Witch King

A curious fantasy story (apparently the start of a series) where demons, witches and other beings (both supernatural and mortal) mix together in a world that has seen devastation after an invasion, but whose future is yet to be determined.

The story is set both in the present and the past. In the present, the demon Kai and his witch friend, Ziede, wake up in a prison. They escape and discover that time has passed during their imprisonment and their friends are also missing, probably detained as part of a conspiracy to prevent them from attending a meeting of allies to determine the future of their coalition. We follow them as they pick up clues to find their friends, and we learn more of their world, which is still recovering after an invasion by people called the Hierarchs.

In the past, we see a younger Kai, sent from the underworld to inhabit the body of a newly dead mortal as part of an alliance agreement. Here, we see the beginning of the Hierarchs invasion, and the devastating power they use to overcome demons, witches and mortals resisting the invasion. Kai is captured, but later escapes with the help of rebels who want the world to rise up and fight back against the Hierarchs.

Both parts of the story intertwine via common characters, places and events that occur in both parts. As the story progresses, we also learn more about the world and the powers that demons, witches, Hierarchs and others posses and how they are wielded.

The ending, and the conspiracy that imprisoned them, would eventually turn out to be rather anti-climatic. Hopefully, this, and other unanswered questions raised, can be addressed in later books in the series.

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 is tough to beat.

The Current Day story line is much thinner and involves mystery and conspiracy but honestly it doesn't feel like much happens so much as you're spending time with these characters as they deal with their current problem.

As far as I know this is a standalone novel but I wouldn't mind seeing more of this setting and these characters.

“Why is everyone so afraid of demons?”

It's curious how each individual aspect of this book is pretty much exactly up my alley, but the whole they form left me vaguely unsatisfied. The beginning hooked me pretty hard: a classic in media res opening that felt like starting a new tv show with the first episode of season two; a soul-sucking, body-snatching demon trying to figure out who betrayed him and where his companions went; a few cool subversions of minor fantasy tropes along the way; evocative descriptions; immersive vibes. For the first quarter of the book or so, I genuinely enjoyed how the flashback storyline intermeshed with the plot in the present time. There were plenty of interesting, fleshed out characters with a complex web of relationships between them and smart, quippy moments of dialogue.

However, the deeper I went into the story, the harder it was to sustain that immersion. The world continued to be interesting and cleverly built. The characters remained complex and compelling, in theory. In practice, I was finding harder and harder to connect to them, possibly because of the two different arcs (the past and the present) running alongside each other. I kept waiting for certain gaps between the two storylines to be filled, but they never quite went there, and there were a couple of plot threads that felt practically abandoned, even though technically, the events that needed to happen to wrap them up did happen. The emotional payoff, however, just wasn't present, as if something important was missing each time between the set-up and the conclusion.

Upon some thinking, I suspect that part of my dissatisfaction comes from not forming expectations correctly. I'm not even sure what I expected, exactly, but I just thought I'd be more engaged with Kai in the present storyline. But for the most part in the present, he's the sort of character who's already peaked and now is figuring out where to get the will to go on. It doesn't help that the present-time plot is fairly straightforward to the point that it's barely enough to sustain a novel. The depth comes from the various side characters who, by virtue of being side characters, don't get to take the center stage, and from the storyline that unfolds in the flashbacks—and has the ingrained flaw of the reader knowing how it ends before it even begins. 

This is definitely the kind of story that's focused on the journey above the destination, and I'm normally all for it. But the further I read, the more disconnected I felt from that journey, and I still struggle to formulate why. So far, my best guess is that the things that would hook me the most into the characters' stories and inner worlds were glossed over or kept silent. There were some moments that really stuck with me: Ziede and Kai's moment of "how it started, how it's going" reminiscence, or that instance when Kai heard of how his relationship with Bashasa was perceived from the outside and reflected on how it truly was in that regard, or Kai's interaction with his mother. All of those exchanges were ripe with emotional weight and history that I longed to see the story properly delve into. Instead, those things that would have truly hooked me were stuck existing between the lines. In general, I just think that for my taste, too much was missing/assumed about the character and relationship development. 

I did enjoy a lot of narrative threads here, and even more so the worldbuilding. In particular, I loved the themes of what happens to the world after it gets saved/rebuilt, the post-revolution instability, and the anti-imperial ideas. I also, being me, wholeheartedly appreciated how queernormative this setting is, and I found Wells's take on demons super refreshing. While the magic system and some other aspects of the worldbuilding had me confused for a long time, I felt like the key points came together quite naturally by the end and I definitely prefer this sort of organic immersion to infodumps. And I'll be definitely thinking more about the dual narrative structure here and all the ways it did and didn't work for me in the coming days.

From the get-go, Witch King manages to grab the reader for what promises to be an enjoyable ride. The reader follows as the protagonist, a demon named Kai (short for Kaiisteron, among other names) wakes up trapped in a water tomb… turns out, he’s dead. The novel deftly switches between past and present perspectives, crafting a narrative that slowly unravels some of the central mysteries marching along with the plot. Accompanying Kai are not only his dearest friend, Ziede, but also a young sacrificial child, as well as others known from his past and new acquaintances.

Wells doesn’t hold your hand—she immerses you in the worldbuilding from the get-go, and you slowly begin to unravel the history and context of the characters as you go along; however, the worldbuilding is almost beside the point—we never get encyclopedia-style explanations, just enough to move on and help the narrative flow smoothly. The characters and plot are both important aspects here, which is perhaps why I enjoyed it so much, even though the worldbuilding was not the strongest. It was kind of like the inverse of The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie, which has some pretty neat worldbuilding, but whose characters and plot feel secondary to the former. Both novels worked well for me, so I guess it is mostly dependent on the author’s skill.

Perhaps in a different mood I would have demanded more worldbuilding, or more in-depth examinations of the characters’ relationships; but here, I was content to get lost in the mystery of the world. Though the plot was nothing too complicated, it was still enjoyable watching Wells unravel the knotted threads and bring them to a restored whole at the end. The pacing could have been executed better at times; the back-and-forth of present vs. past could get repetitive; sometimes I just wanted to stay in a particular moment. This is a self-contained narrative, and I don’t necessarily think it would have worked if it were drawn out into a series, but something about the length feels off—perhaps it could’ve been more concise.

I did quite enjoy the focus on themes like found family, memory, and perhaps a hint of what we owe others (especially those we consider friends). The exploration of these themes could have been deeper, but I also wasn’t expecting it to be; the novel just works as an enjoyable standalone fantasy. I’m definitely hoping to read more from Martha Wells—and I’m very excited that Murderbot is a series of shorter novellas.

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 immer besonders irkt: Natürlich haben die wichtigen Leute alle Bedienstete-bis-Sklaven, die möglicherweise durch weniger-reinblütig-sein an diesen Platz kamen… Urgh.

Das ist mit alles zu monarchistisch, da höre ich lieber ein paar langweilige, heteronormative Grusel-Hörspiele bis das nächste Murderbot-Hörbuch in der Bücherei verfügbar ist.

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 Witch King.

We also do get a bunch of likeable characters doing an adventure together, which is something Martha Wells does well, and she does not disappoint this time.