Witch King (Rising World)

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I've always been interested in characters who were in the same situation of being involuntarily isolated in a lot of different ways. And so when they do form friendships or bonds, it's very strong because they need that connection. And I think a lot of the best science fiction I've read revolves around characters like that."

I almost want to do like an epic fantasy series, the good parts version, where you feel all these things have happened, but you're really only seeing a slice of it." Narrator Eric Mok makes this wonderfully inventive and diverse fantasy eminently accessible... Mok's Kai is appealing and relatableâ??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 To me, it's really hard to characterize someone who doesn't have a sense of humor because I think it's such an integral part of your personality." 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?And kind of the inspiration of this book was looking at a map of the world and seeing how much colonization there had been and just trying to think about the ancient world before that and what our world would look like now if the colonization hadn't happened. And thinking about how terrifying that would be, to have these people come out of nowhere and these things to happen and just this invasion for no reason out of nowhere by people you'd never heard of before. That was really the inspiration for it. And also looking at how different countries have been taken over by others and what that process was like. Because in the book, the Ariki are basically infiltrated first. They were a fairly powerful culture and they were infiltrated first, where others that were not as well armed, not as well organized, were just swept over and destroyed. So yeah, just looking at all that stuff and just thinking about how that would affect the world I wanted to create. Distracted by unwilling suspicion, Kai said absently, “Your great-aunt Kavinen thinks your nine-volume history of the Hierarchs war was a boring waste of time.” One other specific aspect of the worldbuilding I want to call attention to is Kai’s body-shifting. Kai has both a demon body in the underearth, the underground region where demons dwell, as well as various human bodies he inhabits in the world above. Some of those human bodies are male, some are female. Wells hasn’t necessarily written Kai to read like an intentional trans allegory; demons simply don’t care about human genders all that much. I found myself wondering multiple times how Kai might present to trans readers, because Wells did such a good job of both exploring Kai’s experience as well as painting various human cultures in her world as having varying levels of gender conservatism. This meaty complexity makes the story feel more poignant. Witch King doesn’t need a sequel (even though I’d devour one) So, you mentioned nonhuman characters. Between this novel and your past work, there is sort of a running theme of main characters, often nonhuman, who are being othered. Murderbot struggles with relating to humans, while Kai develops the strong connection to mortals, particularly the Saredi people. What draws you to this theme?

MW: Part of my thing for it is I almost want to do like an epic fantasy series, the good parts version, where you feel all these things have happened, but you're really only seeing a slice of it. I think I'll just pin it on terrible pacing. I am so disinterested that the bit of humor and banter didn't even make me smile once. MW: Yeah. That's because just a cool description of a lot of stuff that you're not emotionally involved with doesn't have any kind of impact, as opposed to watching someone move through that world and being very much affected by it does. SD: I'm sure. And I think he does a great job not only with the characterizations but kind of those more action-oriented scenes, really bringing up the intensity and the excitement and the anticipation during those scenes. I really enjoyed listening to him. I hope he does a lot more. Always great when you find that perfect fit, especially if you're going to have an ongoing series and ongoing characters. And I know our listeners appreciate that continuity.I got lost in both good and bad ways when reading the book. I was lost in a bad way in that I never fully grasped what was going on, and I would love a Wikipedia-style blog just for information about the world. However, as I mentioned earlier, when I did some re-reading, things made more sense. SD: Right. And I think sometimes that tension and anxiety even heighten the humor. So, getting into narration a bit, Witch King is actually the first title that we have narrated by Eric Mok, who does such a fantastic job. Always exciting to have a debut narrator. And I see there's more coming from him, which is great. I'm curious what you were looking for, hoping for, in the casting of this novel, considering that your main character inhabits different bodies and thus different voices and perspectives, and we’re introduced to so many different new cultures and societies. I am just not getting into the story. It feels like an endless and stale list of things the protagonist says and does. Martha Wells’s writing is solid, but Witch King suffers from slow pacing and a dense, disengaging style that makes the book a struggle to read. As a result, I never felt fully invested in the story or characters.

It's a decent history textbook. Not one of the really bad ones, but even good exposition is just not good enough to engage me as I expect from a fiction story. As it was, I was able to figure out who we are fighting and who we aren’t in any given scene, and that was enough to get me through the book, which is basically one long action scene with periodic pauses in which the characters read maps and argue about politics before being flung headlong into another action scene. There’s so much drama that even the quiet scenes feel like action scenes. My favorite moment in the book involved someone finally falling asleep and everyone whispering so as not to wake him up. Thankfully, Wells is a master at her craft, and that trust is well deserved. While it took me a couple of chapters to really get adjusted to the vastness and strangeness of Witch King’s world, it ultimately ended up adding to the sense of immersion. There’s always a strong feeling of intention behind the specific choices Wells makes in telling the story; the magic, cultures, and various creatures and bits of lore are expertly drawn. The characters are vivid and lovable, especially Ziede, who is a consistent scene-stealer. Witch Kingis simply a well-wrought fantasy book in pretty much every respect. MW: Oh, thank you for inviting me and I really enjoyed it. It was interesting to talk about the book. I wrote it two years ago basically, in 2020 and 2021. I've been really waiting for a long time for people to read it and talk about it and everything.

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SD: Right. So, you mentioned world-building. One thing I admire about your world-building is how you allow the listener or reader to discover it sort of organically, via the characters. Tell me a little bit about how you approach world-building in your writing practice. Are you one of those people who lays it all out before you start, or does the evolution kind of happen as you go?