If you’re a fan of sci-fi, you’ve probably heard about Martha Wells’ hit Muderbot Diaries series. But Wells began her writing career as a fantasy author. And her most recent fantasy novel, Witch King, is her latest entry in the genre. And it’s a good one.
Witch King begins with the consciousness of the main protagonist, Kai, the immortal demon Prince of the Fourth House of the underneath, awakening to find their slowly decaying body entombed in a glass coffin in a stone tower half-submerged in the ocean. He soon discovers that a powerful mage has drained the seawater from the room and is trying to bind Kai’s spirit to their will. After making the sorcerer pay for their overconfidence, he then finds his friend Zeide, a witch who can control and talk to wind spirits, trapped in a stone coffin farther up the tower. The two of them discover that their other traveling companion, and Zeide’s wife, Tahren, is missing. They then leave the tower with two goals in mind: find Tahren, and find out why someone tried to murder them.
The novel evolves from there, of course, but not in ways you’d expect from a typical fantasy novel. Witch King does not hold the reader’s hand. Character development and world-building are handled in a hands-off fashion by Wells, using a Past/Present style to tell this story. The ‘Present’ chapters revolve around Kai and Zeide’s search for answers as they navigate both physical, environmental, and political dangers. Meanwhile, the ‘Past’ chapters focus on important events from Kai’s past that contextualize the events of the previous chapters. Readers might wonder, for example, why Kai and Zeide’s bodies were placed in a tower in the middle of the ocean. It’s a detail that neither Kei or Zeide talk about as they make their escape, but why would someone go to all that trouble to dispose of the bodies? The answer is shown in the ‘Past’ chapter following their escape from the tower, a chapter which shows that water severely limits the ability of demons like Kai to use their magic powers. So whoever put them there did so deliberately. They wanted them to stay there.
The connection between the ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ chapters are not always that clear-cut, but this style does allow for the main narrative to feel much more active. Instead of reading long paragraphs about the history of a region, Witch King uses the ‘Past’ chapters to show the world as it was when Kai was young and contrast that with the present to show how the world changed over time. This style also allows Witch King’s characters to take action with little to no explanation for why they’re doing them because the ‘Past’ chapters are always there to give the reader insight for why a character took those actions. Add to that set of unique magic systems and a cast of compelling characters with dialogue to match, and you have one of the most original fantasy novels of the year.
You can place a hold on Witch King at Heights Libraries, or get the ebook or audiobook through Libby/Overdrive.
(One last plug: If you haven’t read the Murderbot Diaries series yet, you really should! They’re mostly novellas, if that helps convince you.)