Thank you to Netgalley and Tor books for the advanced copy of this book!

First, I can't believe I got to listen to this early. Martha Wells can do no wrong in my books, so unsurprisingly I loved this. This was an incredibly unique take on fantasy and a refreshing look at gender. The book definitely throws you right in and expects you to keep up/catch up. However, this really only made me love the book more but if that's not your style I completely understand. I loved the back and forth between Kai's past and present lives. The gender fluidity was so refreshing as well, and I genuinely loved the characters in this book.

A 5 star read for me.

*3.75 stars*

The Witch King is a dense fantasy written in an inimitable Martha Wells way that had me rooting for a demon. While the world building and parallel timeline action took a while for me to get used to, once I was in, I was completely in. Indeed, I ended up having a lot of fun with Kai and his world.

My quibbles are that I wish the worldbuilding had been just a tad less and that we had some more characterization for some side characters.

Overall, a really solid read.

The past POV was hard for me to get into but I loved the present. Common with multiple time POV for me. Found family stories are my favorite and this one was beautiful! Kai will stick with me for awhile!

Thanks to Tor and Netgalley for giving me a copy of this for review!

Unfortunately I feel like Witch King is Wells being undone by her own fame. The author has stirred up such a fury with Murderbot, that any step away was going to met with a lot of attention, but Witch King is definitely not Murderbot. What it is is dense. Full of lore, characters, and balls in the air to keep track of, Witch King is about on par with your average introductory novel in a fantasy series, with exposition coming out of its ears and lore dumps every other page. This is not the say the Lore here isn't interesting, it certainly is, and unique! I love the worldbuilding here, and the magic systems, but for those not attuned to the motions of a typical fantasy novel, this may be a difficult sit. What Wells does bring that elevates the work is some pretty fantastic character work, as many of the characters here could have played out like tropes had it not been for a firm and cheeky grasp on personality that has become a Wells staple. I will surely revisit when more of the series is released, but I was a bit letdown by my own expectations, I think. Still, fans of Epic Fantasy should devour this, as it may become your next favorite thing (calling all Gideon the Ninth stans).

This is an immersive and engaging fantasy about a group of intrepid, perhaps reluctant heroes fighting a rising evil. The world is interesting and so richly described by Wells. I really felt as if I was set down in the middle of every location, seeing it through my own eyes. This is great because the main thrust of the novel revolves around our characters being hunted from place to place trying to figure out who and why. We really get a chance to see how big and expansive the world is because of this. I was introduced to Martha Wells through her Murderbot series and this is the first of her fantasy books that I've read, but it won't be my last.

Martha Wells is one of those authors that I reach for again and again, Witch King is no exception to her fantastic stories! Witch King follows Kai who has just been murdered. Kai is looking for his wife and answers to what happened. This book is rich with worldbuilding and magic. I can't wait to see what Wells comes up with next!

DNF at 30%. This book has an amazing fantasy world, Wells is an accomplished writer and I'm still a huge fan. I just had to put the book down because I wasn't feeling connected to the main characters and was getting a big exhausted by the constant back and forth between past and present timelines. To be honest, I really felt the entire sections where we flashback to the past could have been deleted entirely and the gaps in the history of the main character addressed as short explanations in the present timeline.
The reason I am DNFing is that after putting the book down, I just never got the motivation to pick it back up and it's been a month. I may come back to it in future however I don't know if this one will end up being an adored book for me in the way the Murderbot books are.

I was intrigued by the premise and was excited to dig into this but quickly found myself confused and feeling like I was re-reading the same paragraphs. Kai is a demon prince who inhabits bodies of dead mortals. We follow Kai through waking up in a tower entombed and no memory of how he got there. We run parallel to a past timeline where basically the same thing happened except he's roped into a rebellion of sorts against the Heirarchs that enslave and murder demons. He works along side other humans, witches, and demons to break out of the Summer Halls.

In the present timeline, he and Zeide break out of their imprisonment to find that almost a year has passed, neither remembers what happened, and Zeide's wife is missing. They travel with other formerly enslaved to track her down and find out what happened.

The conclusion wraps up in an unsatisfying way for me and wished it had been drawn out and cut out more of the overlapping story lines. If there is a sequel to this I will not be reading it. I'll stick with the author's other series Murderbot Diaries.

Ahoy there mateys! I have read and enjoyed books by this author before and was so excited for this read. However despite starting it in early May, I had trouble finishing. I though that maybe it was just me mood that was problematic. But once I begin dreading picking books up, I know that I have to give up on books and abandon ship. Sad but true.

I am infinitely sad that this book didn’t work for me. I loved the set-up and mystery of what happened to the Witch King. The major problem for me with this one was the split of the book into Past and Present. I enjoyed the present but began to dislike reading the past. Immensely. I only ended up making it to 32%. The world building seemed interesting (despite the demons) but I wasn’t really connecting with any of the characters. The idea of the found family talked about in the novel kept getting me to put the book back up but I was stuck in a Past chapter, I kept putting it back down. I like Wells’ other fantasy books. Just not this one. Sad. Arrrr!

• 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝕽𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖊𝖜 •
When a manticore killed Ester's mother and infant brother, her family was torn apart, leaving her with nothing except her father's agonising silence and a single, overpowering desire to destroy the creatures that had slain her family. Ester's journey takes her to the King's Royal Mews, where the heroic and devoted ruhkers of the legendary huge rocs fly them to hunt manticores. Ester discovers her mission and success by dedicating herself to a cause that calls for total devotion and a being that will never return her love, together with a young roc named Zahra. In addition to embarking on the most hazardous manticore hunt in the empire, Ester is also led on a journey of acceptance and endurance by the horrific relationship between woman and roc.
Untethered Sky is a fun read with interesting characters. Characterisation is commendable. Every characters are well sketched. The flow and setting of the story is interesting. Though it's a short read, Fonda Lee could evoke throbbing emotions with her writing skills. The author uses first person point of view of the protagonist Ester. So, we get the entire psychological pictures of her mind. We can see all the reasons behind her actions.
The prose quality is elegant. It's a story of love, sacrifice, friendship and vengeance.
Overall, it's a short powerful fantasy read that deals with bond between people and fantasy creature.

Thank you @netgalley and @torbooks for this ARC

https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/book-review-witch-king/

Kaiisteron’s intimacy issues stem mostly from being a demon prince who can occasionally possess human bodies he touches and who often gains sustenance from draining vitality from living things with which he is in contact. Partly, though, his issues stem from a brutal upbringing in the demonic Underearth, partly because the Hierarchs cut him off (along with all demons on the surface) from his full Underearth body, and partly because the Hierarchs brutally murdered all but one of his human friends in the Saredi clans.

Kai used to be your average demon living in a body of a recently deceased girl, but eventually, he become one of the heroes that defeated the dreaded Hierarchs. Sounds like a spoiler? Well, it isn't because the main story is happening about 70 years after the world has been liberated from their domination. All the countries are now part of a big alliance, and the accords are about to be renewed. As one of the important figures, Kai is invited to attend. Then he wakes up out of his murdered body without a clue what happened. He needs to escape from his prison together with his witch friend and find out who betrayed him.

In addition to this more investigative storyline, the book also includes chapters set in the past. It is almost 50/50 divided between the past and the present storylines.

I can see that Martha Wells wanted to give the story a bit different approach by starting the book after the big fight had already been won. I am not sure it worked much for me because I appreciated the past chapters more than the present ones. Nevertheless, the present chapters also reveal parts of the past story and help discover this unique world.

The world-building was without a doubt the thing that captivated me the most. Even the characters were more interesting not because of their personalities and relationships, but because of their abilities.

The demons were my favorite race. The whole concept of the way they live in the human world and their abilities were quite original. The world has various types of magic that at the same time seem to have a kind of the same basis.

"Bashasa stared as if he had never seen Kai before. Kai knew his clothes were covered with slashes and blood, that his braids were unraveled because someone very foolish and now dead had grabbed his hair from behind and tried to cut his throat. Bashasa was just as disheveled, his brocade coat sleeves slashed bloody, his knuckles scraped raw. He said, “You have a knife in your chest.” Oh, right, he did."


The whole lore could certainly support a long series and I have a feeling this could potentially become one. While the story works as a standalone, the past storyline still had a lot more to tell and the present one had this one piece of information thrown in that, in my opinion, strongly hinted at a potential sequel.

I received an ARC for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I shouldn’t have doubted Martha Wells, even if it took me a bit of time to fully connect with this book. I should have trusted her all along. No, it wasn’t visceral love at first sight, it took some thinking and perseverance and yes, trust — but in the end it all beautifully came together with cerebral appreciation and certainly paid off. Well, sometimes you’re gotta put in some effort to get the rewards.

Wells throws the reader right into this world with no handholding, no exposition and no backstory and trusts you to figure it out as you go along, and adds a parallel earlier timeline where you need to do the same — in a bit of a measured slow burn that requires a bit of patience. The worldbuilding happens as we go along, organically, and there are no infodumps, and I quite appreciate that. I love when the author has confidence in readers and that confidence is deserved. I don’t want spoonfeeding and handholding — and it’s good since there’s none of that here.

It’s a complex world with much of it not explained (but hinted at enough to get the general idea), and if Wells decides to use this setting for future books there’s plenty to build on (and I will gladly read those). But as a stand-alone it’s very good, too.

Like Murderbot stories that are built around the protagonist rather than the plot, this for me was built around Kai (or, if you prefer, demon Kaiisteron, Fourth Prince of the Underearth, the titular Witch King) and his interactions and relationships with the rest of the cast, set in an adventure quest to find and free a friend, with a bit of politics playing out in the end and glimpses of the wider world around peaking my interest. And we also see younger Kai start his journey in the earlier timeline and see how those friendships were forged. It’s the depth of friendship and trust and respect between the characters - Kai, Ziede, Tahren, Bashasa - that is fascinating to see.

Plus, it’s a damn good adventure.

4 stars. Martha Wells, you are winning my heart even with books that do not have sarcastically misanthropic human/bot constructs.

——————

Thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Macmillan/Tordotcom for sending me an ARC of this title. I received this copy for free and this review contains my honest opinions.

It’s no secret that I look forward to every new Martha Wells release (and we are so lucky to have multiple this year!). I love Wells’ writing style and how she is able to craft fantastic characters in exceptional worlds. Witch King delivers on both characters and world-building for me: I enjoyed how the characters interacted with each other as we learned more about the world and its limits.

While this was an enjoyable read for me, there were a couple of things that prevented it from being a favorite like her Murderbot books. I usually enjoy reading dual timelines, but I don’t think they were the right choice for this story and neither was fully realized in the way I wanted. This also didn’t read like a standalone to me, but I haven’t found any information to support that this will become a series. Thank you again to the publisher for sending me a free ARC.

DNF around 32% - you are thrown into this new world with no explanation and there is very little to no world building done. It was extremely confusing and I didn't feel like any questions I had were getting answered. And the plot was too slow/boring that I could keep myself interested

Witch King by Martha Wells is filled with complex magic, expansive world building, complicated characters, badass action, and one seriously snarky demon. I fell in love with Kai from the start. First, he wakes up to find that he's not only been murdered and entombed at the bottom of the sea--a move that limits his powers--but someone thinks they can ensnare him to use as a magical familiar. Talk about starting the day off on the wrong foot. Then things seem to go from bad to worse the more Kai and his ragtag band of compatriots try to solve the mystery of who killed him and why.

The world Wells has created is as complex as Tolkien's Middle Earth and filled with magic both complicated and subtle. While the magic isn't fully explained and can be a little confusing at times, it all makes sense within a world that features demons, witches, and humans working together against a common foe. The powers welded by the characters is defined and includes limitations, such as Kai's abilities being weakened by water. Some may find the lack of full disclosure of the mechanics behind the magic frustrating, but I didn't mind it because the action surrounding the use of the magic served as enough of an explanation.

In addition to being powerful, Kai is snarky, and I'm totally here for it. Demons should be snarky, in my opinion. His relationship with Ziede is like that of siblings in that they care deeply for one another, are comfortable enough to call out the other's BS, tease one another, and kick anyone's ass who seeks to harm the other. Despite being a demon, the relationship with Ziede makes Kai seem more human in many ways, but then he "eats" an attacker and we're reminded that he's most definitely not human. He's a complex character and I'd love to see more of him in the feature.

There was one aspect of the book I found a little jarring at first but quickly adapted to and that was the alternating time lines. The story begins in the present but jumps back in time around the third chapter. Even though the chapters set in the past are clearly marked as "the past," some reads may find the alternating time lines to be headache inducing since everything is told from Kai's point of view. However, once I got into the rhythm of Wells's writing style, I found the dual time lines to be a clever way to fill in backstory for Kai, Ziede, and other characters while maintaining forward plot movement. In order to understand the present events Kai is facing, the reader must know the history of this world. Rather than have endless conversations or huge info dumps in the middle of the story that bogs down the plot, alternating the chapters works well to provide the reader with that crucial background information.

Overall, Witch King is a fun read, and anyone who love epic fantasy will find it a worthy addition to their shelves.

Martha Wells’ epic return to fantasy feels a bit unbalanced at times but is masterfully crafted, rewarding those readers who bring enough stamina to follow along.

WITCH KING by Martha Wells

An ARC was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. WITCH KING was published on 30 May 2023.

The powerful demon Kaiisteron, Kai to his friends, wakes up in a watery tomb when a conspirator tries to harness Kai’s powers for himself. After making short work of his significantly waker match, Kai realises he and his close friend Ziede, an equally powerful wind witch, have been imprisoned for quite some time; and worse, their found family has been torn apart, with Ziede’s wife Tahren missing. As they try to untangle the political intrigue that caused their separation, they are lead back to their roots, a rebellious past when they toppled those that almost none thought could be beat.

Cunningly crafted, complex and slightly confusing

After years of writing her award-winning Murderbot Diaries, Witch King is Martha Wells’ return to fantasy. Her most recent novel has all the hallmarks of “proper” epic fantasy: world-ending stakes, intricate politics, languages, travelling, distinct magic systems for different peoples and a Big Bad Evil. At the same time, Wells’ version has a distinctly modern flavour with a wide range of people-of-colour featuring as main characters, queer and disability representation and matter-of-fact approach to gender fluidity most prominently exemplified by Kai’s non-sex-conforming demonic “possessions”.

The epic feeling of Witch King is further accentuated by the form in which the story is told: intricately linked past and present plotlines that manage to inform and build on each other. Though cunningly crafted in general, there is a certain imbalance to the plot, namely in that the Present noticably pales in comparison to the Past in terms of scope and number of things happening. By making the stakes of the Present more personal, Wells counteracts some but not all of that mismatch. In an attempt to keep the novel from sprawling somewhat, a lot of the more interesting things happen off-page and though there are near-equal parts of showing and telling, there can be very little explaining at times, making it hard to follow the myriad of moving pieces.

Rating

Because science fiction often doesn’t work for me, I’ve been kind of watching friends and strangers be excited about Wells and Murderbot from afar and have been meaning to read her fantasy novels without ever getting around to it. So I jumped at the opportunity to dive into Witch King. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not checking the depth of the water I was diving into and was underprepared for its epic scope. That and not having a physical copy where maps and the list of dramatis personae are easy to check didn’t really help with following the plot at the beginning. It got better over time but the novel still required quite a lot of stamina and a high tolerance for only-understanding-things-vaguely. I did enjoy the craft and characters at play, however, and looked forward to the moments where I could give them my full attention, i.e., days with enough free time to sit down and read for an hour or so. I loved that Witch King is a standalone novel (so far) but can’t quite give it four stars.

I'm so torn by this book. While I loved these characters and this world, it took a long time for me to get invested in this world. There is so much to the world building and this throws you in head first. I found it a bit hard to follow at times but once I got invested in these characters, I wanted to know more.

All of the characters were so intriguing and I wanted to follow them for much longer. With the jumping back and forth to the past, it did pull me out of the story at times. I wish that this had been a series that had the past be one full book to give it more time to be fleshed out.

Overall, I did have a really good time reading this and would love to read more from this author!

3.5 Stars rounded up to 4.

Thank you for netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

"Kai stepped close, circled to face his prey, and wrapped his hand around the ghoul's throat. 'Do mortals just walk into your charnel house all the time? Am I one? Am I stupid?'
The ghoul choked out, 'I didn't know you were a...'
'Say it.' Kai smiled.
'...a demon.'
'You idiot." Kai leaned closer, 'I'm the demon.'"

While I ended up being very invested in this world and these characters, I almost DNFed Witch King many times within the first half. The only reason I didn’t is because I’ve been enjoying the Murderbot Diaries so much, and I couldn’t comprehend the disconnect I was feeling. Sure, they’re different genres and characters and stories, but the writing itself is so entirely different that I wasn’t ready to give up in hopes that it would improve.

I had to have checked at least five times to be sure I wasn’t missing some context. Witch King starts in such a way that it assumes you know these characters and this world. I was so lost, and it took longer than it should have to sort out the characters and what was going on. I’m still not convinced that Witch King isn’t part of a series or based on a world created in another series by Wells because it seems crazy how little information we are given to orient ourselves and understand what is happening.

I wanted to love Kai and Ziede and so many of these other characters, but it often felt like Wells was going out of her way to prevent a connection from being formed. Any time the characters get close to revealing, emotional discussions, they back away and say ‘it’s too much’ or ‘not now’ and it’s all shut down. Even the relationship between Kai and Bashasa, one of the most intriguing dynamics, is implied rather than revealed. I had to make assumptions about this relationship based on hints about what they meant to each other in the present, long after Bashasa’s death, rather than anything that was admitted or advanced in the past. It was honestly so frustrating. Whenever I wanted more, it was denied, but sure, here’s another long, complicated political discussion about factions I don’t understand with no context.

If this was the start of a series or a continuation of one, I think Witch King would be much better. But as a standalone with no context clues and a lot of unfulfilled promises, I was left wanting a lot more.

"Kai let his breath out in an uneasy hiss. He didn't trust easily, something he felt was validated every time some supposed ally murdered him and stuck him in an underwater vault."

Like everyone else, I love Murderbot, so I was curious about Martha Wells' new high(er) fantasy work. This is a fascinating novel with so many interesting themes and ideas, though (like others) I found it hard to follow at times and a bit impossible to immerse myself in. Overall, I'd definitely recommend it, but it's not a favorite.