Reviews with content warning for Self harm - Witch King

Reviews tagging 'Self harm'

Witch King by Martha Wells

26 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

Content Warnings

mes0pelagic_fan's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious fast-paced

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

4.25

I loved this book! I was instantly hooked and fell in love with the main cast of characters. I think my only qualms with this book are related to pacing-- I flew through this book and by the time I was 90% of the way through I wanted to shake the audiobook to see if a second half would magically fall out.

Once we hit the Summer Halls in the present timeline, I was like .. woah. hold the phone. The way things went with Ramad so quickly I just felt like I'd gotten whiplash (I was kind of rooting for him and then was sad when he ended up sucking so unexpectedly-- not sure if I missed the clues about him being a spy but I felt like I must have, or they just weren't there).

I honestly think the past timeline was a bit more coherent, but that might just be because the situation was more clearly laid out and the stakes were higher; the mystery of the present timeline kind of flew past me. I was also obsessed with the effortless queerness of this book from the get-go;

especially with Kai's body hopping/general life (and the other demon's reactions!).

There were also a lot of themes/plot threads I wish were explored more, but there just wasnt time

(the self-harm to magic thing was never really addressed, same with the hierarchs' potential return, and Kai's whole under-earth family, along with a bunch of other stuff I wanted to dig into)

. There is definitely plenty of room left in this world for more adventures. This book isn't perfect, but was delightful to read (especially after dnf-ing a few books for taking sooooo long to pick up any meaningful threads!)

Content Warnings

wardenred's review

Go to review page

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.

Content Warnings

norspider's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Definitely building toward something!

Witch King is full of multidimensional characters in a fleshed-out world. The magic system is unique and leads to several powerful characters. There is also a great amount care given to under-represented people.

But there's no conclusion! This is obviously meant to be the beginning of a series, and there's nothing wrong with that. But books, all books in any series, should still have a complete narrative in themselves. Witch King fails in this regard. That said, it does a wonderful job introducing this world, and I will absolutely continue this adventure.

Content Warnings

maryellen's review against another edition

Go to review page

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!

Content Warnings

aubreevae's review

Go to review page

adventurous funny hopeful medium-paced

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

5.0

This book had dry humor without. The characters were all lovable. I loved how fluid and casual gender, sexuality, and identity appear in the book. AMAZING!

Content Warnings

hanz's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Content Warnings

petrel's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

Content Warnings

julesadventurezone's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous 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

3.75

I liked the general plot and the characters (Martha Wells makes such compelling characters), but the worldbuilding is a lot to try and memorise as you read. I feel like if I reread this and made graphs and diagrams as I went, I'd enjoy it more.

Content Warnings

msawyer77's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging 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

4.0

Content Warnings

More...