Witch King is a delight of a standalone fantasy novel. Thrown into the deep end with Kai, an immortal Demon prince who wakes up in a coffin and doesn't know what is going on, the perspective shifts back and forth between a present day political conspiracy plot and the past rebellion that brought Kai notoriety. With each shift, this full world reveals a little more of its compelling personality and motives of the complex characters that inhabit it. Rich characters, interesting magic, and complex fantasy culture leave a little something for everyone to enjoy while finding their footing in this world.

As I am finding to be typical of Wells as an author, Witch King isn't much one for big battles, flashy wit, and grand morals. In a refreshing turn against the grain of sweeping, allegorical epic fantasy, Wells presents the power of trustworthy allies, painstaking efforts, and a determination to see the mission through. As Kaiisteron Fourth Prince of the Underearth and victim of a political conspiracy, gives way to Kai, formerly Kai-Enna of the Saredi, readers are left with a simple, yet poignant message of hope and a yearning to know what comes next.

I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for that epic fantasy feel without the obligation of several sequels and complicated family trees.

I haven't read the Murderbot series so this is my first introduction to Martha Wells. The world-building confused me a bit, especially in the beginning, but that honestly just comes with entering a new fantasy world. However, the pacing threw me off a bit.

I'm working my way through the MurderBot series by this author (starting with [book:All Systems Red|32758901], just finished [book:Exit Strategy|35519109]) but haven't ready any of their previous work, so I was excited to try this new fantasy. I don't like it, for a lot of the same reasons I struggle to enjoy other popular high fantasy novels.

There is a very large cast, all with made-up names that I couldn't keep straight right off the bat. The story takes place in two time-lines, one "present" and one unspecified past. The length of time between these two time-lines isn't specified into well into the second half of the book-- by which time, it hardly matters anymore.

There are some interesting gender dynamics at play-- in the dominant culture the men wear skirts and the women wear pants; demons posses human bodies but keep their "original" gender identity regardless of the host's gender; plenty of female guards and fighters, enough that it seems to be a "woman's" job-- but these are so mixed and muddled up with all the other things the reader has to figure out, it's hard to know which bits are important. The reader is dropped into a seemingly-globe-spanning war of conquest, with no map, no history, no orientation markers, and has to figure out who's fighting, why, where, and also, simultaneously but in the future timeline, who's still salty about it, who's in on the conspiracy, and why. I guess if you like your reading experiences to feel like a cross between Perfection and Operation with the required anxiety and attention to detail, well then, good news!

eARC from NetGalley.

I’m not a Murderbot fan. I’ve only read the first one, and don’t really remember it. I didn’t dislike it, but it wasn’t what I was in the mood for at the time. Given Wells’ popularity I’ve always meant to go back and try again, but I’ve never found the time. So if you want to know how her fantasy compares to her science fiction, I can’t really help you.

I can tell you that, independent of any shadow of Murderbot, this was an excellent character-driven standalone fantasy.

Our protagonist is Kai, a demon with the ability to take over the bodies of mortals. He wakes up in a glass coffin in some kind of prison, with no knowledge of where he is or how he ended up there. But there are people there who mean to kill or enslave him, and he senses a dear friend is also imprisoned nearby. And so we’re off.

This is as clear an example of *in media res* as I can think of. While the story moves forwards, and Kai works out who imprisoned him, and how, and why, we also learn about his past fighting against the world-conquering nigh-invincible Hierarchs. The two threads of the book play off of each other; as we learn about something in the present, we learn about the events of the past that provide the relevant background. Kai gathers friends and allies as he goes, especially ones he was very close to during the war.

As a story goes, it is quite good. The present kept pulling me along with the whodunnit aspect of things, especially since it’s made clear that someone close to Kai had to have been involved. The past storyline kept pulling me along because I was invested in Kai and his relationships to his friends, and needed to know how those bonds were forged. But I called this character-driven for a reason. Kai is the heart of this book, and Kai is what keeps everything moving.

I called this a standalone, which I don’t actually know to be the case. There’s definitely room for Wells to write more stories in this universe if she wants to, but this book is whole and complete. There could be a sequel, but it’s not needed.

Strongly recommended, and makes me want to revisit Murderbot.

Thank you to Netgalley and TOR for the ARC!

First off, this was my first Martha Wells read, and it definitely made me interested in checking out the Murderbot Diaries series as well!

I enjoyed the story of this one overall. As a standalone high fantasy novel, I felt myself wanting more world building in particular. I also continued to get names mixed up with one another, and altogether was confused by the world the story took place in. But I don't necessarily want to say that Witch King did a bad job of this, because I do not often read high fantasy, which this definitely is, and so I'm not as used to so many characters and terms being thrown at us and hardly explained. I also felt like the ending felt lackluster, and as I was reading the ebook, I was about 96% done with the story and was completely unsure how it was going to end in a satisfactory way (spoiler alert: it didn't really). I actually think this could have been a great first book in a series, and in a lot of ways it felt like the beginning to a series, so some of my issues with it might be that so much was packed into it to make it a stand-alone. But as I said, overall it was a fun read and I definitely got invested with the characters and the story

3 Stars!

I thank Netgalley for providing me with an arc for an honest review.

I requested this arc because I read an excerpt of the first few chapters. The beginning was so nice, how we along with the characters know nothing about what happened to them and how they got to the situation where they find themselves at the beginning. Normally, I also love split timeline povs in books, so I was excited when I found out that this book also had a past and present timeline. Unfortunately the book stops being interesting almost until 80% in. It was not boring enough to dnf but also not interesting enough to keep me reading once the chapters ended and the next one was of a different timeline. It was almost as if I was reading 2 books with both of them starting out really slow and only getting interesting at the end. I wish one timeline would have been more fast paced than the other at different times.
Although I have to confess that I got really emotional at the endings of both timelines. This is probably also the reason I gave this book 3 stars instead of 2.5. The characters were another reason. I loved them all and they grew on me the more I read how they came to be and why they are the way they are.

Even though I gave this book only 3 stars, I would definitely read more of these characters and if there is ever a second book or a spin-off, I will be picking those up!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for an eARC of Witch King!

From start to finished, you will be entranced in this action packed fantasy world. Kai, the Witch King, is a demon from the Underworld and he was assassinated. Kai makes his way into another body, determined to find out who put him in his watery grave. While moving through the story, you will be transported into Kai's past and then back to the present as the mystery begins to unravel. This was definitely an epic fantasy adventure!

I wanted to love this book. And reading the premise of a Witch King had me thinking I was gonna devour this book.

It was mostly boring. The main character was great and Kai was the only thing keeping me interested. The plot felt floaty and incomplete and the pacing was so bad. It changes from last to present a lot, which I know isn’t new, but the way this book did it felt jarring and confusing a lot of the times.

I feel like I would have preferred a novella of the “past” because it was more interesting to me than the present storyline.

It was basically a long boring trip to find someone with sprinkles of a cool backstory weaved in.

Overall, I really liked this book, but I didn't love it. I loved the characters, the world, and the dual timeline. It was so easy to root for Kai and Ziede right off the bat. I found the world interesting and complex. And I liked the parallels between the past and present. The only thing is I kept thinking there would be bigger action in the present timeline. So my advice to other readers would be to expect more action in the past timeline and pay attention to the details in the present because it's a bit more psychological figuring out what happened to Kai, Ziede, and Tahren.
Or in more general terms, the present read like a mystery and the past read like a fantasy. Had I known that going in, I think I would have enjoyed it more... But I still really enjoyed reading Witch King! And I'm definitely going to read the Murderbot books now.

When Kai wakes up, he finds himself feeling a bit…odd. When he’s able to focus himself again, he sees his body laying in a glass coffin.

Martha Wells has the ability to drop you, mid plot, in her universe. She has a way of weaving you through how her characters are currently engaged while simultaneously immersing you in the background and lore. Witch King is no different.

Wells is also a master at character development—introducing side characters and distinctly developing each side character through both their interactions with others as well as dialogue.

Just like she did with Murderbot, Martha Wells has created a slew of new characters and an enjoyable new world I hope she’ll continue to develop.

After several Murderbot titles, the always excellent Martha Wells' newest title goes back to her fantasy roots. As with her Books of the Raksura series, her fantasy world is not a badly disguised medieval Europe, but a world unto itself.

The book starts out with a bang. Kai awakes in an underwater prison.. He realizes that he has been dead (for certain values of dead) for an undetermined amount of time. A magic user shows up, hoping to drain Kai's powers to add to his own; this does not end well for the magic user of his party of henchmen. In short order, Kai has freed a friend also trapped in the prison, as well as the magic' user's last living captive. Kai has many questions. Why were they there? Who is responsible for their imprisonment? What does this unknown party hope to gain? The rest of the book is spent answering those questions.

After the original prison break, the plot follows two time lines; one in the present and one in the past, when Kai's adopted people were wiped out by a group known for their genocidal ways. I am not a big fan of this mode of storytelling, but I eventually came around to it, and accepted that is was the best way to tell this particular story. I did find it a bit confusing at first - I read this title as an eARC; I hope that the final edition will have chapter headings to give the reader a clue as to what timeline they are in.

My only complaint about the book is that, even after finishing it, I'm a bit confused about the magic systems in play in this world. Kai, as a demon of the Underworld has one set of abilities, Witches have another, as do other races introduced. And, because of a situation Kai finds himself in, he ends up with some of the abilities of his enemies.

Still, I recommend this title, and hope that Ms. Wells writes other stories set in this universe.

Thanks to Tor and Netgalley for the eARC of Witch King!

As with a lot of other readers, I was drawn to this book because I love Wells' MurderBot series. The premise sounded exciting for this and I thought it would be a great introduction in Wells' fantasy work.

Unfortunately, I DNF'ed this one pretty soon on (15%). I know that doesn't seem like much but it took me about two weeks to get that far into it. I am not sure how to fully explain why, but I will do my best. It boils down to the fact that this first book in a series does not feel like the first book in a series. It felt like a sequel. Some authors just toss you into the story and hope you figure it out on your own, which I am fine with, if done correctly. Wells took this and amped it up to 300%. I had too much thrown at me with the expectation that it would be explained later and not enough given to me upfront to draw me in. Once I realized this and went to read some other reviews, I quickly realized that the payoff would not be worth my stumbling through this book with little to no explanations for me to get my bearings in the new fantasy world and magic system. The dual timeline story telling compounded this issue even further. I didn't understand the world, the magic, or what was happening in either timeline.

I wrote all of that but I really think the best summation of this book is that it somehow feels like the second book in a series.

Great characters and an interesting world. The dual timelines and dense worldbuilding sometimes made it a little hard to follow.

I am absolutely and completely in love with this novel and all of its characters. Martha Wells is amazing.

The Witch King has got everything you'd want in a fantasy.
A journey
Magic
An (almost) all powerful enemy
Names you can't pronounce...

It's so beautiful and so creative, I loved all of the characters. Sanja, Tenes, and Ziede were my faves. (Sanja is the cutest, bravest, most amazing tiny human, and I want to be like her when I grow up❤)

I know without a doubt that this is going to be one of those books that I read over and over again, and I'm sure my understanding and appreciation will only increase.

It was kind of difficult to follow in the beginning, and I felt a little lost sometimes.. The character index was really helpful, but what would have also helped is an index for some of the characters' descriptive words. For instance, the character index says Dahin is a Lesser Blessed but it doesn't explain exactly what that means.
Words like Expositor, Lesser Blessed, Blessed, Hierarchs, Demon, Witches, and how they came into their power and what specifically makes them different from each other; an index like that would have been incredibly helpful, if she didn't want to lay it out for the reader in the actual novel.

Having finished the book, I have a pretty good understanding, but I had no clue in the beginning and I worry that that confusion might cause other readers to give up on the book, which would be a shame because I think it's very creative and wonderful and worth finishing.

There's so many layers to this magical world and I look forward to continuing to reread and love this book as time goes on.

Thanks to NetGalley & Tor/MacMillan Publishing for providing me/my employer with an ARC of this wonderful novel.

This is another strange yet absolutely splendid read from one of my all-time favorite authors, Martha Wells.

As is, per usual, I felt like I was dropped in this world suddenly but with still a comfortable ease of learning and understanding about what is happening. Kai, the main character, is another great example of Wells ability to create a persona that is sometimes difficult yet also effortless to follow. The gender and sexuality of the main character remain vague but still fully fleshed out, which may sound strange, but it's one of the many things I love about this author. The idea that gender and sexuality do not have to have a clear definition to be accepted.

I loved this story. A demon prince that wakes up entombed and breaks free. That can eat souls and talk about how they each tasted. It's definitely a bit gory but absolutely delightful. Slow towards the middle, but I still couldn't put this book down.

Out May 30, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

This one was wayyy out in left field, but in a good way. Kai, a demon is the epitome of sarcastic and fun to follow.

My favorite read of the year so far! This book... The characters, the world building, the tone and layers and history, the mystery element clad in an intricate fantasy setting… I’m so happy that this is a book that I can read and reread, and reread again.

We follow the body-possessing demon Kai and his closest ally Ziede, an elemental witch. They both awaken after having been sealed away for an unknown period of time in an underwater tomb - convenient for their enemies since water weakens a demon's power.

Kai and Ziede have to figure out how long it's been and what happened to them, and as readers we learn of events along with them - while we also piece together how this world works and its history. The story alternates between present and past; from the time that Kai first came into the world sixty plus years ago to live with a nomadic grass people. A peaceful existence that did not last.

When I say intricate setting, I mean intricate. It's all worth it though! This is a story where you have to try to remember names and grasp how history informs the present, as well as how different types of beings have different standings in the world. But you're not supposed to know anything from the start and the novel gives all the information needed, little by little, all packed into great storytelling.

Who betrayed Kai and Ziede in present day, and who can be trusted when they try to find answers? I got invested enough to really feel for the characters as the truth is revealed. The political implications are woven in with the personal as our main characters have been around for so long. It's all a big puzzle of a world and a whodunnit, and I loved it!

All the threads and the pacing of the events of both past and present come together in a seamless way. This novel felt like reading a mix of N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season and Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings. The tone is entertaining as well as serious, the characters well-defined, the action parts just enough, and the balance of all these things shows what a talented writer Wells is.

Hopefully she will write more from this world - I don’t care if it takes place a thousand years before with different characters (Grandmother’s story, anyone?) - but if not, at least this novel is a thing that exists. Can I give ten stars?

Witch King is out May 30th. Thank you to Tor Publishing Group/Tordotcom and NetGalley for sending me an eARC for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Between The Books of the Raksura and The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells has become one of my favorite character writers in the contemporary sci-fi/fantasy genre—especially when she’s writing outsider characters with a penchant for sarcasm. And so it’s fair to say that her new fantasy novel Witch King ascended to the top of my TBR pretty quickly.

Witch King stars another character with a penchant for sarcasm, the demon Kai (who is demonic in the “came from the underworld and can possess a mortal body after its original occupant dies” sort of way, not the “is evil” sort of way). Kai’s story is split between two alternating timelines, separated by decades. In one, he is trying to beat back the terrifying conquest of the Hierarchs and help form some kind of alliance that can stand against them. In the second, he has been betrayed and imprisoned and must identify his betrayers and find his missing allies before any more damage is done.

While I find Wells’ characterization to be a consistent strength, I have often struggled to connect to more action-heavy segments in her previous work. More than once, a character-driven first half has had me making room on my all-time favorites list before the action sequence at the end saw me downgrade my overall opinion to “quite good.” This is not a universal opinion (and, for reference, I recall feeling the setup/ending dichotomies mostly strongly in The Siren Depths, Artificial Condition, and Network Effect), so if you’ve read her work in the past, feel free to put more or less stock in this review based on your own assessments. But I find that the two-timeline structure in Witch King throws the characterization-to-plot ratio badly out of balance, making it hard to generate that initial character investment and relying more heavily on action that just isn't interesting enough to sustain my attention.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with Kai as a character, we just don’t spend much time getting to know him before he finds himself in mortal peril. And the time we do spend getting to know him is split across two timelines, delivering a fragmented portrait of a character who used to be fairly uncertain in his power but can now confidently rise to a whole host of challenges. It’s not that the character is inconsistent, it’s that it’s harder to generate the kind of connection that felt so natural with Moon and Murderbot when the lead’s inner life changes so drastically from chapter to chapter, and when there’s relatively little time for the characters to breathe before the action gets going.

Making matters worse is a fairly complicated soft magic system, with readers having to keep track of Demons, Witches, Hierarchs, and Immortal Blessed—never mind the odd ghoul or spirit—all of which have different supernatural abilities. It feels a bit like a worst-of-both-worlds, without enough detail to satisfy the hard magic aficionados but with enough information to distract those who prefer more of a character focus.

The writing itself is perfectly professional. It’s Martha Wells, of course it is. And there’s nothing especially wrong with the plot, for all that it's very much two stories stuffed into one book. It’s the structure that made this book such a struggle for me. There are so many thematic parallels between the two timelines that I can only assume the alternating structure was chosen to highlight them—seeing the lead and his compatriots walking the literal same ground on which they fought so hard decades before. But in practice, it introduces more confusion that it delivers thematic resonance. There are enough parallels that it can take a few paragraphs for the reader to orient themselves in the proper story, and it splits valuable interpersonal development among too many characters at too many stages of their relationships.

As you can see, I didn’t like this one. Of course, with an author like this, there’s a baseline of quality that never wavers. The prose is easy to read, and you won’t find many elementary mistakes. But the characters didn’t jump off the page as they have in some of her other works, and the two timeline structure didn’t effectively highlight any strong elements there were, instead providing a significant impediment to immersion. It’s not a book I can really recommend, but I’ll certainly be back to try again with her next release.

Overall rating: 10 of Tar Vol’s 20. Two stars on Goodreads.

We all love Murderbot, right? Murderbot is one of the absolute best characters to come out of SF in years. I remember when I read the description of Martha Wells’s All Systems Red and thought to myself “I’ve got to put that on hold at the library!” And I was right - it was excellent. I have eagerly awaited each new Murderbot book and also read some of the Rakusa series when it was nominated for the Best Series Hugo. So I was very excited when NetGalley and tordotcom gave me an eARC of Ms. Wells’s new fantasy, The Witch King, in exchange for an honest review.

And it was great! But maybe not as great as I was hoping? I think maybe I doomed it with unfairly high expectations. You see, the thing about the Murderbot books that really resonate are Murderbot itself, and to a lesser extent, ART. Those characters feel so real and so perfect that they carry me through. Sometimes the secondary characters feel like ciphers but I always took that to be because Murderbot doesn’t pay that much attention to them.

The Witch King starts out strong, and ends strong, but there are so many characters with similar sounding names that even the Dramatis Personae section in the front of the book couldn’t always help me remember who was who. I never really felt I got to know many of them, and the protagonist, Kai, was not nearly interesting enough to carry the story the way Murderbot can. I never really felt like I knew why I should be rooting for Kai.

I also didn’t love the structure interspersing flashback chapters after every chapter or every other chapter. Especially because each chapter was so long, it felt like it robbed the story of narrative urgency. Also, the book felt like it was too long for the story it was telling and I would’ve enjoyed this more at novella length.

This review feels like a lot of complaining. Don’t get me wrong - I did enjoy the book. The world building was interesting and there were a number of fun set-pieces. It just wasn’t the home run I had been hoping for.

Martha Wells is most known these days for her Muderbot series. I admit I’ve only read the first one and found it decent. However, I can confidently say that for fans interested in exploring her new work, prepare yourself for something completely different.

I won’t lie, I don’t think this book is for everyone. The pacing of this book is absolutely glacial, and it dumps the reader in the middle of the story and leaves you going “who???” every time a name is mentioned until, slowly, you pick up enough information for the story to make sense. Typically, I find well-executed stories like that are incredibly fun and rewarding to read, yet even I found myself struggling at times. That being said, once the worldbuilding, the characters, and their backgrounds came together, Witch King became one hell of a ride.

Witch King is told in a past/present alternating storyline, with the focus of the story on the present. There’s a vast world being built here, with destroyed empires, mysterious invading conquerors, and multiple factions vying for their share of the power in this post-conquered world. What I found jarring, however, is that while Witch King is clearly meant to be an epic fantasy story, the writing never seems to fully commit. At only a ~130K wordcount, the plot covered in Witch King could have easily been just the opening third of another story. The past storyline felt almost speedrun, covering just enough to give the reader context to events referred to in the present storyline, when the events in the past could have easily been its own book. To me, worldbuilding and cultural details that would have better grounded the worldbuilding felt glossed over in favor of a shorter novel.

The one aspect of Witch King that truly shines, however, is the characters. I loved Kai’s narration and character. We open with Kai and his witch companion Ziede buried alive, and Kai’s jaded ‘ugh, what now’ demeanor had me instantly sold. Kai’s been through some shit and he’s well aware of both his notoriety and his powers. His companion Ziede, a powerful witch with abilities to control the wind, as well as others we meet along the way, have all been through the same events in the past and have come out more powerful for it. I love a cast of competent characters and it’s such fun to see them shine when they know they’re the scariest and most powerful people in the area.

Overall, I rate this book a 4/5. While incredibly slow-paced and surprisingly short, the characters were a delight and I was absolutely gripped by the end. Now that the world and the major players have been established, I can’t wait for what book 2 will bring.