I love character driven fiction so this one was right up my alley! There wasn’t anyone in the main group of characters who wasn’t likable. There’s a body count of course but the killing is all pretty justified. It bounces back and forth between why and how Kai became the Witch King to be still alive and feared ages later and the present day of Kai and friends regathering after they were attacked and otherwise separated. It’s interesting world building and I want to see more in book two. I was lucky enough to get to read an ARC but I am going to order myself a physical copy too to keep so I can reread later.

Witch King was at its core a dark fantasy but Wells has created genuine characters with dark humour and wit woven throughout. In part a dystopian tale with a water-drowned fantasy world, Wells crafted a unique and plot of deception, friendship, love and loss which added the necessary links to humanity in those who survived the ending of their world – albeit a demon who drains life to survive and swaps bodies, a witch bent on revenge and finding her lover and a mortal child saved from the darkness of the Rising World Coalition and Blessed Hierarchs with their expositors and necromancy magic. In this new world, Wells draws on the darkness and deception that surround the Rising World Coalition where truth and lies can be hard to distinguish. Wells has created a masterfully written story with genuine characters and unique world-building.

Conclusion

A wonderful read for fans of dark fantasy with humour, witchcraft, necromancy and fantastic world-building for a water-drowned dystopian unique fantasy world. Highly recommended!

** This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any judging decisions **

DNF @ 42%. This was DEFINITELY a case of it's not the book, it's me.

From the part I did read, I know it'll be an epic hit. Martha Wells is a phenomenal author, and her literary dexterity is on full display in Witch King. She has a true gift of creating new and complex worlds that feel accessible and familiar despite the differences.

I've loved other books by Martha Wells (I'm looking at you, Murderbot), and I was excited about Witch King, her newest fantasy offering. I may eventually circle back to this one later, but this complex fantasy with intricate world-building and a novel magic system was too much for my brain right now. I've had higher pain levels recently (I have autoimmune conditions), and my brain couldn't handle all the details right now. I needed something easy and predictable, and Witch King isn't predictable. If I do pick it back up, I hope I'm in a better headspace and can really enjoy all its beautiful, magical-ness.

The narrator was fantastic. As much as this shocks me to say, though, this may be a book I need to sit down and read in order to focus enough to truly understand and appreciate it.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The first 40% was slower and a little bogged down with world building. There were moments where I felt like I was reading book 2 without having read book 1. While I think it is cool that Wells used a very unique naming system for her world and her characters, they are almost all impossible to pronounce without a guide, and in the beginning made it a little confusing to keep track of everything/everyone. The thing I loved most about this book is the gender diversity and representation. Some cultures in this world don't even recognize gender at all. Wells' take on gender rolls and typical "gendered" clothing is also very interesting, and made for an even more unique world. I also really loved her inclusion of sign language. After I got past the 40% mark and really dove into the book and really started to care about the characters - that's when things got interesting. I liked the magic system a lot, as well as the political intrigue and bit of mystery and conspiracy going on. I also loved how the book leaves us with lots of questions, but still manages to wrap up the story in a clean and clever way. 4.5/5 total stars, definitely would recommend to anyone who likes fantasy with lovable characters, a unique magic system, and a little bit of mystery thrown in for good measure.

***ARC received from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for honest review, opinions are all my own. Thank you!***

This book was a struggle for me to read which makes writing a review difficult. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it yet I still want more of it because there are so many interesting aspects of the plot and world that could be explored.

We follow Kai, the Witch King who has woken up to find that he is in a rather difficult situation. We as the reader follow Kai in the present as he works to figure out what is the bigger plan behind his murder and the friends that have gone missing. The book also follows Kai in the past where we as the readers learn what made Kai and the world what it is. Flashback Kai I found more enjoyable, something about present day Kai felt a little too unstoppable. Like he had all the answers while flashback Kai was younger, in a very strange environment having everything he knew and everyone he loved taken from him.

I wish that we had gotten to spend more time with the secondary characters, Ziede is a little bit of one note. I wish we had gotten more of her in the present time as she has a singular focus to find her missing wife. The friendship they all have is fully developed by the time the book takes place and barely established in the before sequence and I wish we had been able to see that development.

The chapters that take place in the past are far more interesting than the current story. Not much is happening in the current time but the past goes through Kai and the world slowly coming under the control of the Hierarchs, which unfortunately we don’t learn much about either. There is a lot of action and world development in those past sections. I felt like this book read like a duology that got mashed together to form a single book when it needed to be two separate stories. It expects the reader to know so much about the world, history and magic system that it never fully explains it and so much of the politics are fleshed out in the past sections it left me feeling very confused and a little frustrated. I also feel like I would have cared more for what was happening to Kai, I would have worried right along with Ziede because as the reader I would have already gotten to know as it stands I don’t know enough about their relationships to feel invested in them or the characters.

Writing is really nice, the book has built up an incredibly interesting political dynamic and a mysterious set of villains. Because of the set up though we don’t get to explore either in very much detail which was frustrating. Those things were so interesting and had the potential to be something really fun to read but it never gets further than surface level. Perhaps this will benefit more from a second read having some knowledge of what is happening so I don’t feel so lost. It also doesn’t help that this had such a strong opening and then dragged itself along until about the 65% mark where the action really picked up. That helped move the story along after a middle section that didn’t really do much.

In the end there is a ton of potential there with interesting characters, villains and politics that never quite make it to the front instead left with this strange quest to find a character I never felt much connection to.

I was eager to read this, but it wasn’t as captivating as I hoped. I liked Kai and his ability to change bodies, but the world remained wague and I didn’t quite get a hang of it or the story.

4.5
I fell in love with this world and most especially the characters. If I've learned anything about Martha Wells' writing, it's that you're going to have a good time with dry humor throughout an otherwise fast-paced, high stakes plot. The world building is efficient and engrossing. I say efficient because this book is probably not ideal for the intro fantasy reader. There is a collusion of species (demons, Witches, Hierarchs, "normal" people), cultures, languages, magic systems and Wells does not steep to info dump any type of exposition to spell things out for you. From the beginning, the reader is swept up in this world and meant to figure things out along the way. You're not meant to know something until you're meant to know it, and that includes important plot developments. Honestly, I loved this. It was a breath of fresh air in the fantasy genre and I enjoyed not feeling like I needed to guess the next plot point. I could just ride along the beautifully crafted wave of storytelling.

My one, singular critic is that there were points, especially action-heavy scenes, where I truly had no idea what was going on. This is maybe the trade-off for the efficient world-building; it was difficult to conceptualize all the magicking going on and picture the environment we were in.

The true shining star in this book were the characterizations of Kai, Ziede, Tahren, Sanja, and each and every other character introduced. Yes, each one. No matter how insignificant their role in the story. They were distinct, interesting, and I never got bored interacting with them.

Overall, this was such a memorable and worthy addition to the fantasy genre and I hope we get to explore this world more in the future. Definitely picking up a physical copy when it comes out.

Okay I have so many thoughts for this book and they’re a bit conflicted but hopefully this review isn’t all over the place. The premise was sooo interesting. We have Kai, the titular Witch King, who is a demon that sucks life out of people, uses pain as power, and can change mortal bodies. He’s EXTREMELY powerful. So when he wakes up in a tomb of water, which limits his powers, he has to find out who did this and why, and he’s likely been betrayed because otherwise he would never have been trapped in the first place.

The plot takes place over dual timelines, one being the present of Kai trying to find out who trapped him, and the other being the past of when Kai first inhabited a mortal body. I usually love dual timelines and I’d say this one was written well in that hints and revelations are done super well but I was a lot less invested in the past timeline than the present so every time it switched to the past, it was a bit draggy for me. There are also so many different characters with fantastical hard-to-pronouns names, having the two sets of characters switch between the timelines got confusing because I couldn’t remember who was who and who did what.

That being said, the characters are very lovable, like one big chaotic found family, and there’s lots of diversity for sure (queer characters and non-binary worldbuilding and poc rep ❤️) Kai in particular is such an endearing morally gray character and it’s fun to watch him pick off enemies like flies while being sarcastic about it the entire time. The worldbuilding is also super fascinating with a cool (if a bit unlimited) magic system and very unique fantastical elements - like a ghost boat that doesn’t know it’s a ghost and a Kai riding a whale even though he doesn’t know how to swim. I would say there’s a bit more worldbuilding than necessary for a standalone and it may have made the beginning more complex than it should have been but that’s sometimes what you get from epic fantasies. I think that’s my biggest complaint that the complex world and so many characters made the beginning very confusing but once it picked it, it was very enjoyable!

I haven’t read anything by Marsha Wells before but I think I enjoyed this one enough to read more!

The Witch King, Kai, is having a very bad day. He is a body-jumping, life-sucking demon and he has been betrayed, But who would do this to the Witch King? After awakening from his watery grave, (water limits his powers extensively) Kai and his second-in -command, Zaide must figure this out and why, Then there's the whole second timeline regarding the revolution that helps give some background to this. You also get Kai's inception in the mortal world to said revolution. But all the body-jumping can get confusing and Wells doesn't slow down to explain who is who or what is what. The world-building is vast and fast. You're kind of just expected to know what's going on but with all the body-jumping and strange-sounding names, it's difficult to keep track.

*Special thanks to Net-Galley and TorDotCom for this e-arc.*

I'm so sad I'm joining the people disappointed with Witch King. I had such high expectations for this book since I love Murderbot and had an excellent time with Wells' writing in that series, but this story and how it was presented and developed really did not work for me at all.

The opening chapter was pretty great. It felt a little bit like I got dropped in the middle of a story, but in a positive way. It was engaging and Kai's situation was a tense and intriguing one and I wanted to know more about it. The world-building was a little confusing at first, yet I would say that was one of the strongest part of this book.

I'm going to echo what other people said about not being able to connect with the characters and the story. The non-linear narrative didn't help me at all since we jumped timelines whenever things started getting interesting. I don't think Wells successfully developed any of the characters and so I found myself not caring about any of them or what they were going through.

That means I did find this book pretty boring. I kept expecting a spark of connecting and/or interest and it didn't come. The extremely slow pace at the beginning didn't help at all, even though the plot picked up during the third half of the book.

I'm sure other people will have a good time with this, especially if they enjoy world-building/plot driven stories, but this one was really not for me.

Witch King
by Martha Wells
Fantasy Magic
NetGalley ARC

Kai wakes in a coffin, with a lesser mage trying to make him into a familiar. Kai isn't a typical demon, he is the witch king and isn't about to become a weak mage's pet.

Kai doesn't know how the body he inhabited ended up dead, in a coffin at the bottom of a water trap. But he wasn't the only one trapped or dead. Now with the new body of a young man who was to be a sacrifice, a young girl who was to suffer that same fate, and a close friend who was also left for dead, Kai is determined to find out who did this to them and why. But they weren't the only ones betrayed, and now he must find another friend.

The opening chapter grabbed a hold, then the rest of the book let go, and allows the reader to fall into confusion while waiting for some action, that never comes.

It's missing a lot of backstory. Who these people were, the magic levels/casts, even just a little bit more of each character's world/tribe, etc, would've given the story and its characters a reason for a reader to connect with them. (((((POSSIBLE SPOILER BEWARE!) I couldn't help but compare the story and its characters to Christianity, the witch hunts, and other historical events. Makes sense because they are witches, demons, and possibly angels.)))))

I was very disappointed in this story, as I was expecting a lot more because the author's Murderbot series is the bomb. This one wasn't bad, but it failed to reach the level of great to make me look for another book if this becomes a series. I've read nothing that states this, but it's left open enough that it can happen.

Not too graphic, but there is murder, killing, and other violence, so not very suitable for readers under 16.

This one just missed the next star.

2 Stars

i've heard so much about martha wells and when i was approved of this, i was so excited to read it. but i've had this for a good 2 weeks i think on my cr and there was never a time where i feel pulled towards continuing it and instead i cheated on a lot of other fantasy arcs and other books (i thought i was having a fantasy slump but my recent reads say otherwise).

i think my issue to this book is just that it's slow and a bit clunky and i wasn't engaged with the story - which is a bummer because the main character so far has been interesting and that usually would help me in deciding whether i should continue a book or not. 20% in and i still could not bring myself to care about the world building and i still couldn't grasp the bigger picture of it all.

this is not to say i won't try reading this book again in the future, and i still have the Murderbot series in my tbr as well!

A found family adventure that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Martha Wells if an epic fantasy heavy hitter and you can see her chops in this one with a dual timeline, huge cast of characters, and intricate world building!

I am a huge fan of Murderbot and I've never read any of Martha Wells' fantasy. I didn't know what to expect and I'm not sure epic/high fantasy was it. This isn't a bad thing. There is a lot of world building, a ton of characters, and a non-linear story line. I suspect those unaccustomedto high fantasy will get lost easily. Kai's story is an interesting one that I very much enjoyed.

I think I want to go back and listen to this as an audiobook later.

I have really struggled with what to say about this book, because I think I liked it but I'm not sure, and I don't know why either way.

The settings are the strongest point for me, for feeling both unique and real, and grounding the story in a particular flavour. I particularly enjoyed the grasslands of the Saredi and had a handful of "I want to go to there" moments. I liked the main characters a lot, too, Zeide in particular, and loved the names. The magic systems were interesting and clearly well thought-out. It has the solid skeleton to support a great story, I love a good dual timeline story, though in this particular case, I had a strong preference for the Past storyline. The Present one just never quite grabbed me.

However, and where my primary concern comes in, there was just way too much of all of it, to the point that I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on, or contextualizing any of the story. Too many characters, too many places, too many different kinds of being and magic, and all of it with proper nouns that I couldn't keep track of. I generally like the high fantasy style of being dropped straight into the world and figuring it out as I go along, but this one just never provided enough background for me to actually be able to figure it out. The whole thing is generally lacking in context and exposition, in my opinion. Which is too bad, because I really wanted to like it and I love the elements, but it just didn't come together in a coherent whole.

I genuinely do love the setting and the major characters and would love to read another book set in this world, but this one unfortunately was just really difficult to follow.

Like a lot of readers, I was introduced to Martha Wells' work through The Murderbot Diaries series (a huge favorite!), but knowing that most of her books were fantasy titles made me really want to try those; so I was really excited to read a stand-alone fantasy from her! And, overall, I really liked Witch King and would like to try more of her fantasy titles.

Witch King takes place in a fully realized fantasy world that I find REALLY interesting; we get different nations of people with their own cultures, traditions, languages, etc., along with multiple magic systems that are used by different groups.

Honestly, I did struggle at first - Wells really drops you right into the action with little hand-holding (the novel starts with a LONG list of characters with descriptions that did not make sense to me at first); I think I hit the 20% mark before I started really following along. However, what kept me reading was the characters, a rag-tag found family team of misfits, whom I found very endearing and fun right from the get-go.

One thing that I find interesting that the description doesn't mention is that the story is split between the present day (which is what's in the marketing material with Kai finding he has been betrayed and imprisoned) and the past, with Kai's childhood/young adulthood and an invasion and war that changed everything for everyone - which explained a lot about the present (and shapes the world so much). Getting the backstory made a huge difference and explained so much, both about the world and the characters.

I thought that this split-timeline worked well and I was equally interested in both; if anything, I wanted more about the time between the past and the present that we didn't get to see, but I did really love that it felt like we as the readers are given hints and glimpses into how that time went.

My main complaints are simply that I found it hard to get into at first, but once I was in I was really into it; I also kind of wanted more about the mysteries of the world, but I can't help but hope this secretly isn't a stand-alone and we'll get answers in a sequel.

Regardless, that's how I know I liked this a lot - I thoroughly enjoyed my time in this world and with these characters and will be thinking about them for a long time.

HIGHLIGHTS
~‘misfits adopt random orphan’ is a trope I will never not love
~women ready to burn the world down to get their wives back
~pain-magic packs one hell of a punch
~ghost-ships that don’t know they’re ghosts
~family means a lot of different things
~‘I’m the demon’ indeed!
~anti-imperialist heroes FTW

Witch King is a story spun out of silk: endlessly soft, smooth and flowing, richly coloured. Quiet as silk is quiet; and surprisingly, impossibly strong, as silk secretly is. Luxurious even when plain; unembroidered, because it does not need to be. Its quality speaks for itself.

It is a masterpiece.

Not the kind we’re used to. As I said; it’s soft, and quiet. This is not a tale of clashing armies and Dark Lords that need overthrowing. There is a quest of sorts, but not the kind you’re thinking of. The battles are more like skirmishes, even if some of them are devastating. World-changing.

Witch King is the story of what happens when the world-changing adventures are over; what does the world do with its heroes, when it decides it doesn’t need them anymore? Intertwined is an earlier timeline, letting us trace the thread of how, exactly, our main character became capital-k Known – but it stops where most stories are just getting going. Wells carefully, deliberately avoids what most of us would think of as the real story, the big story, the dramatic and cinematic war against evil – we see its beginning and its aftermath, but not the war itself, not really.

It’s puzzling, and fascinating, and here, for this book, this story, it is also exactly right. Witch King is not a sweeping, grandiose epic; it is a smaller story, and because it is small it feels more human, more real, more believable. Like something you could reach out and touch, if you could just work out the right magic for slipping your fingers past the print and paper. Because it is a story woven out of human connections and human moments it is easy to grasp, easy to fall into; you come to care about the characters quickly and completely, because they are people, not characters.

People with extremely impressive skill-sets, yes. But still people.

<Kai leaned on the rail, concentrating on being enigmatic and not looking as if he was frantically trying to come up with alternate plans>

(I do not mean to suggest that Witch King is cosy, or that the stakes are low. Neither of those things are true. But even during the fights, I found it oddly peaceful. Maybe because it pulled me so completely out of my world and into Kai’s; it’s been a while since any book had me this subsumed in its story. Every time I stepped away from Witch King was like surfacing from deep water, like taking a breath I didn’t know I needed – but it was also disorientating; it took me minutes to adjust to this world again, after being so deep in Kai’s.)

If you zoom out a little, and look at the big picture Wells is painting, then this is a story of a group of people – allies who become friends who become family – who pulled their nations together to fight off an indisputably evil empire…and now have to stop that Alliance from becoming a new empire.

(It probably wouldn’t be as terrible a one as their old enemies were. But empires never work out – I say that as someone with a UK passport – especially for the ones being devoured by and into said empire, and our characters know this. Kai and his companions are fiercely, passionately pro-independence for everyone, which is a philosophy I can definitely get behind – and so they are not going to let this happen.)

You might expect this to be fairly grim and cynical, but it isn’t. Kai and co definitely feel betrayed, and oh boy are they pissed, but there is never any sense of futility, of why-even-try, of the despair of having to fight the same fight again. For one, because it’s not the same fight, not at all: there is no genocidal enemy army on their doorstep this time (thank all the gods). And two, because Kai and co are just…not like that. The book opens with Kai and the absolutely amazing Zeide confused and angry and somewhat scared, but from the get-go there is the very clear sense that they are both people who will never lie down and give up; not so much ruthless – they have strict moral codes – but endlessly determined, and maybe even more importantly, capable. They are world-wise and street-smart and they know – they know – exactly what they are capable of, and that there is nothing the world can throw at them that they cannot handle.

<“I’m starting to think that a mortal Prince-heir who wanted to consort with a demon in human form may not be a completely trustworthy person.”>

Is it obvious that I adore them???

And then we switch to the older timeline, and it is such a startling but wonderful contrast: by the time we see Kai’s past we are used to him being the unstoppable Witch King, so the sudden pivot to his younger, more innocent self is a lot. Past!Kai was definitely someone who, when pushed past his breaking point, was trapped in despair. (For very, very good reasons. I would have despaired too, if I’d been in his position.) And yet Wells wields her words so deftly that I was never left feeling like past!Kai and present!Kai weren’t the same person; it was so easy to see how the one grew into the other.

<The answer came back on an eddy in the current: Why should I trust?

Always a good question. Kai replied, I wore chains once, too. He sent the whale an image, a memory, of the old Cageling Demon Court in the Summer Halls of the Hierarchs, how we had huddled there with diamond chains around his throat and wrists, the perpetual rain soaking his ragged clothes, searing his skin.>

What we get, what we see, is his origin story, in a way; the painful journey that is him…not so much finding himself as finding his feet, realising his own strength, his own potential, his own capabilities. And we don’t need to see more than that. We don’t need to see him decimating battlefields, because it’s so very clear that he could; that he will; that he did. It would have been redundant for Wells to have actually written the war-parts. And Witch King feels perfectly complete without them. I would absolutely love to have seen more of Kai’s world, and I desperately hope Wells comes back to this verse eventually, but the story told here is perfectly self-contained. We see, are shown, experience everything that we need to and not one bit more. It’s an incredibly elegant efficiency of storytelling that I’ll be mulling over for years.

<“Stop being overdramatic.”

Kai would love to, if dramatic things would stop happening to him.>

Although both timelines in the book have huge implications for the Big Picture story, Witch King feels more tightly focussed on the Small Picture; you have to zoom out to comprehend the prevent-a-new-empire plotline because the view we have is so zoomed in. At its heart, Witch King is intimate and personal, something small and precious and held close. This novel is a snapshot, a magnifying glass held over a quiet corner, a story woven together out of human connections rather than grand destinies. The driving force of the present-day plot is less ‘we must stop the coalition from becoming an empire’ and more ‘where is our friend’ – it just so happens that the latter is vital to achieving the former; Tahren Stargard, Kai’s friend and Zeide’s wife, is a very important member of the Rising Worlds coalition, and necessary for the renewal of the alliance. So yes, technically, they’re doing a Big Epic Thing – their actions will help prevent a new empire from rising – but the motivations feel much more personal.

Which is definitely on purpose; by ignoring (for the most part) the wider world and zooming in so tightly on a small handful of characters, Wells humanises them in a way few epic fantasy writers can – because Witch King is wholly made up of the kind of small human moments most of us would never think to include or see in an epic fantasy story. Kai discovers a game-changing power because of a moment of simple, fearless curiosity from someone who has every reason to fear him; a small overture of compassion is the beginning of the alliance that will bring down their great enemies; the forging, loss, and creation of new family bonds changes the course of history. The devil (or demon) is in the details, and the details are tiny, the kind that never make it into the history books but which we know from our own experiences can be life-changing.

Think of the teacher who took a chance on you, the stranger who asked if you were okay, the coworker who covered for you just because. All of us, I hope, have experienced those moments, and Wells has built her epic fantasy out of them, and the idea of it alone would be breathtaking even if the execution wasn’t fucking flawless.

Is everyone going to love this book? No – especially those who go in thinking it’s going to be something it’s not. I’m really worried that readers who only know Wells from Murderbot will be confused and upset by how absolutely not-Murderbot it is, and I suspect even some fans of epic fantasy will feel cheated by a story that does not do what we expect epic fantasy to do. And even I, who am passionately declaring this not just a Best Book of 2023 but also a new all-time favourite of mine, will admit that Witch King left me pining to see more of the incredible world Wells has created here than the small corner of it she showed us.

And yet – as someone who fell in love with Wells’ fantasy as a teenager, and has been following her career ever since – as someone who adores Murderbot and reveres Wheel of the Infinite and would really like to wake up as a Raksura tomorrow, please-and-thank-you – I think this is Martha Wells at her best. Prose, plot, themes, characters, worldbuilding – they all shine like flawlessly cut jewels, a parure of perfection. This is a book that makes your heart happy, that steals your breath away, that fills you with so much hope for people and for the world. I love it. There is nothing else like it. I will treasure it always.

If you are looking for unconventional, beautiful, character-driven fantasy – if you walk into Witch King with your eyes and heart open – I genuinely believe you’ll find a new all-time favourite waiting for you too.

An endearing Paranormal epic fantasy suffused throughout with Magic, Adventure, Friendship and Found Fantasy (some Necromancy too), WITCH KING is the first new fantasy publication in over a decade from the inimitable Martha Wells, author of the wildly acclaimed MURDERBOT Series! Fans will rejoice, as Ms. Wells brings her Fantasy A-game in a fantasy adventure you can't put down!

A big thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

You saw her sci-fi, now get ready for Martha Wells' fantasy.

Witch King by Martha Wells is a standalone fantasy novel that follows the (after)life of Kai, who was previously murdered, after his consciousness has been reawakened following his prolonged dormant state. He awakens to find a lesser mage trying to harness his magic. Which doesn't end well of course. With a new body, Kai must navigate this new world in an attempt to understand all that's happened since his death. And most importantly, why he was trapped.

This book is so wild and weird, it's hard not to love. And to save everyone from spoilers, as the description does it no justice. Read this book! Go read it right now!

CW: war, violence, death, slight body horror, torture, confinement

I, like many others, am a fan of Martha Wells because of her wildly popular novella-series the Murderbot Diaries. She always manages to create multi-faceted characters within a rich world-setting that you just want to know more about, so I was really excited to check out her latest Fantasy release - Witch King.

The book started out with such a BANG! There was action, the promise of intricate relationships and a hint at betrayal in the past. I was ready to jump in, but the longer the story went on, the less I found myself invested in the plot. To me, it felt like we were introduced to Game of Thrones-level political scheming, but without the necessary time to really get acquainted to the world and understand the mechanics and connections. Granted, there is a list of notable characters provided at the very beginning of the book, but I still struggled a bit with distinguishing the territories and abilities/power people held.

Told in the Past and the Present, I appreciated the many parallels that could be drawn between current events and what had already transpired. Sometimes certain chapter endings were meant to lead you astray and make you doubt characters, which I thought was a fun element of the dual timeline, but it didn't always work out perfectly. Certain reveals just didn't hit right, because we e.g. already knew what someone was capable of in the present.
Also, the final reveal was just not shocking or as satisfying as I would have hoped with the build up. The "betrayal" had been built up the entire time, just to not feel as weighty and personal as I had expected.

What I will absolutely give credit to is the found family aspect of the story and the lovable characters. I almost wished we just got more scenes of them hanging out and interacting rather than chases around the world in search of items and people alike. They had such fun dynamics and I would have loved to see even more of the initial "getting to know"-stages of their relationships.

Fazit: 3.25/5 stars! An interesting world that unfortunately didn't quite light the spark in me.