A review by hjswinford
Witch King by Martha Wells

4.0

I'm honestly a little disappointed that I can only give this one 4 stars because I wanted to LOVE it. There were aspects about it that I did love. Like Ziede. Just....all around. Loved that girl. And after a while, i really liked Kai as well. I loved his empathy and his desire for the world to be good and fair, even though it was largely not that. I also adored the strange uniqueness of the world. I really would like more about it. I like that the story didn't do anything like I expected it would, and mostly in a good way.

What didn't work for me was the overall politics, which were really just too complicated and elusive for me to wrap my head around. I feel like I missed out on some of the impact of the story because the political machinations were not laid out clearly enough. I also felt like there were a lot of characters that didn't get enough page time for me to really comprehend who they were and how they played into Kai's situation. I didn't want the book to be longer but I did want it to be clearer. I don't like to be hand-held through world-building, and yet I felt to adrift through parts of this book. Still, though, the things I loved kept me invested and I was so happy to see

Spoiler

Ziede and Kai reunited with Tahren in the end.

Plus the closing paragraphs were just wonderful.

Pre-review: Ziede is the level of quiet, self-assured snark that I aspire to. 4/5 stars