Reviews and Comments

On the surface, this may seem like military SF, but really, it's more about trauma, and radicalization, and cults, and personal growth. It's well-written, too. When following the perspective of an initially angry teenager as she then changes as a person, it is possible to lay things on too thick, but Tesh manages to do it just right.

This sort of shifting perspective also makes the worldbuilding of the setting interesting. The view of the novel's world is colored by the characters' biases, and how those biases shift, and those shifts play a role in the overall plot. The overall plot is perhaps a bit of the standard SF fare, but the way it is told through the arcs of the characters involved is what makes it compelling.

This book stands out in both its approach to the kind of plot and setting it employs, and also in doing what other SF novels may attempt to do, but in this case doing it exceptionally well.

This book starts with a bunch of absurd humor, and as the story goes on, that humor gets mixed in with the darkness of the dystopian setting and overall plot. It kind of resembles Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls, but whereas that book was more adventure, this one is more dark comedy.

Tchaikovsky does manage to pull off the combination well. The main character, being a robot, brings a bunch of robotic aloofness to the narration, which actually works pretty well with the overall mixture of simultaneously aloof and dark tone of the book. While the main character keeps encountering perhaps too-poignant and neatly tied up episodes of his adventure, like the hero in some sort of a fable (which is where the comparison to Cage of Souls comes to mind), the character is sufficiently compelling to carry the book forward.

The conclusion to the overall plot could perhaps be more satisfying; it, too, tries to be rather poignant. The setting could perhaps be more fleshed out and less fable-like, but it works with the structure of the story.

This novel is a fun action-adventure romp involving starships and a number of colorful characters. It is not a elaborate story with sophisticated story that explores complex themes of political or philosophical nature. Sometimes you want a fun action-adventure romp, though, and this book mostly delivers in that area. There's dramatic chases, creepy abandoned facilities, fighting, narrow rescues, cleverly competent problem solving, and other such things.

One complaint is that at times the writing can be a bit too verbose, throwing the pacing off. L. M. Sagas has a habit of writing paragraphs detailing characters' mental state at emotionally fraught moments, but often, instead of conveying the intensity of the character's feelings, it just feels redundant. One could also get into nitpicks about how some of the side characters are a bit flat, or how the plot, devoid of any large gaping holes, nevertheless sometimes takes some liberties for convenience. But, if the book is to be an action-adventure romp, then those additional complaints aren't as big of a deal.

Witch King features a lot of worldbuilding. Its fantasy world is inhabited by different people with different cultures, and people who can different sorts of magic in different sorts of way, and Martha Wells manages to weave details about this world into the story in a way that makes the world feel alive (except for all the dead people).

The setting is also one with a history of dramatic upheavals and epic struggles, though the story is not set during those things. The main narrative is set years after major historical events, whose effects are still felt by the present-day characters. We also get flashbacks of events around the major historical events. In this way, the book tells a history by telling of its aftermath, and the events that preceded it. This is something that could be executed poorly, leaving a disappointing gap, but it actually works pretty well in Witch King.

We also do get a bunch of likeable characters doing an adventure together, which is something Martha Wells does well, and she does not disappoint this time.

This is the kind of book that really gets into worldbuilding, especially in the earlier parts. The reader is introduced to all sorts of weird concepts in the universe, and even if the earlier introductions feel like a bit of a dump, they are smooth—the setting is inventive with its space magic empire, but shows that it is a space magic empire from the get go. The overall concept of the book's universe is, by itself, also captivating.

There are ways to do vast, dystopian interstellar empires well, and there are ways to do them badly. Fortunately, Ninefox Gambit does them well. The story is pretty dark, and the setting is grim, but it doesn't feel gratuitous. Horrible things do happen to characters, but they happen to characters, instead of merely as an arbitrary background violence that punctuates the point. The story feels like it is, appropriately enough, about how people exist within the machineries of empire.