The Witch King

review, sort of

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This is not like, a coherent review or anything.

Yesterday I was just like possessed with anxiety nonstop the whole day and everything I did seemed to make it worse and i just like spun my wheels and I got some things done but mostly felt worse and worse and more and more stressed, due partly to external circumstances but largely, i think, to nothing in particular. And finally after dinner I was sitting on the couch comfortably and realized you know what, fuck it, I am not going to “try to write” and wind up refreshing tumblr and chatting on discord all night, not while I’m already fretting and stewing like this, i’m going to be miserable and probably get in a fight or something and i don’t want that. Fuck it. So I went to the tab I already had open in my browser, which I’d had open for weeks but the time was never right, and I bought the kindle version of Witch King and read it right there in my browser, the whole way through, did not click away or put it down or move or do anything else, and you know what it was fantastic.

I’d read a preview and been like hm i don’t know what this is about and read a couple of amazon reviews that were like this was really confusing, some of which concluded so i didn’t like it and some of which concluded so i super liked it, and like, I’ve been a fan of Martha Wells since she put the Element of Fire up for free chapter by chapter on her Livejournal when the rights reverted to her in like 2006 or so, so I knew what I was going to get and also knew that I would not particularly know* exactly* what I was going to get until I got it, and I also knew I was going to enjoy the ride, but I hadn’t wanted to read it in stolen or exhausted moments lest the “this is confusing” bits prove too much.

In the end I found it not in the slightest bit confusing, it was a very straightforward interspersed flashbacks storytelling technique that i thought suited the story beautifully (not to be spoilery but we join a character in medias res with an action scene and it’s him trying to figure out who has betrayed him in a complicated political scenario, and in the process of unspooling this he has to revisit the site of where the complicated political scenario was first set up, some sixty (?) years earlier, so he’s retracing his own steps and it’s really well done I think, introducing new bits of history right as they’re relevant to the current storyline– and just fantastically done, not at all forced, completely natural and compelling, and no the reader isn’t told anything they don’t need to know but you do get everthing you need to know, there’s no unneccessary coyness at all).

So anyway i loved that, and I hope there’s a sequel planned but it stands alone just fine if not, I’m already figuring i’ll alternate my rereads and do every other chapter each time, so I can do All The Backstory first, then All The Current Timeline story, and that’s such a fun way to eke out many many many rereads of a story that like all of Wells’ works I will reread until I have chunks of them memorized (anyone who has read my works surely has found whole undigested bits of hers bobbing around in there because I do this so much; I found the phrase weary past bearing in something of mine the other day and was like oh that’s moon when ember first shows up i stole that whole emotion wholesale out of the third raksura book yes i did).

Little side notes: Love the aroace qpr vibes with Kai and Zeide, also sort of enjoy the lowkey genderfuckery that comes with a demon who has his own gender then inhabiting bodies that had different genders. Great magic system too, and I love that we first get introduced to how Kai’s pain magic works as a like totally fait accompli chunk of didactic worldbuilding and then in a later chapter we get to see the flashback of him inventing it and understand why it works the way it does, that was also so well-wrapped-up.

Anyway– Definitely recommend this one but probably it is best if you can do it like I did, in one big binge-read. It took me probably three hours and I was trying hard not to read it too fast.

Yeah. Anyway. People assume I’m a big reader. I was, as a kid. I am not now. This is the first new book I’ve read since probably the spring sometime. I don’t casually read things i only read them if I’m going to add them to my Pantheon of Rereads, and that goes for fic too mostly. (Your picture was not posted)