then resolved in a way that was slightly less confusing but I still don't really understand what happened. The world-building is rich but also extremely complicated, and the book regularly shifts between long past, middle past, and the present. There are several different kinds of people/entities and across and between them there are shifting alliances that change depending on where you are in the timeline. I usually love a really complex book but I just could not get a handle on this one.

Chaotic Mess, Really Disappointing

2 stars

Honestly don’t know where to begin. A demon and a witch have a short quest that ultimately doesn’t seem to do much? Really hard to follow, so many poorly named characters.

This book felt like a chaotic mess that needed far more editing and a much stronger plot. Would not recommend. A disappointment compared to her other books and considering the setting and main characters feels like they could have been so much better.

Abgebrochen

2 stars

Habe das (Hör-)Buch bei 12% abgebrochen. So der ich Murderbot Diaries mag, so sehr hat mich Witch Kind gelangweilt. Ich konnte zu keinem Charakter eine Verbindung aufbauen und das ist eine schlechte Grundlage um einer so komplexen Story akustisch zu folgen. Das Hörbuch begann tatsächlich mit einer mehr als drei Minuten andauernden Aufzählung von absurd vielen Charakteren, von denen viele noch Spitznamen hatten und in Beziehung zu anderen Charakteren standen,… Natürlich konnte ich dem nicht folgen, ich kannte ja noch nicht mal einen der Charas. Kein guter Start.

Der Rest der 12%, die ich gehört habe, unterschied sich allein in einem Aspekt positiv von 0815-Fantasy: Das Setting war nicht irgendwo im europäischen Mittelalter. Vielmehr zogen die Personen umher, waren vielleicht Beduinen oder ähnliche nicht-sesshafte Gruppen.

Aber alles andere war so langweilig: Hauptcharakter männlich (wenn auch nicht hetero), „the chosen one“ (wenn auch Dämon), rechtschaffend-gut obwohl Dämon, … und was mich …

Interesting and well-executed approach to worldbuilding

4 stars

Witch King features a lot of worldbuilding. Its fantasy world is inhabited by different people with different cultures, and people who can different sorts of magic in different sorts of way, and Martha Wells manages to weave details about this world into the story in a way that makes the world feel alive (except for all the dead people).

The setting is also one with a history of dramatic upheavals and epic struggles, though the story is not set during those things. The main narrative is set years after major historical events, whose effects are still felt by the present-day characters. We also get flashbacks of events around the major historical events. In this way, the book tells a history by telling of its aftermath, and the events that preceded it. This is something that could be executed poorly, leaving a disappointing gap, but it actually works pretty well in …

Review of 'Witch King' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I have read and enjoyed the Murderbot series, as well as the Raksura books. But this one leaves me cold. The author drops you into what appears to be chapter 14 of vol 2 of a three-book epic. You have to puzzle things out from there, and as the characters didn't do anything for me, and the plot line was confused, I can't give it more than two stars.

Fantastic Voyage

5 stars

Witch King flips back and forth between two times. One is a mystery - who trapped us? What intrigue is afoot and how can we foil it. The other is a rising challenge, a hopeless rebellion against an overwhelming authority.

Both are told with strength and warmth- our protagonist is frankly a bit of a shit in the beginning, but we learn why and see where they are coming from and where they are supported more than they see.

It ends with the perfect ending for a mystery and the aftermath of a rebellion. The story is done.

I’d absolutely enjoy another book in this world but this stands well all by itself.

Great start, not sure about the ending

4 stars

The opening scene is really engaging, then we progress to some nice exposition, action, mystery. We're bouncing around at a pleasant clip, zeroing in on an energetic plot. But I'm left with a somewhat Stephenson-esque sense that at one point she just wanted to stop writing any more of the story and that's where the book ends.

Could have been more

4 stars

This one is difficult to rate for me. I only had 7 days to read it but it's a book that needs to be savoured. You should take your time with it. So I probably didn't get the full experience. The narrative starts right in the middle of a story that has a long backstory some of which the readers are going to learn during the course of the book. There are also quotes from historical or anthropoligical works from that world at the beginning of chapters. A lot of thought went into the world-building. The chapters switch between the present and the past. While I do like the sense of layers of history that certain places and relationships have due to that I also feel that this narrative structure didn't quite work. A couple of times the timing is such that the emotional impact of places and events is …

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