A review by sendlasagna
Witch King by Martha Wells

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

  1. Came to this book by way of frantic revelation at 4 AM that Martha Well released new fantasy last year that I only today heard of?? Went to the library at 6:15 PM after work and finished it 4 days later. A classic Wells, and very very lovable. A classic Wells also in that there’s no
    spectacular singular villain, but a reasonably built out conspiracy throughout the book
    but that exact lack of egregious shock and violence is why I love her. 
  2. While answering the Storygraph review questions I realised, there is no strong “character development” per se, because the plot is bifold: vignettes from the characters’ history, and their brief present-day escapade. So the plot is not quite the slow unravelling of their personhood, and this is by design. But even if it’s not character dev, it is very much emotional dev.  By page 400, you learn exactly why you loved them on page 1.  
  3. Page 188, the other demons moved when he moved. A moment I died for. 
  4. 3 paragraphs on Page 409 where no one says a word – this is a goddamn love story 😭😭😭
  5. As a simple analog, you can think of this as a Shadow and Bone type story with more mature characters and stronger sociocultural worldbuilding, and also the villain is not
    the same/one man but an ideology
  6. Interesting portion of a rebellion to focus on. Again, a common Wells feature where the delight and novelty is in the early pages of worldbuilding and in ignoring expected story beats. The endings of her books do tend to feel devoid of revelation and because I like her, I think this is good and is training readers to learn to to read the slow story, the unremarkable story, the quietly existing tale (like real life)
  7. Love how the white people are one flattened culture lmao 
  8. Very satisfying past/ present parallels in alternating chapters 
  9. I really enjoyed the descriptions of murk
  10. — and how open sea felt so different from a drying river and from submerged ruins, all while also creating brief pockets of visuals for grasslands, underearth, bluff/expanse, and a couple of seatowns. Def an interesting geographic writing, worth looking at from an EH perspective 
  11. The Rising World Coalition part needs work, but im not gonna dock a star, I enjoyed imagining this too much 
  12. After reading other reviews: I think there’s a difference between Tolkien “missing crucial information” and people like NK Jemisin’s and Martha Wells’ “missing crucial information”, wrt multichatacter & mis en scene storytelling. The latter never bothers me. Also, kzimm2024 has a great review for the book.