Martha Wells has a penchant for unusual protagonists. In the past, she’s featured outcast prophets (The Wheel of the Infinite*), genetically modified exiles (City of Bones), matriarchal shapeshifters (Books of the Raksura*), an entire city (the Ile-Rien books*), and a part-bot, part-human Murderbot*. She’s a specialist in outsiders, skilled in making their marginalization part of their appeal. With Witch King, her new fantasy in a new universe, she may have outdone herself.
Meet Kaiisteron, called the Fourth Prince, or the Witch King. He’s a demon.
He’s also dead.
He pulled all his focus in until the black sea yielded and resolved into dark stone walls, a large circular chamber, water running down from the upper shadows. Mossy weeds furred the gaps between the stones, light crept in from somewhere behind him. He need to move, but swimming around in the air as an amorphous cloud was new and deeply disconcerting. He imagined his body around him, pulled his arms in, and spun himself to look down.
At his own body.
p. 2
To be accurate, Kai’s body is dead, and has been for a while. It, and his consciousness, have been buried in a trap designed to keep him in statis, when an expositor (a variety of magician — and if ever a phrase were designed to provoke a chorus of “actually’s”, this is it) blunders in and frees him. The expositor also, helpfully if unintentionally, provides him a new body to wear, one that takes a little getting used to.
Why he’s been imprisoned in an elaborate tomb, one designed specifically to contain him, is the main question that Kai needs to have answered. It had to be someone powerful enough, rich enough, resourceful enough, and well-connected enough to pull it off and still keep up a screen of secrecy. There are only a few people who fit that bill, and fewer still who would want Kai and his companions removed from the world, even if their hiatus was only temporary.
Imprisoned with Kai is his companion Ziede Daiyahah, but her spouse Tahren Starguard is missing. Both Kai and Ziede know that Tahren and their other allies would never abandon them, and they realize also that, with their waking, other forces have been alerted and will come looking for them. The hunt is on, Kai and Ziede for Tahren, and everyone else for Kai and Ziede.
Wells is a master at taking marginalized characters and, through the course of a novel, revealing their humanity, no matter how deeply buried it may be under layers of trauma and alienation. The outsider/insider dynamics she plays with give her space to critique the political structures that enable social inequities. In the case of Witch King, we see Kai’s beginning in a communal herding society that is brutally crushed by an imperial force, an invasion that reaves him from both his own kind and his adopted people. (Yes, Kai is a demon, but it’s not what you think.)
Structurally, the book feature parallel plots, the one in the “present” that unfolds over a few days, and the “past,” which chronicles the invasion of the world by the Hierarchs, a mysterious, brutal, and powerful imperial force that occupies and destroys everyone it touches. At first, the effect of juxtaposing past and present is jarring. The two plots don’t initially have anything to do with each other, as the past plot exists really to introduce the characters and explain their shared history. The sense of dislocation eases, though, as the two plots move toward each other.
I’m not convinced it’s a successful narrative device — there isn’t enough tension between the two timelines to make sparks fly. However, and this is a big however, although some reviewers have labeled Witch King as a standalone novel and Wells herself hasn’t said, I’m convinced that it’s the start of an ambitious new series and, therefore, the two-plot structure may prove out to be the perfect storytelling vehicle, if only we give Wells time to work.
Why do I think this is not a standalone? Well, the whole story hasn’t been told yet. By the end we’ve only just met the whole cast of characters. We know nothing about the primary antagonists, the Hierarchs, beyond that the characters are all survivors rebuilding in the wreckage left in their wake. We see the beginning of the revolution that throws down the Hierarchs and know its conclusion, and we know a little about the Rising World coalition, the political system that replaces it, but enormous chunks of the story have yet to be revealed. We do learn by the end who imprisoned Kai and Ziede and why, but that resolution only leaves open more questions.
So we end with a minor conclusion and a larger theme. This is why Witch King is a first volume, not a last, and there is a lot of story left to be told. We don’t even know why Kai is called the Witch King — yet.
The world that Wells draws here is exactly opposite of the one she creates for the Murderbot universe. There, it’s all metal and polycarbonates. Here, it’s dust and mud and woodsmoke. The characters feel particularly rooted in the details of their cultures — their differences and distinctions in class and caste, their clothing and food, their methods of travel, their trauma and its lingering effects, characters major and minor struggling to figure out who can be trusted and how far.
You might be tempted to wait until the series is finished and then read it in one gulp, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is the pleasure of anticipation. I don’t want the whole thing all at once; it’s good to keep something in reserve. And if, by chance, Wells doesn’t return to this unnamed universe of the Rising World, it’s been a good visit, and I’m glad to have been there.
* The Wheel of the Infinite is currently out of print, but available in second-hand venues. The Books of the Raksura, Ile-Rien, and Murderbot are series that you can find by their individual titles.
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