Witch King (Rising World, #1)

by Martha Wells

Martha Wells, the New York Times bestselling author of the Murderbot series, pens a major fantasy novel in Witch King.

Kai-Enna is the Witch King, though he hasn’t always been, and he hasn’t even always been Kai-Enna!

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.

Witch King is a rousing tale of power and friendship, of trust and betrayal, and of the families we choose.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• ISBN13: 9781250826800
• Publish Date: 30 May 2023
• Publish Status: Forthcoming
• Imprint: Tordotcom
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 432
• Language: English
• URL: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250826800/witchking

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

Book Summary:

Waking up can be surreal in the best of times. Finding yourself locked in a tomb (yes, you read that right) will certainly not be a good time. Yet that is precisely the situation Kai finds himself in, as he wakes to realize he has been murdered and locked away.

Who could have locked Kai away? Whomever it was would have to know how to do so, which limits the number of people significantly. Which begs the question – who betrayed Kai, and why?

My Review:

I've been a fan of Martha Wells for quite some time. One of the things I love the most about her writing would have to be her expansive worlds. The second thing I love about her work? Just how unique and creative each world she creates is.

On that note, Witch King is nothing like MurderBot Diaries. Don't enter this read expecting a science fiction romp featuring a robot with an existential crisis. This is a high fantasy novel, and it is pure excellence. Kai's journey is complex and intricate, and I loved every minute.

The story bounces around between two points in time. Effectively, there's the present (post-murder/betrayal), and then there's the past. The two weave together in beautiful and surprising ways. There were times when I found myself more invested in the present and times when I was upset to leave the past timeline. In other words, the tension was balanced pretty evenly between the two.

I'm not going to lie - Witch King is a dense read. It's 432 pages (I believe), and it has a plot that is just as thick. That said, I seriously recommend this book to anyone who enjoys high fantasy, epic tales, and rich worldbuilding. Witch King is that and so much more. I quickly grew to love many of the characters and sincerely cannot wait for the next installment of this series.

Highlights:
High Fantasy
Complex World
Friendship & Betrayal

Trigger Warnings:
Violence
Death
Enslavement

Thanks to Tor.com and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks | Quirky Cat's Comics | The Book Review Crew | Monkeys Fighting Robots | Storygraph | Bookhype | Bookstagram | Twitter | Tumblr | Reedsy

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

2.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Powerful demon Kaiisteron and his companion witch, imprisoned in a tomb under the sea, are awakened by a mage with more ambition than caution. Once free, they find a close companion is missing, and their search for her whirls them into a complex political web with its roots in the past.

Review
I’m a big fan of Tamara Siler (Tambo) Jones’ original Threads of Malice books, in part because they take place after an epic war between good and evil. Martha Wells tries to go that one better here, in a dual-threaded story both before and after a vital revolution against evil. Unfortunately, Wells does a frankly poor job of laying out all the complex politics; even at the end of the story, I had very little notion of who and what many of the key players were, and therefore no clear sense of the characters’ motivations. A key theme, for example, is a renewal that involves both Imperial Blessed and Rising Earth. I still have no real idea of what any of those three things is or why it was meant to matter.

It looks as if the truth is that Wells is just an uneven writer. She clearly knows how to write engaging characters – her Murderbot books are about almost nothing but engagement, and they’re generally speaking very strong. Here, however, she pulls back sharply from the characters, and the result is cold and distant. I understood the emotions of Kai, the protagonist, but I didn’t really feel any of them. Much is left to us to infer (e.g., Kai’s relationship with key figure Bashasa), and while I did so, it didn’t mean much to me.

Wells also knows how to build intriguing worlds (as in her Raksura books), and does so again here, but not in any really coordinated manner. There are several different kinds of magic, and their nature and limitations are never really clear. We learn at the very start of the book about ‘pearls’ that are placed (literally) in people’s hearts, and that Kai has one. But we never learn what they do, how they work, or where Kai’s came from. It’s intriguing background, but most of it is never resolved, and only sometimes essential to the plot.

I’ve liked some of Wells’ books quite a lot, and some much less. Unfortunately, Witch King falls in this latter category. It’s an interesting sketch of a novel that could have been, but that never really developed.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.