Random Reading: Witch King by Martha Wells

[chomiji]

A being called Kai wakes up to find himself in a glass box, feeling terrible. His mental powers confirm that a dear friend is somewhere near, but she's feeling equally out of it. Then a gang of unsavory characters show up, dragging with them a dead body and a struggling prisoner. With an ease that shows he's done this many times before, Kai transfers himself into the dead body.

Wait, what?

In less than five minutes, the little band of evildoers discover that they are facing not the helpless ensorcelled person that they had expected, but a fully functioning and extremely pissed off major demon:

"Now," Kai said, grinning, as he shoved the veil aside. "Which one of you wants to go first?"

This is not the Wells of Murderbot, with relatively straightforward plots and a narrator with a limited interest in the worldbuilding around it, but instead the Wells of the Fall of Ile-Rien and Books of the Raksura, with rich, multi-layered histories and landscapes. Some readers may be disappointed; I was enthralled.

After a series of brief action-filled set pieces in which Kai, his friend Ziede, and the former prisoner (who turns out to be a street urchin named Sanja) escape the islet tomb/tower in which the two adults were imprisoned, the book starts to alternate the current timeline plot, in which Kai and Ziede start to unravel the mystery of who imprisoned them and why, with sections set in Kai's past, where we find out more about what he is and what he cares about.

Part of the core of this book is that Kaiisteron, called a demon, is far more tenderhearted and loyal than most of the mortal beings around him. In the sections showing his past, we learn about his upbringing as part of a tribe of semi-nomadic human people who have an ongoing relationship with certain demons. Kai's childhood is an idyll of togetherness, learning to hunt and to scout with his foster siblings (to whom his demonic core is neither more nor less important than the fact that his body is, at this point, female). That all ends when the grasslands and its coastal allies are overrun by the conquering armies of the Hierarchs, who have fearsome magicians among their forces.

In the present day, Kai and Ziede are major political figures who are key parts of a new, more humane empire -- or is it a coalition, as Kai insists several times? -- known as the Rising World. So is Ziede's wife Tahren, born into the isolated militaristic and theocratic culture known as the Immortal Marshalls of the Blessed Lands, and now missing in action. There can be no doubt that the imprisonment of the two friends and Tahren's absence are both political moves on someone's part.

As the two of them work to figure out who is responsible and where Tahren is, they gather allies - some dependable and some likely not, cast a wide variety of magics that are described in detail, and travel across richly described sea and land. Your enjoyment of the book will depend a lot on whether you like this sort of travelogue and detailed magic system exploration.

I really liked this book, but then, I trust Wells to tell a story that I will enjoy, and she seems to be as addicted to the Family of Choice trope as I am.

Witch King has drawn an extremely mixed bag of reviews. Part of it is likely due to the fact that readers are thrown into the deep end and expected to figure out this swimming thing themselves. Not everyone likes this approach. What info dumps we do get are brief, basic, and simply told because they are most often directed in-story at young Sanja, who seems to be nine or ten years old.

Another complaint is that except for Kai, we don't get inside anyone's head. This is actually a common Wells characteristic: the sole narrator of Books of the Raksura is Moon, and the sole narrator of the Murderbot Diaries is, of course, Murderbot/SecUnit. (The Fall of Ile-Rien is a little different: we definitely get sections from both Tremaine and Ilias' viewpoints, and I think we get some from Florian in the second and third books.) Again, this isn't something that bothers me.

On the positive side, people have noted with pleasure the fact that much of the story is agendered. Kai's only concerns about the bodies he has inhabited are how useful they are: some bodies require more rest, some need more food to function well, and so on. Gender isn't an issue. Ziede and her wife Tahren are both women, and various members of the supporting cast use they pronouns.

The ending is fairly open: some of the mysteries are solved, but there is plenty of "Yes, but what about …?" to feed into a sequel or sequels. And when I went to move the ebook from my actual Kindle device to the app on my iPad for another re-read (this will be re-read number 3) , I noticed that the current title info says Witch King (The Rising World Book 1). 😃

Comments

[estara]

A Chomiji review, yay! I really liked the book, too. I have enjoyed Murderbot but not as much as her fantasy based books. I love the fact that TOR is releasing Author Preferred Versions of her older books - City of Bones is out already and Element of Fire/Death of the Necromancer were released as The Ile-Rien Book, I think. The next one will be Wheel of the Infinite, I'll buy it but am wondering how she can improve on perfection, Maskelle is my favourite heroine of hers.

I hope the live action adaptation of Murderbot will do extremely well and people will discover her other works.

Family of choice is a favourite trope of mine, too. Have you read any Michelle Sagara West books? She's great with that, too.

[chomiji]

Re Michelle Sagara - actually, I have not. It's a pity I hadn't thought about her earlier because while I was still working, the put-a-book, take-a-book shelf at work had a pile of her works at one point. I guess someone had just bought all her works in electronic form and was ditching the paperbacks.

Yes, Wells' day has finally come. It's been a long time coming! I do think some Murderbot fans are disconnecting when it comes to her longer, meatier works, but I guess that just shows how versatile she is - she's not writing the same thing over and over. Although Tremaine, Ilias, Moon, Murderbot, and Kai are very much cut from the same cloth!

I'm not super-happy with all the casting choices so far for "Murderbot TV." Sadly, it's the lead that is giving me the most heartburn: such a northern European and very male person. At least they have appropriate-looking choices for Mensah, Ratthi, and some of the others.

[armiphlage]

Thank you, purchased based on your recommendation.

[chomiji]

I hope you enjoy it! Have you read any of her other works?

[armiphlage]

"The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon"

[chomiji]

😆

[muccamukk]

Last I heard she was working on the second one over the winter, so I'd think it would be out late 2025, but of course that's pretty up in the air this early.

[chomiji]

She now has a link to an article where she talks about it very briefly!

The title is Queen Demon. This makes me wonder whether Ziede is going to learn some Demon magics, the way Kai has picked up Expositor and Witch magic. Whatever she's going to write, I'm very much looking forward to it!