Narrated by Erik Mok
Publisher’s Blurb:
A 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.
Review:
I loved the Murderbot books and was excited to dive into Martha Wells’ latest release, Witch King. It’s fantasy rather than sci-fi but I like both genres so my hopes were high.
The first problem was that the book starts with a “dramatis personae” – ie a cast list. It is long. Many of the names are complicated “fantasy names”; some of them are very similar and, there was just no way I was going to remember almost any of them. The cast list describes who they are, their race and/or role and where they might fit into the story. Or, at least, I expect that’s what the intention was. It’s completely useless on audio.
In a print book, one can go back and forth from the story to the front matter to refresh one’s memory about who is who. In an ebook, it’s harder but possible. (I think it would be annoying though.) On audio it’s just not an option.
Consequently, I started the book with only the blurb to help me. There is no explaining – I was just plunged into an entirely different world with many characters, most of whom I could not place. And, apart from about five or six of them, when they came up again, I couldn’t remember exactly who they were. I made it about a third of the way into the book but really at that point I was so lost and I had no real hope of ever being found. It’s not enjoyable to spend hours listening to something where my prevailing thoughts were “who is that?” and “what is happening?”. Most of the time, I could not answer those questions.
Added to that, the narration was unevenly paced with some parts being at a good speed and others being way too fast. It meant I couldn’t slow the entire listen to fix the problem. Mr. Mok had little differentiation between characters of different genders and that made it even harder to work out who was who. After a third of the story I really didn’t know all that much more about the world or the story than I had from the blurb.
Possibly Witch King is a great book. But it’s best read in print I believe. Maybe once a listener is familiar with the story and the cast (ie having read the book already) the listening experience would be entertaining. But for me, it was not.
I’m sorry to say Witch King was a DNF for me.
Kaetrin
Witch King by Martha Wells on Amazon
How disappointing! Thank you for your review. I agree it sounds like it would be better experienced in print, but an ebaook would be no better for me than the audiobook. My big problem with Kindle is not being able to easily move around the book. It’s my only regret about not getting print books from anything but the library these days. (We’ve been vastly reducing the number of dead tree books we own in the past 5 years in preparation of downsizing at retirement.)
I’m not even going to attempt this one unless we get it from the library.
I had similar problems – occasionally – with Hailey Turner’s Soulbound series, although on a lesser scale, because most of the characters didn’t have ridiculous Klingon-sounding names, and many were recurring, so once I’d got into the story and had met them a few times, it was easier to remember who was who and how they all related to each other. I’ve seen audiobooks that have an “accompanying pdf” – it would make sense for high fantasy audiobooks to have one of these that you can download along with the audio book so that those of us who want one have a visual reference. I don’t buy print books any more (haven’t bought one other than as a gift for over a decade) – I don’t have space for more dead trees, but mostly because I can’t read them these days, so a book like this wouldn’t be easy to access for me anyway.