Hugo Nominee Review: Witch King, by Martha Wells

Hugo Nominee Review: Witch King, by Martha Wells

by Rich Horton

Here is the fifth of my reviews of the 2024 Hugo nominees for Best Novel. Martha Wells published her first novel, The Element of Fire, when she was 28, in 1993. It was well-received, getting a nomination for the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, and she went on to publish five novels and a half-dozen or so short stories in its series, collectively called Ile-Rien. She began another series, the Books of the Raksura, in 2011, and that too comprises five novels and some short fiction, and it was shortlisted for the 2018 Hugo for Best Series. All those stories are Fantasy, and until 2017 her only science fiction was some work in the Star Wars and Stargate franchises. But in 2017 she published All Systems Red, the first novella in her Murderbot series, which is definitely SF. It was an immediate sensation. I remember the buzz about Murderbot at the 2017 World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio, where Wells was the Toastmaster. The stories and novels have since won four Hugos: two for Best Novella, one for Best Novel, and one for Best Series. I think they are definitely deserving, for what that's worth. More recently, she has nobly taken to withdrawing Murderbot stories from award consideration, presumably feeling that they've received their fair share of recognition. This includes this year, in which she withdrew Nebula and Hugo nominations for the Murderbot novel System Collapse. But Witch King, the first in a new Fantasy series, is still on the ballot.

I have only read a couple of Wells' fantasy short stories (which were quite good) -- the only longer works I've read by her until now are Murderbot stories. So Witch King is an introduction of sorts, for me, to this important aspect of her oeuvre. I will add that according to the Amazon listing, the book is the first in the Rising World trilogy, but it works quite well as a standalone novel. (That said, there is plenty of room for more stories in this world.)

The novel is told on two threads. The main character is Kai, a demon prince who is called the Witch King. The novel opens as he wakes from some form of imprisonment underwater. It turns out he has been wakened by an expositor -- some form of magic worker -- who planned to make him a familiar to increase his power. This doesn't go well for him. Kai ends up freeing his friend Ziede, a witch (an actual witch -- not a demon called Witch King!) They escape, and realize quickly that while they were gone Ziede's wife Tahren Stargard, an Immortal Blessed, has also been captured and imprisoned -- an action that threatens the stability of the treaties maintaining the Rising World, a new polity that emerged after the Hierachs' War, some 60 years earlier. 

Lots of questions already! What are demons? What are witches? What are Immortal Blessed? What are expositors? What are Hierarchs? We learn the answers over time. (In essence, all are different sorts of magic users. This world also has mortals, some of whom can become magic users such as expositors.) Each type of magic is different, with limits and costs. The other question is -- what happened 60 years ago? And for that, we get the other thread.

This thread also involves Kai, Ziede, and Tahren (after all, they are all immortal to some degree or other.) Kai is now (then) Kai-Enna, a demon who has taken the body of a dead member of the Saredi people, according the the terms of a treaty Kai's (human) grandmother established, whereby demons can come from the Underearth to the surface to live among the Saredi -- but only by occupying the body of a dead human. We see Kai-Enna as an adolescent -- but war is coming, as the mysterious Hierarchs advance, using their tremendous magical weapons to obliterate all in their path. The Immortal Blessed have allied with the Hierrachs, but one, Tahren Stargard, has rebelled and tries to help the mortals resist the Hierarchs. Kai, having taken another body after Enna's death, ends up imprisoned. But with the help of a brilliant mortal Prince-heir, Bashasa, he and the witch Ziede and Tahren manage to kill two of the Hierarchs -- something thought impossible. But in the process Kai takes over the body of a living expositor -- a terrible betrayal of the agreement the demons had made. This alienates some demons, but Kai and Bashasa and company are more concerned with taking the battle to the Hierarchs.

Meanwhile, in the more recent thread, Kai, Ziede, and a growing band of allies (a street child they rescued from the expositor, some soldiers another expositor had enslaved, Tahren's brother Dahin, and more) journey to recover a "finding stone" that may lead them to Tahren, while being chased by what appear to be members of a conspiracy to disrupt the Rising World. 

I don't want to say much more. The plot is well executed, and both threads are great fun. The magic is effectively portrayed and in context convincing. The political questions are worthwhile. There are deep mysteries in this world that may provide material for further books. The gender background is intriguing if kind of understated -- for example, Kai is a demon who strongly identifies as male, but he occupies both female and male bodies without stress or change in his personal identification. Tahren and Ziede are both female and are married, and Ziede has a child, but it's not clear (to me, perhaps I'm obtuse) who the father is or if Tahren is even though she's female. The battles are well described, the geography is interesting. 

It's a good, fun, novel. But is it a Hugo winner? I'm not so sure. For one thing, it's -- well, it's in many ways a typical fantasy novel. A well done fantasy novel, to be sure, but while it rings some interesting changes on some of the tropes it plays with, it doesn't really do anything spectacularly new. I liked it. I'm glad I read it. I'll read more in the series as they come. But, for my Hugo votes, I want something at another level.