Finished reading Martha Wells’ Witch King and the sequel, Queen Demon.
First, these stories are in a unique magical fantasy world, so much more like Martha’s other novels than the popular Murderbot stories.
I loved Witch King; it was one of those stay-up-waaaaay-past-bedtime books that I fell into. It could be considered self-contained, so you can read it, get a complete story, and not have a cliff-hanger ending. It tells the story of the characters in 2 timelines (past & present) in alternating chapters.
Queen Demon takes place right after the end of WK in both timelines. Again with the alternating chapters, which didn’t bother me in WK. For QD, about halfway through the book, I did end up reading just the past chapters to the end, then went back and read the present chapters. There is an ending …. though it also very much a new beginning.
I originally thought/read this was a duology, so I expected a WK cliffhanger (that didn’t happen) and expected more of a complete closure in QD (also didn’t happen), but that means Martha has more Rising World stories planned, which is exciting, because I really enjoyed my time with these characters.
Side note: if you buy the ebooks, you do not get the world map, which is handy, so I included it as the last image.
Cover art (tordotcom edition) by Cynthia Sheppard
#bookstr #marthawells
