“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.

I know Martha Wells’ writing from her far-future set sci-fi Murderbot series of novellas whose last two instalments have been a more conventional novel length. Witch King is my first experience of her exploring the fantasy end of the speculative fiction range.

All Systems Red delivered an immersive style of world building as the reader was led at a brisk gallop through the tense mystery plot. While Witch King has the same first person protagonist approach that the murderbot series had, this opening salvo in what will surely be an extensive series has more complexity to guide the reader through. You get the sense of that intricacy when the opening pages are taken up with a dramatis persona list. It’s not so much essential opening reading as a reference to look back to in any moments of confusion. However, it does emphasise how Wells has invested more deeply in well-developed worldbuilding (verging on Tolkienesque) than the future capitalist chaos that the rogue sec-unit charges so gamely through. Besides the large cast, complicated geo-politics, intricately interlocking magic systems and tangled plot of betrayals and rescues Wells gives us two distinct timelines that the protagonist journeys through.

In some ways it reminds me of Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in that there is a moment of present crisis which was spawned from and harks back to a moment of past disaster, and the story starts with the present.

Our eponymous protagonist is a demon called Kai – a fourth prince no less – from the underearth who was invited by the nomadic grassland people into the body of a dying girl as part of their culture. Not quite a demon exchange visit, but an alliance forged by Kai’s demon grandmother with those peoples. To be fair, as we canter through Kai’s past story and present dilemmas it is clear that both narrative strands have enough action and events to merit a novel of their own. It is to Wells’ credit that she has compressed and combined them into a singly 400+ page story. Furthermore, the pairing of the two timelines works well in allowing for some intriguing switches between the past and the present.

We first encounter Kai in a different body, trapped in a watery tomb following an act of betrayal he can’t quite recall. The present timeline centres around how he frees himself, gathers allies, evades enemies and goes in pursuit of missing friends and some much needed answers. Beyond the pages of the narrative, but often alluded to is a significant political event of renewing a grand alliance and re-affirming the participant states’ independence. You could perhaps think of it like a renewal of NATO or the UN mandate – but with lots of different kinds of magic, witches, immortals, city states jealous of their dignity – all that kind of political sensitivity.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, given that analogy, the past time-line is about Kai’s part in a war that this same alliance managed – against all odds – to win. That war occurred ‘a mortal lifetime ago’ so yeah – you could think of it like the second world war perhaps, except that in this case the enemy were a shadowy group of people called The Hierarchs who had huge powers of mass destruction, such that even 70-80 years after the event the world has still not recovered. Its population remains depleted, with many cities ruined and empty, and some whole nations  wiped out in the battle to destroy the Hierarchs.

I expect this entertaining twin timeline approach to continue in future books. As Winston Churchill might have said – Kai’s activities in the past timeline do not herald the end of the war with the Hierarchs, or even the beginning of the end, but more like the end of the beginning. In the present timeline, again Kai and his friends get some satisfying resolutions but still have much work to do, so this is definitely a story set-up that has the legs for multiple sequels.

There is a risk with twin timelines that the reader’s sense of jeopardy for characters in the past storyline is compromised by the fact they appear in the present story, but Wells separation of the timelines by a mortal lifetime (apart from Kai and a handful of equally long-lived associates) manages to leave the past as a still undiscovered country.

Although Kai, as witch king and immortal demon, might seem over-powered, he still does have limits on his ability and vulnerabilities. As a creature of the earth, water appears to be – if not quite his kryptonite – then certainly his Achilles heel, which is a problem given how much of it there is around. The rest of Kai’s core party, Zeide the wind witch, Tahren the immortal blessed and Dahin her lesser blessed brother, deliver an interesting mix of snark, humility and aggression – for example when Zeide chastises Kai for oversimplifying her powers

“It’s not flying. It’s entity manipulation,” Zeide corrected in annoyance.

Or when Dahin is rebuked for eating the world’s equivalent of Macdonald’s

Saadrin eyed him from her seat on the bench. “You’re polluting your body,” she told him repressively.

“I’ve been eating Blessed travel rations for months, my body is desperate for pollution,” Dahin told her.

However, my favourite character is Prince-heir Bakshasa from the past timeline, the mere mortal who builds a rebellion against the Heirarchs’ seemingly impregnable power, recruiting Kai along the way. I like that his impact stems not from magic but from the words and actions he uses to inspire and lead.

Wells’ magic systems are intriguing – with characters drawing on different power sources to activate their spells. For Kai this means often using his pain. However, he is also able to drain the soul out of a body and even taken over that empty vessel, though there is a certain etiquette to be observed which usually govern such behaviour. I enjoyed Wells’ use of different terms to freshen up more familiar language – the evil magicians are expositors, many spells work like glyphs – Wells’ terms them intentions which can be sketched in the air or cast on flesh or stone. Expositors can create amalgams – not to fill teeth, but Frankensteinian golems manufactures from different animal parts to serve a purpose (usually pursue and kill).

The prose delivers some nice lines – for example the description of huge reptilian pack animals

“A little distance away the wallwalkers loomed in the dark, sleeping while standing up, breathing like wind-filled caverns.”

Or when Kai is drawing on the life power of old wood.

Kai stretched to put his hand on the end of the beam and felt for a trickle of life/ It had worked on a leaf; it should work om a piece of wood. They both came from trees, which were obviously alive. But the only life left was impossibly faint and distant, like a dim memory too faded to recall except by its absence.

Or when Kai has just drained the life of an enemy who wanted to enslave him

The girl said, “Do you have to do that to people to live?”

“No,” Kai told her. “I did it because I wanted to. And bad people taste better than good ones.”

Overall this is a rewarding opening salvo in what promises to be an excellent series weaving two timelines into an intricate narrative.

Reading this – as always – through the lens of contemporary politics, I see resonances with how Kai’s present timeline travails result from people striving to impose a new dictatorship. This takes place at a time when the populace have lost the memory of how hard fought the original battle to defeat the dictators was. Maybe we need more contemporary discussions that draw the parallels between the last great war that the western democracies fought and the enemy that was defeated then, and remember not to let the national populist inheritors of that fascist world view creep back into power.

Witch King is due for release 19th August. You can pre-order your copy HERE