 | |
| Author | Martha Wells |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Tordotcom |
Publication date | 30 May 2023 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 432 |
| ISBN | 978-1-250-82679-4 |
| Website | https://www.marthawells.com/witchking.htm |
Witch King is a 2023 fantasy novel by Martha Wells. It is the author's first fantasy novel in almost ten years, following the publication of her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries.
The story alternates between the past and the present; this plot summary is written in chronological order.
In the world of the story, demons come from the underearth. The nomadic people of the Saredi make a deal to allow demons into the overearth; the demons possess the bodies of recently deceased Saredi, becoming members of their extended families. Witches are born of the unions between mortals and demons.
Kai-Enna is a demon living among the Kentdessa Saredi clan. His cousin Adeni is killed by a monster, presaging an invasion by the Hierarchs. The Hierarchs's expositors, or magicians, close the gateway to the underearth and separate the demons from their home. The Hierarchs ally with the Immortal Blessed in order to capture and control most of the continent. They take prisoners of war, including Kai, to their Summer Halls.
Kai is rescued by Bashasa Calis, a prisoner of war and prince-heir of the city-state Benais-arik. Bashasa leads a rebellion. He is assisted by the witch Ziede; the Immortal Blessed warrior Tahren, who has chosen to turn against her people and the Hierarchs; and Tahren's brother Dahin. These fighters free the prisoners and kill a Hierarch in the first successful retaliation against the conquest. During this process, Kai steals the body of an expositor. This non-consensual possession is a great wrongdoing in the eyes of the other demons, including his cousin Arn-Nefa; the other demons disown him. Bashasa reclaims his throne in Benais-arik, leading to the founding of the Rising World coalition.
Kai wakes to find that he has been imprisoned. An expositor attempts to bind him as a familiar, but Kai kills him. During this process, Kai's consciousness jumps into a new body. He rescues his companion Ziede and a street urchin named Sanja. Ziede's wife Tahren remains missing. Kai suspects that Bashat bar Calis, current prince-heir of Benais-arik, is responsible.
They are pursued by expositors who are using a ship stolen from Immortal Blessed. Ramad, personal vanguard to Prince-heir Bashat, helps Kai. The prince of Nient-arik is implicated. This city-state wants to replace Benais-arik as the leaders of the Rising World Coalition during the upcoming treaty renewal ceremony.
They travel to the ruins of the Hierarchs’ Summer Halls to look for a finding stone, which will help them locate Tahren. At the Halls, they fine Dahin. They are attacked by Arn-Sterath (formerly Arn-Nefa), who is working with Immortal Blessed and the Nient-arik conspirators. Kai and Ziede emerge victorious with the finding stone.
It is revealed that Bashat knew about the Immortal Blessed and Nient-arik conspiracy. He allowed Kai, Ziede, and Tahren to be captured, then exposed the plot in order to strengthen his own city's position. Ramad has been his spy. Kai has simultaneously organized to weaken the international support of Benais-arik, causing the renewal to fail and the Rising World coalition to devolve into a set of allied states rather than an empire. Kai abandons Ramad. They use the finding stone to locate Tahren, imprisoned by Immortal Blessed. The remaining conspirators are captured and Ziede is reunited with her wife.
Writing for The New York Times, author Amal El-Mohtar ranked Witch King as one of the top ten science fiction and fantasy novels of 2023. El-Mohtar wrote that the novel "is an immersive throwback to a beloved species of 1990s fantasy doorstop, full of cataclysmic intrigues between mostly immortal families". [1] Alex Brown of Tor.com called the novel "challenging, immersive, and sprawling", praising the way in which queerness is normalized in the novel as well as Wells's "descriptions, both macro and micro." Brown notes that some readers may be disappointed that "Wells doesn’t tell the reader much about the history of the world or the specific events that bridge the gap between Kai’s time in the grasslands, the Hierarchs’ brutal rise and subsequent fall, and the rebuilding of the world left in their wake." However, Brown notes that "it doesn’t so much matter how they got to where they are; what’s important is how they plan to move forward." [2]
Publishers Weekly wrote that "the dry, workmanlike prose that works so well when Wells is writing robots can make it difficult to feel particularly close to any of these living characters." Nevertheless, their review praised the treatment of gender and sexuality, as well as the way in which Wells depicts "the cultures of this world with an anthropologist’s care". [3]
Writing for Locus, Adrienne Martini stated that "Wells introduces so many parts of Kai’s world so quickly that figuring out all of the players and how they relate to Kai’s story quickly becomes impossible, so much so that I really wondered if this was the second book in a series." Martini praised the "imaginative bits of scenery" and the relationships between the characters, but ultimately felt that the plot was too confusing. [4] A review for Berkeley Fiction Review gave the novel 2.5 of 5 stars, noting that "the readers’ lack of knowledge about the world and Rising World politics makes the story cumbersome rather than engaging." The review criticized the dual-timeline structure, noting that "The Hierarchs are established as the Big Bad, but we enter the novel in the present day with the understanding that Kai has already defeated them—negating any tension involving the Hierarchs that Wells crafts in the past timeline". Finally, the review noted that the "queer relationships in this novel are more repressed than celebrated; despite being openly gay or lesbian, her characters aren’t ever given an opportunity to show their feelings openly on the page." [5]
The novel was nominated for a 2024 Hugo Award. [6]
Urban fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, placing supernatural elements in an approximation of a contemporary urban setting. The combination provides the writer with a platform for classic fantasy tropes, quixotic plot-elements, and unusual characters—without demanding the creation of an entire imaginary world.
Adam Charles Roberts is a British science fiction and fantasy novelist. In 2018 he was elected vice-president of the H. G. Wells Society.
Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on fantasy and science fiction subjects. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. She is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology.
Night's Master is a 1978 fantasy novel by British writer Tanith Lee, the first in the Tales from the Flat Earth series. It has been translated into Dutch, Italian, French, German and Spanish. It was published with illustrations by George Barr in 1978 and by Alicia Austin in 1985. It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1979.
Nora Keita Jemisin is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. She won a fourth Hugo Award, for Best Novelette, in 2020 for Emergency Skin, and a fifth Hugo Award, for Best Graphic Story, in 2022 for Far Sector. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020.
Max Gladstone is an American fantasy author. He is best known for his 2012 debut novel Three Parts Dead, which is part of The Craft Sequence, his urban fantasy serial Bookburners, and for co-writing This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Gods and demons fiction or Shenmo fiction is a subgenre of Chinese fantasy fiction that revolves around the deities, immortals, demons and monsters of Chinese mythology. The term shenmo xiaoshuo, coined in the early 20th century by the writer and literary historian Lu Xun, literally means "gods and demons novel". Representative works of shenmo fiction include the novels Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods.
Amal El-Mohtar is a Canadian poet and writer of speculative fiction. She has published short fiction, poetry, essays and reviews, and has edited the fantastic poetry quarterly magazine Goblin Fruit since 2006.
The Bear and the Nightingale is a historical fantasy novel written by Katherine Arden, published in 2017 by Del Rey Books. It is Arden's debut novel, and the first novel in the Winternight trilogy.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a 2019 fantasy novel by Jamaican writer Marlon James. It is the first book of the Dark Star Trilogy. The novel draws on African history and mythology, blended into the landscape of the North Kingdom and the South Kingdom, and the political tensions between these two warring states, as well as various city-states and tribes in the surrounding landscape. The rights to produce a film adaptation were purchased by Michael B. Jordan in February 2019 prior to release of the book.
A Desolation Called Peace is a 2021 space opera science fiction novel by Arkady Martine. It is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire, and the second novel in Martine's Teixcalaan series. Like its predecessor, the book won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, in 2022.
Trail of Lightning is a 2018 fantasy novel, the debut novel by Rebecca Roanhorse. After a supernatural disaster destroys most of North America, Navajo monster-slayer Maggie Hoskie must navigate a world of monsters and gods. The novel won the 2019 Locus Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Nebula awards.
Witchmark is a 2018 fantasy novel by Canadian author C. L. Polk. It features a murder mystery set in a secondary world in a country called Aeland, and has been described as gaslamp fantasy. Witchmark won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2019. It was first published by Tor Books.
Lent is a 2019 fantasy novel by Jo Walton, about Girolamo Savonarola. It was first published by Tor Books, and was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.
Gideon the Ninth is a 2019 science fantasy novel by the New Zealand writer Tamsyn Muir. It is Muir's debut novel and the first in her The Locked Tomb series, followed by Harrow the Ninth (2020), Nona the Ninth (2022), and the upcoming Alecto the Ninth.
Interference is a 2019 science fiction novel by American writer and translator Sue Burke. It is the second novel of her Semiosis Trilogy series, the first being Semiosis (2018). Interference was first published in October 2019 in the United States by Tor Books. The novel takes place on the planet Pax about 100 years after the events in Semiosis when a new expedition from Earth arrives.
The Craft Sequence is a series of urban fantasy novels by American author Max Gladstone. It currently consists of six novels, beginning with Three Parts Dead (2012). The sequence received critical acclaim. It was nominated for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Series.
Thornhedge is a 2023 novella by Ursula Vernon, writing under the pen name T. Kingfisher. The novella is a reimagining of the story of Sleeping Beauty. It won the 2024 Hugo Award for Best Novella.
And What Can We Offer You Tonight is a 2021 science fiction novella by Premee Mohamed, published by Neon Hemlock Press. It was the winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.