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Witch King

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Witch King

By: Martha Wells
Narrated by: Eric Mok
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About this listen

"Narrator Eric Mok makes this wonderfully inventive and diverse fantasy eminently accessible... Mok's Kai is appealing and relatable--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

From the breakout SFF superstar author of Murderbot comes a remarkable 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.

WITCH KING is Martha Wells’s first new fantasy in over a decade, drawing together her signature ability to create characters we adore and identify with, alongside breathtaking action and adventure, and the wit and charm we’ve come to expect from one of the leading writers of her generation.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com.

©2023 Martha Wells (P)2023 Macmillan Audio
Action & Adventure Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Magic Users Royalty Witchcraft Wizardry King
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Critic reviews

2023, Nebula Awards - Nominee: Short-listed

Nebula Awards - Nominee: "Short-listed

Hugo Award - Nominee: Short-listed

2023, Hugo Award - Nominee: Short-listed

Locus Awards - Winner

2023, Locus Awards - Winner

“A wildly original and complex fantasy exploring how revolutions are won through trust, and destroyed through selfishness. Wells excels at brooding, powerful inhuman protagonists who just need a little kindness to be their badass best.”—N. K. Jemisin

“Unlike anything I've ever read. A layered and complex novel that delivers on the promise of epic fantasy.”—Zoraida Córdova

“Fantasy readers looking for new worlds and characters to explore will be enthralled.”—Library Journal

What listeners say about Witch King

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great story.

Very engaging. Not as challenging as others reviews hint but it does require some investment. Really hoping for a sequel.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Story let down by narrator

Narration is flat and rushed. Very distracting. It Diminishes the story as there is little distinction beteeen characters.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

It’s hard to judge the story with such mushy narration

Listening to this audiobook has been a terrible slog, the narrator is pacing and pronunciation was really hard work. Think I might have to read this book to actually see if I like it or not. I’m assuming I will because I do normally like Martha Well’s stuff.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Great audio, alright book

I really enjoyed the flow of the audio book as it brought out the great writing. However my problem was the fact that this book was dual timeline which made it difficult for me to care about these characters and the people they cared about. Glad I listened to eat but overall just a meh experience.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Slow but steady.

Like most people I discovered Martha Wells through the murder bot diaries. I was excited for this book, but disappointed at first read, as it didn’t have the fast pace or the charm of MBD. But I warmed to it on the second read.
The book follows Kye a demon and the titular Witch King, as he wakes from a what is essentially a magical coma and tries to figure out what happened to him. The book goes back and forth between two timelines the past and present, the past is definitely the more interesting plot wise.
Like most people I feel Kye lacked personality I think it was a combination of writing and the VA’s performance. As I said the pacing is slow the first chapter alone is half an hour of essentially people talking. Again I found this jarring after reading the Murder Bot diaries, but now I have read some of Wells other works I realised this is the actual the normal style for her.
If you go in without knowing any of Wells work or preferring her fantasies novels you will enjoy this. If you reading this because of MBD either don’t read this it treat this book like it was written by a different author.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Confused

I was completely lost from start to finish. Timeshifting with an overlapping set of characters left me disorientated. I never got to know anyone apart from the main character.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Boring on all fronts

This is not a great book, the characters are charisma vacuums so while some of the world has interesting ideas, you utterly fail to care.

This isn't helped by substandard narration, the author is just reading the book, for some books that is just fine, but the standard for other fantasy novels I have read is much higher, with a lot of characters with odd names a good narration involves giving some personality to the characters, different accents different deliveries etc. At best there is some slight changes of intonation here and thats it, there really is very little range and the result is the already uncharimatic characters fall even flatter.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Felt like studying for an exam

I normally enjoy Wells' book, but this one was hard to get through. The story is peppered with a lot of seemingly superfluous lore, many, many names, and it makes it hard/tedious to follow. It doesn't help that the narrator has poor enunciation. The word "mortal" must appear about every second sentence, and the first few chapters I was baffled at why the author referred to people as "morsels".

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

constant fighting, complicated names

I had been looking forward to thus, after I enjoyed another Martha Wells audiobook a lot. Unfortunately, this one was a disappointment. It took me some time to understand that 2 narratives (past and now) were intertwined. I found difficult to keep up with the names and sometimes was lost. The story consist of a series of battles, all presumed to mean guaranteed death for the heroes, but after a while that bored me, probably because I never fully understood who was an ally or an enemy. This one was not for me. The narrator had a pleasant voice and read well.

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