Reviews with content warning for Confinement - Witch King

Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Witch King by Martha Wells

34 reviews

superstar_y2k's review against another edition

okay so i would absolutely recommend this book, but i am a mood reader and im finding it difficult to keep up with this story. i love the world building and i love that there are two timelines happening. the characters are loveable. my dnf is a reflection of where i am as a reader currently and i hope to find the space and desire to start this story again

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amylynn44's review

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adventurous inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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jennikreads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

3.75

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lanid's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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wardenred's review

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adventurous challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

“Why is everyone so afraid of demons?”

It's curious how each individual aspect of this book is pretty much exactly up my alley, but the whole they form left me vaguely unsatisfied. The beginning hooked me pretty hard: a classic in media res opening that felt like starting a new tv show with the first episode of season two; a soul-sucking, body-snatching demon trying to figure out who betrayed him and where his companions went; a few cool subversions of minor fantasy tropes along the way; evocative descriptions; immersive vibes. For the first quarter of the book or so, I genuinely enjoyed how the flashback storyline intermeshed with the plot in the present time. There were plenty of interesting, fleshed out characters with a complex web of relationships between them and smart, quippy moments of dialogue.

However, the deeper I went into the story, the harder it was to sustain that immersion. The world continued to be interesting and cleverly built. The characters remained complex and compelling, in theory. In practice, I was finding harder and harder to connect to them, possibly because of the two different arcs (the past and the present) running alongside each other. I kept waiting for certain gaps between the two storylines to be filled, but they never quite went there, and there were a couple of plot threads that felt practically abandoned, even though technically, the events that needed to happen to wrap them up did happen. The emotional payoff, however, just wasn't present, as if something important was missing each time between the set-up and the conclusion.

Upon some thinking, I suspect that part of my dissatisfaction comes from not forming expectations correctly. I'm not even sure what I expected, exactly, but I just thought I'd be more engaged with Kai in the present storyline. But for the most part in the present, he's the sort of character who's already peaked and now is figuring out where to get the will to go on. It doesn't help that the present-time plot is fairly straightforward to the point that it's barely enough to sustain a novel. The depth comes from the various side characters who, by virtue of being side characters, don't get to take the center stage, and from the storyline that unfolds in the flashbacks—and has the ingrained flaw of the reader knowing how it ends before it even begins.

This is definitely the kind of story that's focused on the journey above the destination, and I'm normally all for it. But the further I read, the more disconnected I felt from that journey, and I still struggle to formulate why. So far, my best guess is that the things that would hook me the most into the characters' stories and inner worlds were glossed over or kept silent. There were some moments that really stuck with me: Ziede and Kai's moment of "how it started, how it's going" reminiscence, or that instance when Kai heard of how his relationship with Bashasa was perceived from the outside and reflected on how it truly was in that regard, or Kai's interaction with his mother. All of those exchanges were ripe with emotional weight and history that I longed to see the story properly delve into. Instead, those things that would have truly hooked me were stuck existing between the lines. In general, I just think that for my taste, too much was missing/assumed about the character and relationship development.

I did enjoy a lot of narrative threads here, and even more so the worldbuilding. In particular, I loved the themes of what happens to the world after it gets saved/rebuilt, the post-revolution instability, and the anti-imperial ideas. I also, being me, wholeheartedly appreciated how queernormative this setting is, and I found Wells's take on demons super refreshing. While the magic system and some other aspects of the worldbuilding had me confused for a long time, I felt like the key points came together quite naturally by the end and I definitely prefer this sort of organic immersion to infodumps. And I'll be definitely thinking more about the dual narrative structure here and all the ways it did and didn't work for me in the coming days.

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maryellen's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

I liked this book much better as an audio book!

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kkulhannie's review

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adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

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micksland's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

3 stars

While I'm a huge fan of the author's "Murderbot" series, I thought this fantasy novel was somewhat lackluster.

The story alternates between two timelines, only one of which had an interesting plot. The present-day story involves a missing person and a tepid whodunnit mystery, while the flashback scenes (which take up about 50% of the novel) involve a daring escape and several excellent battle scenes. I kept wishing that the present-day scenes would end and send me back to the exciting part of the story.

The magic system is complex but under-explored. It seems that there are many different kinds of magic with their own limitations and uses, but none of the rules are fleshed out sufficiently for the magic to be used except as a deus ex machina.

I appreciated the exciting battle scenes and the potential for expansion in future installments, but this felt more like a debut novel than something by an experienced author.

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hanz's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I loved this. Martha Wells's worldbuilding is unlike anyone else's. This is my second of her fantasy books and both have very interesting worlds, and I'm looking forward to delving more into her older fantasy books.

I was captivated by this start to finish and was thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. It almost felt like another installment in a beloved series, despite never having read about these characters before.

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julesadventurezone's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The worldbuilding is very thick, so much so that even on a reread i haven't grasped all of it. Despite that I had a lovely time reading this book again, and found myself quite captivated, especially by the storyline set in the past. The main character Kai is so compelling and i love both his arcs.
My favourite relationship was

between Kai and Bashasa, who have this very fun desperate allies to mutual respect to tender friendship to possibly future lovers dynamic.

Kai and Ziede I didn't really care for until late in the book, when

she helped him bury his former body.

Ziede is very cool but I feel like for a main character she was a little underdeveloped.

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