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Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Witch King by H.E. Edgmon

86 reviews

ezwolf's review against another edition

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I think maybe this author’s work is not for me unfortunately. 
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melodyseestrees's review against another edition

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

4.25

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nightshaderoots's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad 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? Yes

4.5

It was a fun book. The world building was something different from what we seen and there are similarities to the real world that tie in nicely. The characters feel lived in and I love how the author describes each and every one of them. Even the characters that aren't ment to be likeable they have a charm to them that makes you want to learn more about them. I usually don't like the main characters of my books and this was not an exception but even though I wasn't a fan of his personality I still understood him. The way he interacts with those around him feels so lived in that I really enjoyed how their relationships developed. What really makes thus book a high rating is also the different kinds of love displayed. From romantic to platonic to love between family or pets it is everywhere in the book. That and the fact that the author put trigger warnings in the beginning shows how much thought and care was put into this book. Can't wait to read the second one!
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wardenred's review against another edition

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adventurous funny medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I am not the golden goose. I am more like an actual goose, hissing and honking and attacking small children who just want to give me bread.

Damn. This was so promising! That in media res opening really hooked me, and also, I listened to this one as an audiobook and the narrator did such a good job with the angry, self-deprecating POV character’s voice. A book with a trans MC, found family, angrily dealing with trauma, standing up to oppression, and deconstructing the fated mates trope sounded amazing. But alas, the further I got into it, the more I felt like the execution of the novel didn’t live up to its amazing potential.

Honestly, this felt very much like an early draft in need of editing. There are numerous sections that read like they were written only as means of figuring out what comes next. Plenty of characters have the exact same shrugging, lip-biting, fangs-gnashing mannerisms. The MC regularly pauses in the middle of dialogue and action to contemplate a bunch of stuff and go off tangent, to the point that I genuinely kept forgetting where the current scene was taking place or what was even happening in it by the time he stopped with the musings. The worldbuilding is full of holes, and the way the fae society functions is more just… a vague collection of ideas that need a lot of thinking through. There was really no need to explicitly spell out that the witches’ position in the fae society is a metaphor for trans/queer kids in the real world. The magic system is all over the place and doesn’t stick to its own rules. All in all, the book feels like someone excitedly telling themself or their closest friends a story, occasionally pausing to insert their own strong opinions in the style of a viral Tumblr post. Which is a perfectly valid state for a book to be in! But, uh, maybe some of this should be fixed before publication.

There *are* things here that I found consistently interesting and promising, but I kept thinking of ways to fix the execution more than I was thinking about the story. Like, we have this premise: Wyatt escaped to the human world years before the book starts, now he’s getting dragged back by his fae prince fated mate. Once there, he gets a proposal from the villain whose beliefs clearly go against Wyatt’s own: make everyone hate you so that the wedding never happens, which would weaken the prince’s position and strengthen the villain. Wyatt wants to go back to the human world and also wants to cause chaos, so he agrees, and some shenanigans do follow—except they feel more like a series of loosely connected vignettes than a plot. Yeah, he does some chaotic stuff. The results of it get promptly fixed with magic, and no one’s opinion on Wyatt or the impending wedding changes much. He doesn’t have any real plans to meet his goal, he just wonders around the plot and makes intentional bad decisions.

Then we’ve got Briar, his best friend from the human world whose parents kind of adopted Wyatt in the backstory. When Emyr appears to drag Wyatt back to Asalin, she allegedly follows because she wants to help Wyatt with his goal of NOT marrying Emyr. But once they’re there, she’s just running around excitedly learning about the new world and nods along whenever the locals talk about Wyatt’s future marriage like it’s set in stone. Does anyone here know how to have consistent agendas??? Though she’s still a way better friend to Wyatt than he is to her.

Speaking of Briar and her parents, I’ve got a lot of questions to them. It was very nice of Briar’s mom to pick up a lonely struggling teen in a library and bring him home (I keep wondering how the family sorted out the legalities around it all, but okay, maybe Wyatt legitimately doesn’t care and doesn’t know). But it sounds like the family just literally tossed this teen into a room with their own teenage daughter and left it up to her to put him together, help him figure himself out, have a short-lived romance with him, become his codependent best friend, try to, in her own words, “be everything he needs her to be,“ etc, etc. Oh, and then they just let the two of them wander off with some winged, horned stranger. I have questions for these adult people. Big questions. Are they even characters, or are they just plot devices existing to make Wyatt and Briar’s story possible?

And the trouble here is, it could be a very good book! Such a good book! There’s SO MUCH potential here if only it got polished. I really loved all the poking at the fated mates trope—some of those moments were the most subtly done, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions, and I really liked how those were written. I liked Wyatt as a character, if not as a person; honestly, his unapologetic, unreserved anger at the trauma he’s faced was refreshing. I liked where his storylines with Emyr and Briar were going, although a lot more was fumbled by the execution here. I liked a lot of the rep. But honestly, if it wasn’t for the audiobook’s narrator being so thoroughly entertaining, I would have DNFed this halfway at best. 
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chase0w0's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

3.0

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jennireadsmaybe's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny fast-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
The Witch King is such a strong start to a fantasy duology featuring a trans witch MMC, his fae childhood best friend and fated mate, his fat Indigenous new best friend, and so many more fun characters. H.E. Edgmon explores repression and indigenous in both the fae kingdom and the human world that Wyatt flees to prior to the start of the series. 

A queer normative fae world is the most powerful aspect of The Witch King, because so much of fae fantasy romance revolves around cishet fated mates. Wyatt is unapologetically trans and not falling for the pressure to become the baby-making mate the kingdom needs him to be. I loved everything about it!! 

I'm excited to see what's to come in the second book after where things left off. 

This book is perfect for anyone looking for queer fantasy, messy and chaotic trans/queer characters, and just a funny time. 
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tinysierra's review

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adventurous emotional tense fast-paced
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“I open the back door to let the dogs out, and Nadua's got her gardening shears buried like a knife in one of my fiancé's wings.” pg 1

I love Wyatt as a narrator. He is so funny.

Book 10 for the
#TransRightsReadathon2024

CW: Wyatt is a vomiter when stressful things happen
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mihrreader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

Wyatt is a very complicated and traumatized character, but he feels very real and very human, and probably pretty relatable to a lot of readers.  His decisions, though self-sabotaging, are understandable and propel the plot forward without being frustrating or irritating.  The supporting cast is good.  The antagonists felt realistic and threatening for most of the book, up until the end, where they suddenly felt caricatured (one of them goes on a classic villain How I Did It monologue, which, while helpful for understanding the behind-the-scenes machinations that lead up to the twist, felt like the author turning to the readers and saying "here's a bunch of information I couldn't figure out how to get into the book any other way, enjoy the monologue," and I didn't care for it too much).

The story ends with a clear segue into a sequel, but enough of the book-one-specific plot threads wrapped up that it doesn't feel incomplete or like a cop out. I'll definitely read the sequel when I can get my hands on it.

Dani Martineck is an excellent narrator!
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saracat's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-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

5.0

I knew from the content warnings this would be a hard read in some ways. But there were also tears and emotions I was not expecting to feel from this book.

Despite all of Wyatt's flaws, there is almost never a moment I was not on his side. All decisions he made that from the outside were bad, could be understood based on how he'd been treated in the past and how he continued to be treated by others. This is not to say that Wyatt doesn't have responsibility for his actions, but the reasoning behind them makes sense. And really, when someone is so violently backed into a corner, it shouldn't be a surprise if they lash out.

Watching the evolution of Wyatt as an individual and his relationship with those around him really pulled at my heart so often. I cannot wait to start the next book in this duology.
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aimeric's review

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adventurous emotional fast-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? Yes

3.25

the story and worldbuilding had potential, and it was a mostly enjoyable read. that being said i did not like the writing style. 

also the characters could have been a lot more fleshed out. one issue that i have is that the side characters’ motivations are never really explained so especially in the later half of the book i just had to accept things at face value. also it feels like nothing the characters do has actual consequences. whatever happens tends to gets resolved or undone in the next chapter, and sometimes things just seem to happen for the sake of the plot, but then have no real impact on the story
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