I was very excited to dive into this new fantasy novel from the creator of Murderbot, Witch King by Martha Wells! It comes complete with map, dramatis personae, and a gorgeous color palette.
Kai is a demon prince of the underearth. The book opens with him coming to, looking down at the corpse of his most recent host body in a glass coffin, and realizing he must have been murdered and then his consciousness trapped by magical means inside the tomb, preventing him from taking up residence another body. Lucky for him, a mage foolish enough to think he could control Kai and bind him as a familiar just unwittingly sprung him from his prison. Now Kai and his ride or die Zeide, who was also imprisoned, are on a mission to discover who betrayed them, and why.
This book presents alternating timelines. After a few chapters detailing this quest, there will be a chapter explaining Kai’s past, beginning more than a mortal lifetime ago: Kai as a young demon new to the mortal world, when a treaty between the underearth and a nomadic grassland peoples had resulted in the bodies of the latter’s dead being honored by hosting a demon, who will then briefly have access to the deceased’s mind and be able to share their final thoughts; Kai as a captive of the Hierarchs, a powerful civilization that came from the south and wiped out all societies in their path; Kai meeting the Witch Zeide, the Imortal Marshall Tahren, and the Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik when the conquered peoples planned to rise up in rebellion against the Hierarchs and in hopes of ushering in a new world order. Along the way the reader is treated to plenty of action, adventure, and found family.
“How did it come to this, Kai? I remember how we started. Now you’re all razor blades and I’m an angry shrew.”
“No…You’re righteously furious. You’ve always had the high ground, Zeide…You’re right about me and the razors, though.” Most of the time he felt like he was made of razors, bleeding from the inside.
“I’ve always loved your razors, Kai. They’ve cut us out of a number of tangles. But it would be good if one day you could stop bleeding.”
There were many lovely characters and sentiments in this story. However, as much as I liked the world, the worldbuilding was rather complex and dense. There were also so many descriptions of what people were wearing, all the time. Descriptions of locations left me feeling a bit lost, as did the particulars of the different magic systems.
I liked Kai, but I’m a sucker for antiheroes and morally gray characters, and while even though Kai possesses (ha, a little demon humor there) some badass abilities, he is 100% teddy bear. Which will probably make him more sympathetic to some readers, just not as spicy. He is amusing at times, though!
“…why shouldn’t I sit next to a demon?” He turned to Kai. “Will I die if I touch you?”
“No,” Kai said, eyeing him. He seemed utterly sincere. “But don’t touch me.”
As much as I thought I was liking the story, I did find I had to keeping talking myself into picking it back up, so clearly I wasn’t 100% engaged. Then the final resolution of the “current day” timeline felt kind of anticlimactic. The things I mention here stopped me from loving this book, but I certainly still appreciated many things about it.
Jessica Crawford 