Witch King

Martha Wells

May 2023 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Eric Mok

About this audiobook

"Narrator Eric Mok makes this wonderfully inventive and diverse fantasy eminently accessible... Mok's Kai is appealing and relatable--he sounds simultaneously young and resigned, weary of death and pain and betrayal and yet still hopeful for something better. Listeners will hope we get more of this fascinating world."- AudioFile

From the breakout SFF superstar author of Murderbot comes a remarkable story of power and friendship, of trust and betrayal, and of the families we choose.

"I didn't know you were a... demon."
"You idiot. I'm the demon."
Kai's having a long day in Martha Wells' WITCH KING....

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.

WITCH KING is Martha Wells’s first new fantasy in over a decade, drawing together her signature ability to create characters we adore and identify with, alongside breathtaking action and adventure, and the wit and charm we’ve come to expect from one of the leading writers of her generation.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com.

Ratings and reviews

TL;DR Good characters and prose, too big a world for the actual plot. This is really a 3.5, and it was enjoyable enough. The actual prose is good, and the main character is done well. However, this book has a structure and scale problem. The scale is too grand for the actual story presented, which causes the beginning to be incredibly dry and hard to follow after the opening sequence. It also doesn't move forward fast enough. We don't meet half the important characters in any meaningful way and are told a lot of important plot points via dialogue. The structure of moving back and forth between the past and present lent heavily to the scale being out of control and caused a level of confusion. The past story was unfortunately much more interesting than the present.

A phenomenal, close to the heart story in a wide and fascinating world! <3<3

About the author

MARTHA WELLS has written many fantasy novels, including The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, the Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads and ending with The Harbors of the Sun), and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, and nonfiction. Her New York Times and USA Today-bestselling Murderbot Diaries series has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards.