Witch King

It is HARD to immerse yourself into this story. It's like wanting to dive into a pool only to realize the top is frozen solid ice. This obviously leads to a lot of problems. 70%, 80% 90% into the book I still felt like I barely know who these characters were and the depths of their relationships to one another.

It's not that they are two dimensional or the world is underdeveloped. I have a feeling the opposite is true. The author has this entire world and story fleshed out in her head but had trouble translating the complexities and details into text. She seems to have forgotten that the rest of us are unfamiliar with this world and its rules and therefore need some sort of explanation to the concepts and cultures she presents. (Or maybe I'm just giving her too much credit coz I wanted desperately to like this book).

There is barely any cultural context to anything that happens in this book and the author doesn't seem interested in answering any of the questions she leaves us with. (Again, I chalk this up to her knowing all of these in her mind and tricking herself into thinking that it's common knowledge).

There are so many stories I would rather hear about in this world than the one she told us. Tell us about the war between the Demons and the Saredi and how Grandmother ended it. Tell us about Bashasa and the rise of the Rising World coalation. Tell us about the first coming of the Heirarchs and their full story until their defeat. Tell us about how Kai lost his demon body or Grandmother lost her human body and what that means to them and how the world sees them.

The story we got felt flimsy and pointless in comparison. The high points fell flat. The reveals, boring. I just wanted to finish reading this book and move on to the next.

What else? The pacing is bad. There is no sense of the passage of time. The dual timelines of past and present feel entirely too separate. I cannot for the life of me tell you where the climax of this story was.

I feel like there is a good story somewhere in here if you just restructure, focus more on certain events, give us a little bit more insight into the motivations of some characters, and leave less things up for interpretation.

Overall, I was very very disappointed. But I won't give up on you, Martha Wells. I will continue to read The Murderbot Diaries.