Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Witch King

Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

wardenred's review

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

geekmom's review

Go to review page

challenging dark informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

I liked this, and also had a hard time keeping all the characters and political factions straight. Having said that, Martha Wells’s complex and original world building is very much in evidence here and made me curious to experience more stories about the people and places in Witch King.

The ending suggests there could be a sequel, which I would definitely enjoy.

Content Warnings