After a short break, I’m ready to dive back into the Martha Wells Book Club. This month we’re reading the first book in the fantasy series the Rising World: Witch King. This was the first book of Wells’ I read that wasn’t in the Murderbot Diaries, and part of what inspired me to take on her back catalogue. I’d been planning on re-reading it, and the only thing that held me back was that I knew I would get to it eventually for this column. I am delighted to report that I enjoyed it even more the second time around.
When Kaiisteron, Prince of the Fourth House of the underearth, wakes, he feels strange. This isn’t the first time he has had a literal out-of-body experience. It’s not even the first time his spirit has jumped from one body to another. Whatever water-based curse kept his body in stasis has broken. After a fight with a couple bad guys that ends as quickly as it began, Kai is in yet another new body, this time an expositor. I’ve written about this before, but something I love about Martha Wells is how she drops readers into the deep end. She gives readers little backstory upfront, preferring to tease out information and cultural details as the story progresses. We start right in the thick of it and Wells doesn’t slow down.
Witch King takes place in the present and past of the lands within what is now called the Rising World. This fledgling empire was born from the ashes of the ruins left from the arrival of the mysterious and brutal conquerors, the Hierarchs, and the bloody revolution that overthrew them. Kai is a demon now trapped on the surface world in the body of an expositor, a sort of witch harnessed by the Hierarchs. He’s joined by Ziede, a former teacher in a cloister that was razed by the Hierarchs who can manipulate air spirits. The book begins with Kai and Ziede as they search for Tahren (Ziede’s wife and a Fallen Immortal Marshall who betrayed the Hierarchs for the rebellion) and try to figure out who held Kai and Ziede hostage. They are joined by their new companions: Sanja, a child kidnapped by the expositor whose body Kai now possesses; Tenes, a young witch enslaved by said expositor; and Ramad, a personal vanguarder to a political leader. The answers they find offer a difficult path forward for not only the Rising World but our trio of powerful beings as well.
Their journey takes them along the eastern coastland of the Rising World and upriver to the Hierarchs’ former stronghold, the Summer Halls. We see that palace/fortress as a flooded ruin in the present and as a lavish display of power and stolen wealth in the past. The past also takes readers far to the west to the grasslands of the nomadic people Kai once called his own. To the south of the sea bordering the realm is another landmass, and it is from there the Hierarchs originated. (All this is helpfully detailed in the map at the front of the book.) Our motley crew are stalked by an enemy, likely the ones behind the plot to imprison Kai and Ziede and disappear Tahren. Unexpectedly, they locate Tahren’s brother, Dahin, who gives them the next clue in their quest. The past follows Kai from the battlefields on the Saredi grasslands to a demon cage in the Summer Halls. With the help of Ziede, Tahren, and Bashasa, a hostage prince from a conquered kingdom, Kai decides he will destroy the Hierarchs, come hell or high water. If he has to die so that others may escape, so be it. The past influences the present, and the present explains the past.
Like many of Wells’ previous books, Witch King is a meditation on trauma, imperialism, colonization, forced assimilation, genocide, and the exploitation of labor and resources by those with too much power. It features a main character who blunders their way into found family as they work to take down their oppressor. It’s a little sadder than her other books, but hope still threads through. It is a story that asks what comes after the rebels win. It reminds me a little of Andor and the new Star Wars trilogy. In the sections set in the past, the theme is both Maarva Andor growling “fuck the empire” and Luthen Rael admitting “I burn my life to make a sunrise I know I’ll never see.” The present sections show what the new trilogy tried to get across. A rebellion may be built on hope, but a stable society is built on progressive ideals and a refusal to allow fascism any room to breathe. Kai, Ziede, and Tahren are in the situation they’re in because the Rising World didn’t quash those who sided with their oppressors when they had the chance. Now the future of everything they nearly died to bring forth is at risk.
As mentioned, the story jumps back and forth in time, with the historical sections prefaced with epigraphs from cultural documents written by denizens of the Rising World. At first, the excerpts feel random; one is from an Enalin chronicler baffled by how the Arike people “divide their people into only two genders, signaled by clothing styles,” while another discusses the Enalin political leadership structure. It is not until we get further into the book and the tidbits of details Wells scatters throughout conversations and experiences start to coalesce that we see how important these epigraphs are.
The gender piece comes up a couple of different ways. We see how each society interprets gender expression and identity differently. Some don’t distinguish gender through attire or physical form while others do. The trio come across soldiers who traditionally would have been women but now present as men, and Kai wonders if they are really men or were women who were forced to change gender against their will. Demons and the Saredi had an ancient agreement where demons would possess the bodies of dead Saredi in exchange for providing magic and children. Neither party cared about matching the gender between human host and demon spirit, and the biological characteristics of the human form have nothing to do with how their societies perceive gender. Which is how Kai, who uses he/him pronouns, ended up in the body of Enna, a young woman. As Kai-Enna, Kai was always referred to as “he.” Another female demon is in the body of an old man, and she is always referred to as “she.”
Gender isn’t the only way queerness appears in this book. As Kai-Enna and later in the body of human and expositor men, Kai is attracted to men. We never see any desire for anyone using she/her pronouns. Ziede and Tahren are women who are married to each other. Several characters use they/them pronouns, and any person who Kai cannot immediately identify their gender he refers to then in a neutral way, such as “the person.” Queerness as a revolutionary identity doesn’t exist in the Rising World like it does in ours. We don’t see queerphobia or different identities legislated against. People are who they are. As a queer person, I find this so refreshing in speculative fiction. I don’t mind reading books with bigotry in them, especially if the characters are fighting against it. Sometimes I want to feel empowered and revitalized, like I know I can keep fighting in the real world after reading about fictional characters doing the same. However, sometimes I’d rather read about characters who don’t have to fight to be their true selves. Sometimes I want to see a world where queerness exists not as an identity or as a contrast to compulsory cisalloheterosexuality but as something that just is.
Queerness is so prevalent and well done in Witch King and the Murderbot Diaries that I was disappointed that Wells didn’t include it in her earlier books (or didn’t include it to the same extent). Not surprising, given the state of speculative fiction in the ’90s and first part of the 21st century, but disappointing nonetheless. I was always frustrated by speculative authors who could imagine whole new worlds full of strange cultures and fascinating characters but couldn’t conceive of two dudes kissing. I’m so glad Wells has made her more recent books diverse in a variety of ways, including disability. Tenes is mute and uses sign language (here called Witchspeak) to communicate. Other non-disabled people also use it and no one has anything negative to say about her disability; in the Rising World, queerphobia isn’t the only -phobia or -ism to not exist.
Since its release in 2023, I’ve read plenty of reviews of Witch King. I was effusive in mine for Reactor, but some others were more lukewarm, and for reasons I personally find unconvincing. All of the things other reviewers complained of—lots of cultural and societal details, readers not having a full understanding of how the Rising World or its magical inhabitants function by the end of the book, it not being as humorous or action-packed as the Murderbot Diaries, a large cast, the flashbacks, Wells offering lots of questions but few answers—are things I loved. They are also things that appear in all of her books, to some extent. The Ile-Rien series is the only series left I haven’t read, yet of the rest of her fantasy books, Witch King is par for the course. I’d put it closer in tone and style to her standalones City of Bones and Wheel of the Infinite. To each their own, but I loved Witch King so much. I’d put it as my second favorite of the books of hers I’ve read so far.
We’re staying in the Rising World for next month’s book, Queen Demon. I haven’t read it yet, since I’ve been saving it for this column. The anticipation is killing me!
Buy the Book
Queen Demon
Did I miss something? I don’t think Kai possessed her.
I loved this book. It’s the first non-Murderbot book by Wells I’ve read and I’m one book on my TBR-pile away from starting Queen Demon. I found Kai to be a very enjoyable protagonist, with a playful snark that added to his almost knee-jerking planning.
Two possessions were mixed up. In the past storyline, Kai accidentally possesses an expositor during the uprising in the summer halls. In the present storyline, there are two kidnapped kids – Sanja and a slightly older boy, who is meant to be Kai’s vessel. The boy is mortally wounded by the person who tries to raise Kai, and Kai possesses the boy’s body. Basically, you have Kai-Enna, Kai-(whatever expositor’s name was) and then Kai-(poor kid whose name we don’t get).
I had to read that sentence a couple times too, not that I have any ideas how to make it clearer. (Sanja, a child) [who was] kidnapped by (the expositor whose body Kai now possesses).
And it occurs to me that it has to be at least disconcerting for her to see the face of her kidnapper every time she looks at Kai.
It’s not quite like that. The expositor Kai possessed is in the past storyline, so that was the body he was killed in. In the present storyline, there is another kid slightly older than Sanja, who was kidnapped to be Kai’s vessel, and he possesses him and kills the others. So, no additional trauma for Sanja just from looking at Kai.
Oh, that’s right. Can you tell I need to do a reread? Because it might be time to do a reread.
The answer is always “yes!”
I listened to both Witch King and Queen Demon as audiobooks, which was a wild ride given the lack of much background exposition, the massive cast of characters, and alternating timelines, but Eric Mok is a great narrator and I would recommend them.
One thing I loved about this book is the undercutting of expectations when Kai and the others initially escape the curse: it’s all set up to make you think he’s been there years, maybe even centuries, and he’s going to be a legendary figure returning from the dead after some kind of huge defeat. But as it turns out, it’s been a matter of months, it’s more political sabotage than anything else, and the really important past events are much further back than this.
I greatly enjoyed Witch King and Queen Demon, although I have to admit that I initially found Witch King slow going, and I’m not entirely sure why. I didn’t have that problem with Queen Demon. Whatever the reason, they’re both deep and rewarding reads.
One of the things I absolutely love about Wells’s writing is that background details that many other authors would treat as entire plot points of their own are just there, adding texture to the world. Entire societies are structured in ways that make sense to them, even if we don’t see all the details. I think it’s no coincidence that some of my favorite authors (Wells, Vernon/Kingfisher, and Le Guin) studied anthropology or grew up surrounded by the the study.
Being thrown into the worldbuilding is really a great element of Wells’ books. I do tend to like her fantasy books better than Murderbot, where I mostly enjoy the main character, but find it hard to get into the stories.
I found Kai to be a blend of Moon (someone who has ended up as a member of an aristocracy somewhat by accident), and MurderBot (squishy humans keep trying to shoot me but can’t hit anything important).
Loved this one – what a ride! Can’t wait to get to Queen Demon.