"The Witch King" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*

[SFFBC, Ancillary Mod]

A few questions to get us started:


1. What did you think of the world?
2. What did you think of the characters?
3. What worked or didn't for you?
4. Overall thoughts?

[Ron]

Competent, well-written fantasy adventure. Diminished, rather than enhanced, by the clumsy folded timeline. Excellent opening and main story line, but the backstory is divvied into chapters and interspersed, disrupting the flow. Except that, the real story is the backstory.
First half lacks Wells’ sharp dialogue and delivery. Not feeling the demon-ness.
The mass of details in the first half becomes a cogent whole the second time through, but who will read it twice. (Other then me.)

[L.G.]

I always enjoy reading Martha Wells' books. So, I immediately preordered this one. The worldbuilding is interesting and the story is told in alternating past and present chapters. The story is filled with magic, demons, different types of immortals, action, betrayals and power-hungry individuals as well as a determined group of bad guys that just want everything for themselves. The large cast of characters is easier to follow due to a long list of Dramatis Personae at the beginning of the book.

[Rachel]

I agree that the jumps back and forth distracted rather than added. I found I would read several chapters of one and then go back and read the others.
But I liked it overall. Just could have flowed better for me

[Ellen]

I think this might have been better as an eye read than audio. I could have used that list of characters.

[WTEK]

I read this when it came out, so my thoughts are a bit hazier. I really loved this book. I liked the characters, I liked the world. I didn't have a problem with the mash of timelines, I've read other books like that and liked them too, so it's probably just something that doesn't bother me.

One thing I appreciated was that the world was like a southern hemisphere iirc. It seemed like the further south you went, the colder it was. I could be misremembering, but it is unusual to read something like that.

[CBRetriever]

I'm in chapter 2 and have yet to hit the time shift, but that kind of book/writing style doesn't bother me

[Louise]

I love Wells books, so while I was confused in the beginning I knew it would pay off to keep reading. Something I like is her respect for friendships and building them in her stories instead of just romances. I really like it, even if at times this felt more like a sequel than a first story in the world.

[Amanda]

SFFBC wrote: "A few questions to get us started:


1. What did you think of the world? I LOVE this world. And I love that Wells dropped us into it and made us work for understanding it rather than giving us a dissertation of information we won't remember. It was unique, and I am incredibly excited to see the world expanded on in the second book.

2. What did you think of the characters? I love Ziede and all of the tense where is my wife moments that we get. I also love her friendship with Kai. I enjoyed that Kai is trans coded or essentially a Trill if you're a Star Trek fan. I read this book for an in person book club in 2024 and one of the comments from the group was that it was refreshing to see a novel about a demon where the demon is the good guy. Dahin was honestly such a comedic relief, he was great.

3. What worked or didn't for you? Honestly, this was one of my favorite reads of 2024. Yes, it was work and it was confusing for a while, but to me it ended up being worth it. I do wish that we got more of the romance build between Ziede and Tahren but I am also ok with not having it. We did get the build up of Kai and Bashasa which was sweet. I know we didn't get much answers on the who the Hierarchs are front, but that seems to be the plot of the next book.

4. Overall thoughts?" Overall, I loved this book! It had great pay off and excellent characters :)

[Tamara]

I really loved the world building - it was intricate and unusual, and I would love more stories set in it.
And I enjoyed the relationships between the characters - Bashasa sounds like he was half in love with Kai almost from the start, Kai's and Ziede's friendship is perfect, and little Sanja's hero-worship has potential! And Ramad deserves a redemption ark methinks, he was fun.
But, I agree with everyone who said they thought the back-and-forth wasn't the best choice, I would have loved reading either timeline on their own, but the mash-up just didn't work for me as well.

[Chris]

This book failed for me. It never gave me an answer to the question of why I should care about what's happening. I didn't connect with Kai, and the other characters were even less engaging. The worldbuilding was lacking; I don't even know much of anything about the Rising World or the other factions. Things happened, but I didn't feel any spark.

[Bonnie]

Chris wrote: "This book failed for me. It never gave me an answer to the question of why I should care about what's happening. I didn't connect with Kai, and the other characters were even less engaging. The worldbuilding was lacking; I don't even know much of anything about the Rising World or the other factions. Things happened, but I didn't feel any spark."

Same for me. I always felt like the terms / names / history / species and so on must have been explained, but I missed the explanation.

When not reading I did not feel sparks of interest or curiosity to look forward to in picking the book back up.

Ramad had obviously been trying to calculate a less fatal way out of this. He said, “As I told the Immortal Blessed Faharin, the Rising World knows about the Nient-arik conspiracy. Harming us will not help you. The finding stone will go to the Rising World to be handed to the Immortal Marshalls.”

Wut.

Maybe just my mood and not the book.

[April]

Saving this thread. Finally checked out the book, but im still behind on my reading and focusing on current reads now, like Pomegranate Gate, but read the first few pages and really like the writing style so far. So, will likely be back, either here and/or on Storygraph.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I finally finished (not the book's fault) and I quite liked it. I think I'll need to read it again to put some of it together - the narrator wasn't the worst but I had to fight for context with some of his delivery. I love bonds of friendship and people who are both cinnamon rolls and ready to kill you. I liked the magic, the conflict, and the cast, but I do understand not "buying in". This book relies pretty heavily on the rule of cool and that we'd find a demon inherently interesting.

That said, I *do* find demons inherently interesting and it was my flavor of cool.