Mini, spoiler free review of *Witch King*, by Martha Wells [Fantasy]
Kai is a powerful demon who awakens outside of his human body to find he's been trapped unconscious in a tomb for over a year. His long-time friends are also missing. He has to figure out who has done this, and why. The story alternates between this “present" timeline, and a "past” timeline that starts with him as a young demon in his newly-gifted human body. Wells has a real knack for creating worlds with interesting rules (far from the cookie cutter tropes of some fantasy), and then exploring the boundaries of those rules. I enjoyed it, but also felt like there was an odd detachment to the story - like there wasn't a lot of emotional attachment to the characters. As an aside, Wells has a penchant for making subtle or not-so-subtle commentary on our society and the prejudices in it. As examples in this one, demons are referred to by the gender of their demon selves, not the gender of the body they're in. Some societies have gender neutral clothing, but where it's gendered it's the men who wear skirts and women who wear pants. One culture is referred to as confusing because they stick to two genders.
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This one is on my list, but after the slightly disappointing Murderbot #8 (Platform Decay) and the overly-long Death of the Necromancer I'm unsure how eager I should be to get to it. Appreciate the write-up, though! I get what you mean by "wasn't a lot of emotional attachment to the characters", that's very much how I felt about DofN.
I haven't read DofN - is it just that it's long (which doesn't bother me), or is there not enough story for the length?
Yeah, I didn't at all dislike this one, but I just didn't really feel attached to the characters. And it's not that they aren't likable; they are.
DotN wasn't necessarily that it had not enough story, so much as several scenes went on for way too many pages, entirely deflating the tension. If we're 100 pages in and the protagonist is on his own in deadly danger- we don't need scenes that go on for 20 pages to describe action that doesn't move the plot until page 21 finally arrives.
Hashtag carriageChaseScene for anyone who's read it
Hmm, okay - that does sound frustrating.