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Sign up todayWitch King
The Rising World: Book #1
Narrator
Eric Mok
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Length
13 hours 9 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“A stunning new fantasy from a fantastic author! This story is filled with incredible world-building, a complex magic system, friendship, trust, and betrayal, and it explores what it takes to win a revolution and then destroy it. Wells' writing makes you feel instantly connected to the characters. The characters themselves are powerful, inhuman, and dry-humored but deeply connected to each other. This is a great fantasy filled with plenty of action, wit, and charm. The audiobook reader did an incredible job bringing Kai-Enna to life and expressing the character's emotions through his conversations.”
— Melissa • The Well-Read Moose
Bookseller recommendation
“Brilliant character development and world building. Getting better all the time”
— Jeri • Rainy Day Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Immerse yourself in this stand alone dark fantasy by the fantastic Martha Wells! Told in two time-lines, it has dense complex world building and a loveable soul sucking demon! I can't wait to start her Murderbot Diaries as my next read! ”
— Suzanne • Underground Books
Bookseller recommendation
“This is true high fantasy complete with a diverse character list, explanations of magics used, descriptions of the world and the different factions operating to bring about events...The narrator speaking with Kai's POV was fantastic. His voice was perfect and conveyed real feeling through the words. I feel I liked this one so much because I listened to it and may have missed some of the nuances had I just been reading. The story starts with Kai awakening after being murdered. Buy hey, he's a demon and that's how he rolls. The story takes off immediately and through a series of time jumps from present to past and back again, all the information is provided to not only allow the reader to join Kai and his friends on the journey to figure out the mystery of who betrayed them, but how they all met each other and became friends in the first place. These POV time jumps are perfectly aligned to give the reader all the necessary information at just the right moment in the story. ”
— Linda • Love Your Shelf
Bookseller recommendation
“Demons, witches, spirits, realms; Witch King has it all. This exquisite world comes to life under Martha Wells’ craftsmanship. Kai, a Demon trapped on Earth after a devastating multi-realm attack, wakes up in a new body surrounded by people with bad intentions. After disposing of them, he embarks on a journey to find out what the hell happened to him, his found family, and the tenuous new world order he helped to bring about. Witch King is an exciting exploration of revolution, love, and found family. It helped me escape this world for a while, then return with new wonder for the everyday magic here.”
— Izzy • Off the Beaten Path
Bookseller recommendation
“Martha Wells, the Hugo-award winning author of the Murderbot series and the Raksura series delivers a detailed and complex fantasy world with beautifully realized human and non-human cultures and point of view characters, and layers of political intrigue that are as compelling as they are baroque. You won't be able to put down this wonderfully paced fantasy-thriller, which focuses on the love of found families and the bonds that are forged through adversity and triumph, and the dreadful costs that those bonds can lead to. ”
— Jeremy • Borderlands Books
"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.
MARTHA WELLS has written many novels, including the New York Times and USA Today-bestselling Murderbot Diaries series, which has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards. Other titles include Witch King, City of Bones, The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, the Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads and ending with The Harbors of the Sun), and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, and nonfiction.
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Reviews
“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
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