Reviews with content warning for Violence - Witch King

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Witch King by Martha Wells

68 reviews

mmmicah's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful reflective medium-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

4.75

THE CRUELEST THING ABOUT THIS BOOK IS THAT THERE ISN'T MORE. MS WELLS I NEEED MOREEEEE!!!

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beckyraines's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

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

4.0

I’m not sure if this book is part of a series, but it felt like book one of a trilogy. As a stand-alone story, the plot left something to be desired-it was a lot of world building and less plot.

On audiobook, it was hard to keep the characters straight; around hour four they locked in a bit for me.

But I do love found family and I do love a sad demon boy.

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superstar_y2k's review against another edition

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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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pirat314's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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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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witcheep's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective slow-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? It's complicated

4.0

In Witch King Wells builds an outstanding fantasy world with very detailed cultural differences and interesting, well-rounded characters who have their own motives for action. The main character Kai is an immortal demon prince, and the plot revolves around solving a mystery: who betrayed Kai by capturing him into an underwater prison to die, and why? If you love Wells' the Murderbot Diaries where the Murderbot tries to figure out the uncertainties of their past while being on the run, you'll enjoy the similar elements of the mystery plot of Witch King's as well.

The plot progresses quite slowly, and the present narration is frequently interrupted by chapters where we are told about Kai's past. Both the past and the present begin to slowly intertwine with each other, showing us possible motives and suspects for the betrayal. They also show the reader the different aspects of the worldbuilding, at times in a somewhat infodump-feeling way but often through plot-related action. This slow story progression requires some patience from the reader, but if you enjoy vivid descriptions of worldbuilding and slowly building relationships between characters, you'll enjoy the book.

The main characters of the book are all multidimensional, and even the side characters are shown to have more than just one trait. All of the multiple characters are introduced in a character list in the beginning of the book by their titles, but you'll get to progressively know more about them throughout the plot. The most multidimensional character is unsurprisingly the main character Kai. On one hand, Kai is immortal, and besides that a very powerful magic user. Kai thinks he has been forced by circumstances to become a powerful, violent thing, and this doesn't sit well with him: "Most of the time Kai felt like he was made of razors, bleeding from the inside."

"I'd tell you to be careful, but..."
Kai looked at her through the black film of the veil. "You could say 'be violent' instead."
Tahren, who Kai was beginning to suspect had a very dry sense of humor, patted his shoulder and said, "Be violent."

On the other hand, though, Kai is quite vulnerable in his personality. He yearns to live a peaceful life with the people he cares about. To achieve that, Kai has helped to start a revolution in the past and in the present exerts to stop another one, both motivated by his will to make the world a better place or "unburn the world" as his dear friend once told him. Kai sympathises with the oppressed and has a drive to free any and every enslaved being. During his endeavors to live a peaceful life, Kai has been badly betrayed many times, but he still chooses not to give up on trusting people. In his opinion, the only way to know if a person is trustworthy is to trust them and "then wait for the knife in the back". This makes Kai a very hopeful person in the end.

The worldbuilding is what captivated me the most in the Witch King. There are multiple ethnicities, cultures, and languages around. There are also different magic systems for different kinds of magic users (Expositors, the Blessed, Witches, and Demons), which adds to the depth of the worldbuilding.

Expositors didn't draw power from pain in their own body, like Kai did, or by forming relationships with the spirits inherent in the different levels of the world, both living and otherwise, like Witches. Expositors drew their power from life: new life, stolen life, life on the point of death. It was why they were so dangerous, why greed was their driving force. It was why their power was so susceptible to a true demon's ability to steal life from anything living or once living.

Representation of different identities is done beautifully in the book. For example, some cultures are more queer than others, and this is shown as a continuum between binary and fluid gender and sexual identities presented as varying levels of normal in different cultures. The cultural differences are found in the multiple languages of the world as well. There's a widely used linqua franca Old Imperial, multiple regional smaller languages, and a sign language for Witches (witchspeak) used throughout the book. I loved reading how the link between culture and language, and therefore their connection to one's identity, was brought up in the book many times. My favourite discussion about language is about how swearing shows what is believed to be powerful in a culture.

Ziede said, "Sanja, if you're going to swear, don't do it in Old Imperial. If you use their curses, you'll take on their beliefs."
Sanja blinked, distracted by that thought. "That's the only language I know," she pointed out.
Kai told her the Saredi word that meant "go into the wetland and eat shit-mud."
Sanja repeated it twice, trying to get the vowels right.

Curses are used when you want someone to suffer, or need a way to express extreme emotions. So, in those situations you need impactful language, and it comes from beliefs (what holds power in one's culture). So, Ziede's comment is actually very deep and meaningful, not just a quick way to chide a cursing child.

The different groups of people have some disagreements and interests of their own, which provide interesting challenges to the interaction between them. The plotline of the past shows that most of the differences can be put aside when there is a great common enemy threathening all the groups: the Hierarchs came to conquer the world, killing everyone on their way, which required all the other people to unite against them. On a side note, no one knows where the Hierarchs once came from and if there are more of them, so finding out about the potential threat of Hierarchs' reappearance could make a premise for a sequel. The aftermath of the conqueror Hierarchs and the other people battling each other isn't pretty; it doesn't end in a happy ever after. When enough time passes, the battles and hardships become only legends and the once united people start to scheming against each other to gain power over each other.

"There aren't many people there. Most of them died." Kai looked down at her, watched her tremble on the edge of a terrible understanding. "The world used to be a much bigger place, with so many more people in it."

The underlying message of the Witch King seems to be that there will always be hardships and battles to fight, but trying to prevent them or –if unavoidable– going through them is always worth it for the people you trust and love and for creating lasting peace. I would love to read more about Kai and his friends, or in some other form return to the world of the Witch King.

Review written 5.3.2024

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saracat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

I loved so many of the ideas in this book, especially concerning demons. I have never come across demons written in this way before, though it's possible Wells drew inspiration from somewhere specific.

I really liked the main character as well, Kai. Though, there were some characters with similar names that I often got confused. And while trying to remember and keep track of so many characters that weren't in the majority of the book was hard, I didn't think you could tell a story like this without a large cast of characters.

Towards the end when things began to get resolved, revealed, and brought to a close, there were some cases where it felt like bits and pieces I remembered fell into place. But for a few, I couldn't recall even hints about certain things and it felt like completely new revelations. However, halfway through reading this book I had a lot of life stuff happen so there was a 3~4 period where I didn't make progress on the book. So it's possible I just forgot some details.

I would like to read this again and see if I pick up on more of the hints and clues throughout the book leading to the conclusions the characters come to at the end.

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mes0pelagic_fan's review against another edition

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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!)

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azzageddi's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful sad tense 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? Yes

5.0

Review from my blog:
Like many, my first Martha Wells book was All Systems Red. It was after reading the first four Murderbot Diaries novellas (2017-2018; the rest hadn't been published yet) that I sought out Wells' earlier novels, starting with her second novel of the Ile-Rien Series, Death of the Necromancer (1998, a steam/magic-punkish riff on Sherlock Holmes from the point of view of Moriarty and his gang, who are the heroes, though the Holmes/Watson team is by no means the enemy, just worthy obstacles), and then its predecessor, The Element of Fire (1993, wheel-lock/faery-punk). I still need to read her Fall of Ile-Rein Trilogy (2003-2005) and the Books of the Raksura (2011-2017), as well as several more stories and books.

But before reading more of them, I first was eager to check out her first novel since she started the Murderbot Diaries, Witch King (2023). And I was very glad I did. As a novel, and as (so far) a standalone, and with a character who is much more interested in the world, there is considerably more detail of the worldbuilding than in Murderbot Diaries. (The lack of such detail in MBD is something which some readers have complained of, but to me that worldbuilding is there, just largely out of sight for now. I have hopes that the streaming show will take a path most will not expect: instead of centering it on Murderbot as the short stories/novellas/novels do, make it a companion-piece and have it outside of Murderbot's rather narrow viewpoint. That will also avoid the problem of how so much of the story is MB's internal monolog, which is just about impossible to portray on screen.) Like her earlier fantasies I've read, it takes a "drop readers in the deep end" approach, explaining very little and counting on the readers to figure things out as the story proceeds.

In this world, there has been a terrible war--so terrible that the population is significantly reduced--conducted by invading, imperialistic sorcerers with far more powerful magic than the locals, but who are eventually defeated by asymmetrical warfare, coalition building, and intrigue. The main character is a demon who, summoned from the underworld, had become part of a nomadic family in the willingly given body of a daughter who had recently died, but in the process of the war and its aftermath has had to change bodies twice. This demon, Kai, has some characteristics similar to Murderbot: very powerful and deadly in combat, an inhuman viewpoint, mental-health issues, and a member of a somewhat dysfunctional but beloved found family.

The story is told in two chronology streams, with chapter titles that indicate which stream. It starts with the Present, and Kai imprisoned with no memory of how that happened. Alternating chapters reveal the Past, when Kai was part of a family, just before the Hierachs' invasion rolls over his people.

As with Murderbot, gender and culture play an important role of cognitive estrangement. The book is just as queer as MBD, with same-sex romances, nonbinary characters, and characters like Kai who are one gender (male) in spirit but sometimes in a female body. As with the real world, the cultures have different gender expressions: the largest culture has men wearing skirts and women wearing pants, a strong enough expression that when Kai (in male body) takes off the skirt for freedom of movement, some of his companions are very distressed that they can see his legs through the feminine pants. And the Immortal Blessed (also powerful magic wielders, most of whom are allied with the Hierarchs) require men to wear their hair long, and women to cut it very short. These are of course part of the worldbuilding, but they also call into question the readers' beliefs of what is "proper," shaking the reader free of conventions.

I very much enjoyed this novel. It's quite different from MBD, but it also incorporates some of the elements that have made MBD work so well for me. It's not exactly set up to be the beginning of a series, but it's not closed off to that, either, and I wonder if we'll see more of Kai and his family.

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