My thanks to both NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an advanced copy of this fantasy novel set in a world of demons, magic users, innocents and evil doers, death and always revenge.

Not many authors can jump from genres even though many bookstores still feel that fantasy books and science fictions books are the same product. Doing the impossible in science fiction can be done with a lot of techno-babble and made up science. The impossible in a fantasy world can be done with a twitch of the nose, and the words, well its magic. Making science and magic real in their respective universes is tough, to be able to do it in two different genres is really awe-inspiring. And make me quite envious. I've long been a fan of Martha Wells Murderbot series, a series that I recommend quite a lot, and will do so here, but have never really delved in Wells' fantasy stories. I have been missing out. Witch King, hopefully the first book in a very long new series is a big book following characters from their end to their beginnings and back again, filled with action, lots of magic, and fantastic writing.

Kai, one of our heroes, is awoken after he has been murdered to find that Kai's body has been trapped in a prison of specific design to keep his soul from escaping. And that he is not alone in his prison. A group of motley pirates and a magic user have disturbed his cell, trying to steal his body for power and gain. Kai quickly dispatches them, and frees his companion a fellow Witch Ziede. Neither has any idea how they became to be trapped, nor Kai killed. Years earlier Kai and his companions had helped overthrow a foul group of overlords who had killed and enslaved thousands, in a war that had ravaged most of the known world. Kai has enemies, but he fears that true threats might be closer, from people that he trusted. Alone, not sure who to trust, Kai Ziede and their new friends begin to follow clues to who attacked them, and the fate of their friends. For Kai is more than a powerful Witch, Kai is also a demon, and Kai is getting very angry.

This is a stand alone, but one that I hope there will be a lot more of. Wells starts the story right in the action and never lets up, so there might be a slight learning curve, but Wells is far too good a writer to make it difficult. Alternating chapters tell of Kai as a younger demon, his meeting with Ziede, and the man who gave them freedom and inspired them to revolt, along with the trying to determine who might be plotting against them. Wells unfolds the story carefully never dumping info, or dropping too much too fast. Kai has a younger companion that has been rescued who becomes the reader in a way, asking questions for us, and letting the information come through her. I particularly liked the magic and its rules. A lot of interesting campaigns could come from this story for role playing. The magic made sense, and I love how sometimes it just got out of hand, succeeding far more than it should, and actually making more problems. The ending was a tad rushed, which makes me think there must be more for these characters. I do hope there is.

Recommended for readers of Martha Wells without a doubt. Great story, fun, interesting characters, and a big new world to explore. A perfect place to start for new readers. Also great for role playing ideas. The magic, the world, the demons, some of the different classes and people. There is a lot to be learned here. And of course a lot to enjoy.

To say I was excited to get my hands on an ARC of Martha Wells’ Witch King is an understatement. I’m a big Murderbot fan (who isn’t?) and as soon as I heard about this book, I knew I was going to review it.

This is such an interesting story - filled with politics, war, magic, and found family. Which, as we know, are some of my favourite things.

We begin the story with the awakening of the Witch King. Kaiisteron or Kai, as he is referred to in the book, is a demon. Summoned to aid the Saredi people, Kai’s initial years among humans are peaceful ones. Until a magical race called the Heirarchs invade and destroy his adopted tribe. In a desperate bid to fight back, Kai joins forces with a motley crew, all of different races: Ziede the witch, Bashasa who is human, and Tahren and Dahin who are from a race called the blessed.

Kai, who had been magically coerced into sleep, wakes up to a world that hasn’t realised he was gone. Along with Ziede, who was imprisoned alongside him, he’s on a mission to find out who betrayed him and unravel what appears to be an increasingly complicated political plot.

The book has some glorious world building in Martha’s signature style. There are no info dumps here, everything is woven into the story without compromising the quicksilver pace. Despite it being fantastical, there’s a lot of room for human emotion. Kai loves, grieves, and hurts - his prodigious powers can’t save him from that. He is also keenly aware that even among demons he’s an anomaly.

There’s something wonderfully endearing about this all powerful demon who has a soft spot for the underdog and doesn’t really want to hurt people despite being surrounded by treachery. I love how this book subverted all the demon tropes, while still using lore you will all recognise. Read it, you’ll see what I mean!

Honestly, it’s hard to do this book justice because of the wonderfully layered writing, complex world building, and political manoeuvring. Let’s just say that I’m hoping this is a series. I’m not sure I want to say goodbye to Kai just yet.

Martha Wells is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winner, and her skill and appeal is evident in all of her work. This story - one hopes the first in a series - is more serious than her Murderbot series, which combined science fiction with a humorous protagonist that could have done stand-up at the Star Wars Mos Eisley Cantina.

"Witch King" is set in a fantasy world with the focus on the demon Kaiisteron, called Kai, who is the Fourth Prince of the Underearth. He is also called the Witch King. (Witches were supposed to have been born of the mix of demon and mortal blood during the long-ago war with the underearth.)

Kai’s real body was in the underearth, under the realm of the Fourth House with all the others who had taken a bargain to come to the upper world in mortal form.

The story goes back and forth between the past and the present, in episodes that dovetail one another. For example, we first meet Kai, in both time periods, during a stint of imprisonment.

In the past story line, the autocratic and cruel Heirarchs controlled most of the world, and also closed off passage to and from the underearth, trapping demons in their mortal bodies so they couldn’t escape. Kai had been captured with other demons and chained up in a foul section of the Heirarch’s Summer Halls. He was rescued by Bashasa, a prince of the Benais-arik, who had been brought to the Summer Halls as a hostage to ensure the “good behavior” of his people. Bashasa didn’t know who Kai was, but he was the right size to swap out for the dead body of Bashasa’s younger sister, and Bashasa wanted help from a demon to defeat the Hierarchs.

When Bashasa met Kai he was not afraid to look at him or touch him as most mortals were. Instead he said, “I have a proposition for you. Help me destroy the Hierarchs.” Kai was suspicious and hostile initially, but Bashasa put his hand on Kai’s arm and said gently, ‘Come, we are all prisoners of the Hierarchs here, one way or another. Fighting with each other is the last thing we should do.’” Kai was startled and disarmed; few mortals ever voluntarily touched a demon; generally, they hated, feared, and reviled them.

Kai’s time at the Summer Halls after rescue by Bashasa was also when he met Ziede Daiyahah, another witch who became his lifelong friend, and Tahren Stargard, an Immortal Blessed. She was called the Fallen because she, alone among the Blessed, had rebelled against the Heirarchs. Those two were also helping Bashasa.

In the present, we know that Bashasa, being a mortal, is long dead. Kai and Ziede were abducted from the palace of Bashat, Bashasa’s descendant, in Benais-arik, and had been imprisoned for the past year. As the story begins, they managed to escape. Tahren Stargard, now Ziede’s wife, was also taken but they did not know where, and Ziede was desperate to find her. They speculated all of it was an attempt to interfere with the renewal of the Rising World coalition [the post-Hierarch power structure] that would establish it as an Empire. A faction in the rival city of Nient-arik wanted to usurp Benais-arik’s place as the ruling capital of the Rising World. The fact that Kai, Ziede, and Tahren were all missing helped Nient-arik maintain that Benais-arik had lost support of the Witchlands and the Immortal Blessed. But Ziede and Kai were convinced that Bashat was behind their capture. Bashat could use their absence to expose the Nient-arik as a nest of traitors and come out of the situation even stronger.

As we go back and forth in time, we find out how all these circumstances arose, as well as learning about the various powers of the different races, including not only witches, demons, and the Immortal Blessed, but Heirarchs and their enforcers, the Expositors.

Kai, who is part witch, part demon, and part mortal, exhibits just as much complexity and nuance as you would hope for from his mixed heritage. He is fierce, courageous, intelligent, loyal, loving, and willing both to acknowledge his mistakes and to learn from them.

I loved this book. I earnestly hope for a sequel!

Thank you Netgalley and Tor for providing me with this eACR in exchange for my honest opinion.

I do not know where to start with this one. So I think I'll just have to start by saying, is this a good, complex, well written epic fantasy? Yes. Did I like it? No and yes, and that makes it really hard to rate this book. I think it deserves 4 stars, but I sadly just can't give it that.

Martha Wells starts with dropping you right in to the story, where we meet Kai, who are locked in a tomb and doesn't remember how it happened. I loved the beginning, it hooked me good and it made me super excited for the rest of the story. Also, we meet a shell-whale and I'm desperate for someone to draw that for me! But then... We get thrown so many names, places and creatures I had to start writing down in my notebook to keep track. Behind some of the names I've noted "Is this a family, a king or a kingdom?", so you can see where this book let me down a little. It may have been that I weren't in the right head space for this book right now, but tbh I just felt kind of stupid.

Now, this book also had a lot of positives, I liked the plot, the characters, the world, the magic-system, sounds like a five star read, right? It just did not land, with every positive, there was a little negative for me. The magic was never explained, the different creatures we only got some sentences here and there about, I don't usually scream for an infodump, but I could've needed one with this book. It got harder and harder to pick the book up, even after I started to understand more of the world. The last hour of the book flew by and was the most exciting part of the book for me, but that part felt rushed after such a slow start.

- The world-building is massive and brilliant, and this book will definitely do good with a detailed map and preferably some illustrations of these magical creatures and strange structures between the pages.
- I enjoyed the characters a lot, and the found family trope was well executed.
- It's alternating between past and present, which I liked, but I wish we got a little more present before we got thrown back to when nobody knew each other and all the names are different again.
- We got a gay MC, and a non-binary world, which was refreshing!
- The book does a beautiful job taking on betrayal, loyalty, friendship and grief.
- A couple of the side-characters I really liked, they intrigued me and I was a little disappointed when we didn't get more from them.
- It seems like this is a stand-alone? I think that a lot of my problems with this book would've been solved if, 1. It was a series, with more time to explore the world/characters and plot or 2. It was a novella, short and sweet.

If you enjoy epic fantasy, slow pacing, massive world-building, strange creatures and a complex magic system, you might enjoy this book! It just didn't hit the mark for me at this time.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor for the ARC! In this new fantasy by Martha Wells. Kai is an immortal (mostly) demon who inhabits a new body after awakening from a suspended death. He reunites with Ziede and the two set out to discover how they were entombed and what happened to their comrades. The narrative is split between the current timeline and the events of the past (Kai's life in mortal bodies and the battle with the Heirarchs). The story is action-packed and engaing, with Wells great characterization. I was left with wanting to know more about the backstory, as well as wanting to follow Kai and his friends on further adventures, and their is certainly the option for that at the end.

DNF at 20%

At a fifth of the way through a book, I should at least care about some of the characters OR have an idea of what the point of the book is. Martha Wells drops us into this story and explains absolutely nothing as it trundles along.

From the blurb and premise, I was really excited to read this, but between being unable to buy into the story and the clunky, juvenile writing style (I’d never heard of Martha Wells before, but I was shocked when I looked the author up and this WASN’T a debut novel), I struggle to even want to pick this book up at all. A lot of the dialogue is cringey, and the repetitive language in descriptions (not for emphasis, just lack of synonyms it would seem) made this a really not fun read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for providing me with the ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

Killer high fantasy. Wells creates an incredible world, and engrossing, lovable characters within it. This is a heart-pounding, kind of creepy adventure featuring dual timelines that both fills us in on what's going on and creates frustratingly great suspense. It's similar to the Murderbot Diaries in how full and immediate the world is, also how real the stakes are, and how much we want to root for the MC. It's not irreverent in the same way though, Witch King is more straight ahead with moments of levity. This book is a great time and I can only hope that it's the beginning of a series. Also I wouldn't mind seeing it on a screen, please and thank you.

Demon-Prince Kai and Air-Witch Ziede are on a quest for revenge on the people that have imprisoned them and to find Ziedes wife, a Fallen Immortal Soldier. On the way they pick up a little girl that was meant as a sacrifice and an enslaved Earth-Witch.
They travel through a desolate almost post-apocalyptic feeling world (it gave me strong Elden Ring vibes). The invaders have come and won, they left large amounts of the population dead and whole cities deserted, until they could be stopped. Now the continent is slowly recovering.
Martha Wells truly is the master of writing non-human protagonists whosomehow feel more human than all of us. Every one of the main crew deserve to have their own book. They are so interesting and fleshed out and so badass and unique.
You can truly feel the love and care the characters have for each other. Kais terror and trauma when his war camp gets destroyed feels real and impactful, as if you were there with him. His anger, and cruelty even, in his quest for revenge feel justified for the things he had to endure. But he never looses his sass and his humor; you can not help but root for him.
Theres also: Whale riding, necromantic-eldritch-horror creatures, ghost ships, Grandma is a demon queen, mute witches speaking in sign-language, unique races with their own magic system.
The book is very much character focused, pacing-wise its a bit more on the slower side.
I am rating this 4.5/5, minus half a star because the ending was a little underwhelming and I was a bit confused about the timeline.

I'd like to extend a big "thank you" to the team at Tor Publishing Group as well as NetGalley for sending me this e-ARC!

This was easily one of my most anticipated reads of 2023, so I'm really saddened that I ended up having to DNF it at 30%.

This book follows a witch (Or demon? I still don't really understand) named Kai who was abducted along with his friend Ziede. You get dropped straight into the action on page 1, and I commend the author for trying this method out, but it left me completely confused. I didn't understand who anyone was (you get a bunch of names thrown at you) and found it really difficult to follow along.

This book bounces back and forth between the past and present day, and I found myself preferring to read about the past, although majority of the book is based in the present. I liked getting to know Kai and understand his character better, so whenever I was brought back to the current situation, I was left reeling. He's a completely different person now than he was before, and I'm sure there's a great reason for that--I just couldn't stick around to find out that reason.

I absolutely hate DNF-ing books, so this was a major letdown for me. Maybe I'll try reading it again sometime in the future.

3.5 stars rounded down

This book had an interesting premise of whodunit mystery with a demon that felt had the vibes of a more cozy fantasy than apic fantasy. I felt that this was more cozy than epic because the story moved at a very slow pace and focused a lot on the politics of the characters rather than the plot.

I personally had a hard time getting into the book and just felt like the writing style didn’t speak to me. It didn’t make me feel anything towards the characters and I felt like the descriptions of the magic were a little lacking and flat to me. The book has a lot of cantrip and intention style magic that wasn’t that interesting to read about for me.

I felt like this book reminded me of The Red Scholar’s Wake because it had the same slow pacing and emphasis on the politics of a unique fantasy world. However, this book did not have a romance element nor the interesting magical imagery. I did think this book had a slightly better ending than The Red Scholar’s Wake but not by much.

I would recommend this book to those who are looking for a slower paced fantasy read with a mystery element. I would not recommend this to anyone looking for complex characters or character growth or who don’t enjoy books about politics.

Thank you to tordotcom and Netgalley for a digital advanced readers copy of this book for my honest review!

I am so grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me the chance to read and review the ARC for WITCH KING. As a huge fan of the Murderbot Diaries, I could not wait to get my hands on this one!

Sadly, it's a DNF for me. I tried and tried to push through, but this one is not engaging me enough to continue. The first chapter, while interesting, dropped me in what felt like the middle of a story. That's okay, I was content to pick up in the middle and figure it out as I went. Unfortunately, the names of the characters, the swapping between past and present while also learning the history and this bargain between demons and humans was very confusing. I was left confused at every turn. I tried to focus, take more detailed notes but because the pacing is also quite slow, I found myself bored and my mind would wander.

At 25% of the way in, I just found myself no longer wanting to pick this one up, so I made the decision to DNF.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘈𝘙𝘊 𝘪𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸.

I wished for so many things and I got them at one point or another. Witch King follows the story of Kai, a demon who can inhabit other people's bodies and how he came to be known as a Witch King in a world where people were hunted by the Hierarch, a group of individuals who hated the world and wanted to see it burn.

The story is fluid, I liked how everything fall into places I never thought about, but at the same time it had a pace I wasn't comforable with. Since the start we are dropped into Kai's story with nothing to go with. We are bombarded from everywhere with worldbuilding so complex I lost so many information on the way because I couldn't force myself to pick the pieces together by the end of the book. They were to many to begin with. I liked Kai's history and I was 100% there for his past with the others and Bashasa. I loved his relationship with the prince and how they became so much more in so little time and how Martha Wells portrayed their feelings in such innocent but intense way.

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐈 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐈 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆:
The beautiful and complex worldbuilding, but maybe too complex for me.
The magic system and how many different made cultures were brought together.
The relationship between the characters.
The complexity of the history revolving around the MCs.
How vivid everything was and how detailed the fighting scenes were.
The past-present divided characters that put showed the character growth and how they went from slaves to something more.
The humor, I laughed at so many quirky remarks.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒: I didn't had many things to complain about and I really liked how the characters played out to be. We have Kai, who's sensible but powerful when needed, who can inhibit other people bodies, we have Ziede, a Witch who can order the wind-devils aka the wind itself, a Immortal Marshall who betrayed her people for her brother safety and other characters that I liked how they were made.

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃𝐁𝐔𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆:
I felt like it was to much sometimes. I liked it a lot but not everything stayed with me until the end.

𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘤 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘺, 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺, 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘴.

Review of Witch King by Martha Wells
I loved the concept of Witch King when I first heard of it was over the moon when I was granted an ARC by Netgalley!
Short blurb: The Witch King has awakened to the revelation that he and his loved ones have been betrayed, thus starts their journey to find out who left them for dead. But the land they return to is changed, and soon the Witch King and his friends are fighting for more than just the truth, they're fighting for their lives.
It took me a long time to fully come to grasp with the setting and the world order of the book. This caused me to lose interest in some of the characters, and I found the time changing to be more confusing than they were necessary. I loved what the book aspired to be, but I just think it fell a bit short for me and I struggled to truly care about the characters and their journey.
Positives: | loved the originality of the story. I also think the intrigue of politics and how it can so suddenly change one way or the other was great. I also think Martha Well's writing was smooth and easy to read!
Two stars for me.
Thank you Netgalley for giving me the arc in return for an honest review!

I’m DNF’ing this. I really enjoyed the beginning chapter or two and then it got SO confusing. I’m nearly 50% through and have no idea whats going on.

I hope to come back to it at a later date but I keep trying and keep getting more confused.

The best comparison I can make with <I>Witch King</i> is that it feels like jumping into <I>Game of Thrones</I> around book three or four without reading or watching anything that came earlier. Fans of Martha Wells' Murderbot books that are specifically into how pared-down and earnestly simple those books are, with the protagonist frankly and clearly explaining its responses to things, are likely to be kind of lost here, given the density of the storytelling, the huge number of characters in play, and especially the complexity of some of the emotions going on. But for fans of her Rakshasa series (like me), this is a hell of an interesting challenge: Just being thrown into the deep end of a rich and realized fantasy world, and told to catch up.

The book begins with Kai (the Witch King of the title) waking up in a trap, after a plot to contain and control him, and then trying to escape and find his scattered allies. It takes much of the first several chapters to figure out what he is, what he can do, who those allies are, and why anyone would scheme against him. It takes the rest of the book to clarify what's actually going on, with a whole lot of flashbacks and reveals, both involving a ton of political players vying against each other in a series of changing alliances. There's a library of characters at the beginning, but it doesn't help all that much, given that the real question about pretty much everyone in this book is whether they are what they seem to be, or whether they're being honest about their agenda. And given how many political agendas are at work, a library of the major factions would have been a lot more useful.

I struggled a fair bit to keep up with the story at times, mostly because of that factor — all the names and details being thrown out at once, including a ton of stuff that doesn't become relevant in this novel, and feels like it's being banked for future novels. But much like Murderbot or Moon in the Rakshaka books, Kai is an appealing protagonist, strong on the outside (his powers often seem nearly infinite, leaving everyone around him at a disadvantage once he decides on a move) and struggling on the inside in some interesting ways. Maybe the thing I enjoyed most about the book is the way it tracks some of the major changes he's been through that he can't communicate to anyone but the reader, because they're so based in cultural expectations and his origins that he doesn't even bother to describe them. (Characters who can't/won't talk about their angst because it just doesn't occur to them to complain or try to share is pretty much a Martha Wells hallmark.)

I could have used a fair bit more about Ziede, his constant companion and ally (and not in any way a romantic contender; she's entirely focused on finding and rescuing her missing wife, who I also could have used more about). We get to see where Kai and Ziede met, but I never felt like I understood their bond, or saw the clear transition between "two co-combatants in a sprawling faction in the past" and "boon companions who feel closer than a romantic couple" in the present. And it feels like there's a lot missing here about Kai's relationship with Bashasa, which also mostly winds up between the lines.

There are certainly a lot of threads here to pick up in a future book. I hope this becomes a series — it's certainly a complex and dense enough world to support more novels, and more intrigues, once readers finally have their feet under them with everything they learn in this novel. <I>Witch King</i> doesn't expressly end with any kind of cliffhanger or "to be continued" that make a sequel inevitable or necessary, but it certainly seems like there's a lot of room left for discovery — and for conflict, given where the political situation ends.

Witch King by Martha Wells is a complex and absorbing fantasy story that is highly recommended for fans of epic fantasy with a supernatural twist. The book features a cast of memorable characters, including Kai, a charismatic demon from the Underworld, and Zaide, who has some wonderful skills like controlling the wind and peeling people's skins off layer by layer. The story is written with alternate sections of the past and the present, which cleverly feed information to the reader, although it may require the reader to stay alert. While some readers may find the pacing odd, and that the book could have benefited from being shorter (and keep in mind, the novella might be my favorite length for fiction), it is still a highly recommended read for fans of epic fantasy. The book has an ending that could stand alone, but also leaves the way open for more.

Unfortunately I DNF’d at 70% because after spending almost the entire book confused, it was at that point I realised that there were two timelines - and only because I checked the contents page of the ebook.

The audiobook doesn’t put nearly enough emphasis on the fact that there are dual timelines, considering those timelines contain the same characters, in the same
places, doing very similar things, which led me to continuously feel like I had missed something important and rewind, only to realise I hadn’t. I would suggest putting some kind of note at the beginning of the audiobook, or more emphasis on the ‘The Past’ sections to ensure readers aren’t confused.

I feel this is a shame for the author, as I liked the premise and the magic system of the book, and if I had read the ebook I suspect I wouldn’t have been so confused.

Unfortunately I can’t bring myself to go back and read the first 70% of the book again as an ebook to assuage my confusion, and I don’t have enough concept of what is going on in either timeline to continue with the audiobook.

I can see myself coming back to this as an ebook in the future, however I would urge audio readers especially to be aware there is a dual timeline, otherwise you may find yourself extremely confused, as I was.

I've been meaning to check out Martha Wells for years so when I heard she was coming out with a new fantasy novel, I thought it might be a good place to start.

Witch King is the kind of novel that expects the reader to do a lot of reading between the lines, making inferences about what's happening between the bits that we get to see. It tells some of the story of the eponymous Witch King, Kaiisteron, as he unravels a conspiracy against him in the book's present. Alternating with the present storyline are chapters from Kai's past which reveal details about both him and the world around him.

The characters are interesting, particularly our point-of-view character, Kai. But to reveal nearly anything about him would be a spoiler. The setting is well-drawn and I was left wanting to know a great deal more about it.

The plot unfolds in languid impressionistic brushstrokes that leaves as many questions as answers by the end. Recommended for fans of slow-moving introspective high fantasy in the vein of The Goblin Emperor and Priory of the Orange tree.

I will definitely be buying and rereading Witch King and I hope the author plans to write more in this world.

CHARACTERS
🔲 mary-sue party
🔲 mostly 2D
🔲 great main cast, forgettable side characters
✅ well-written
🔲 complex and fascinating
🔲 hard to believe they are fictional

PLOT
🔲 you've already heard this exact story a thousand times
🔲 nothing memorable
✅ gripping
🔲 exceptional
🔲 mind=blown

WORLDBUILDING
🔲 takes place in our world
🔲 incoherent
🔲 OK
🔲 nicely detailed
✅ meticulous
🔲 even the last tree in the forest has its own story

ATMOSPHERE
🔲 nonexistent
🔲 fine
🔲 immersive
✅ you forget you are reading a book

PACING
🔲 dragging
✅ inconsistent
🔲 picks up with time
🔲 page-turner
🔲 impossible to put down

It wasn't bad, but I expected more :\

If you are around for a while you might know that I adore the Murderbot series by Martha Wells, so naturally I was super excited when her new fantasy book release got announced. Now, let's start with the obvious: this book was very different from Murderbot. It's a full-length novel, it's epic fantasy, and it follows multiple timelines. What stayed the same though, was the heart-warming found family trope - if you loved that in Murderbot, you will probably love it even more here.

The biggest surprise for me was the amazing world-building. Considering that this is a stand-alone, there were so many details about the different countries and their people, the cultures, the magic, and the history of the world. I also loved how unique it all felt instead of being another classic Western-inspired fantasy. Also also it was so delightfully queer!

The characters and the plot were alright in my opinion, they didn't quite blow my mind away but there was nothing wrong with them either.

The reason this book is not a five-star read for me is the pacing. Maybe the author is just not used to writing longer formats anymore, but this book felt so excruciatingly slow. While I was always enjoying what I was reading, I never felt like picking it up again. I liked the plots of both the present time and the flashback, but maybe it was because of the order of chapters, the momentum of the plot could never build up. It might be a me problem, but I definitely struggled with finishing the book because of this.

Overall, I think this was an enjoyable read, but it won't be a new favourite for me sadly. Still looking forward to picking up whatever the author comes out next with though! 😊

Martha Wells is a Professional Writer. And I don’t mean this to be damning with faint praise. Indeed, as a reviewer, this is one of the highest bits of praise I can offer. That means that Martha Wells delivers exactly what she promises. Witch King says “come with me, on an epic adventure across the seas and lands of a fantastic world. I will sweep you off your feet, make you forget your cares awhile, and take your breath away with images of impossible cities and alien landscapes.” And it delivers. When reading Witch King I was not lying on my couch ignoring piles of laundry yet to fold. I wasn’t stealing half an hour on my bus commute to work. I was soaring over ruined cities, fighting alongside legendary warriors as they clashed for the survival of their countries, and descending into the depths of inhuman oceans. Martha Wells knows how to deliver on the fundamental pact between author and reader--give me your attention, your time, and your imagination, and I will give you something extraordinary.

Witch King is told in two braided timelines looping around eachother as they tell Kai’s (a demon who is trapped in a mortal body, and betrayed by a comrade) rise and fall, and then what comes next. What I love is how rich and how inhabited the world Martha Wells has constructed in this book is--one of the characters is a historian, and his research feels real and asks probing questions that I hope will be answered in future books set in this same world. I also hope that someone will throw stupid amounts of money at an adaptation of this only for the amazing set piece scuba adventure that happens at about 2/3 of the way through this book.

If you are looking for a larger than life, epic fantasy quest, with world building to die for and battle scenes to take your breath away--you could do worse than picking Witch King as your next read. I especially recommend this book for fans of Brandon Sanderson, Tash Suri, or C.L. Clark.
I was provided with an Advance Copy in exchange for this honest review.