Witch King (Rising World)

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Kai is a fascinating character who exhibits a wry sense of humor, making Witch King fun to read in places, such as in the following exchange: One other specific aspect of the worldbuilding I want to call attention to is Kai’s body-shifting. Kai has both a demon body in the underearth, the underground region where demons dwell, as well as various human bodies he inhabits in the world above. Some of those human bodies are male, some are female. Wells hasn’t necessarily written Kai to read like an intentional trans allegory; demons simply don’t care about human genders all that much. I found myself wondering multiple times how Kai might present to trans readers, because Wells did such a good job of both exploring Kai’s experience as well as painting various human cultures in her world as having varying levels of gender conservatism. This meaty complexity makes the story feel more poignant. Witch King doesn’t need a sequel (even though I’d devour one) SD: Right. So, you mentioned world-building. One thing I admire about your world-building is how you allow the listener or reader to discover it sort of organically, via the characters. Tell me a little bit about how you approach world-building in your writing practice. Are you one of those people who lays it all out before you start, or does the evolution kind of happen as you go? The book begins with Kai, the Witch King, awakening in a watery prison. He has to escape, find his friends, and figure out how he ended up there. The story alternates chapters set in the past and chapters set in the present. The reader is dropped into the middle of events, and information about the history and context is spread out throughout the book. This is fine writing and world building. It’s easy to fall in step with Kai and Ziede and the characters who share their quest for a time. Indeed, although it is billed as a standalone novel, I think you will, as I do, hope that Kai and Ziede’s story continues in some form in the future.

I got lost in both good and bad ways when reading the book. I was lost in a bad way in that I never fully grasped what was going on, and I would love a Wikipedia-style blog just for information about the world. However, as I mentioned earlier, when I did some re-reading, things made more sense. MW: I don't know. It's always been something—I was a lonely kid. I was not neurotypical, and at the time when I was growing up in the '70s, there was no diagnosis for girls, for young girls, of ADHD or anything like that. You were just badly behaved and couldn't pay attention and all those kinds of things. They never did think that maybe there was a condition that was causing this. I've always kind of felt isolated a lot. My sister was nine years older than me, so I was alone at home. Our house was isolated by a really busy street from other kids, so I didn't have anybody to play with except at school, and I wasn't getting along there. MW: It's a big influence. Just learning how cultures work and fit together and all the different elements that you have to take into account has really helped me in world-building. How much material culture, the things people use every day and their tools and that kind of thing, really can inform the reader of what the world is like. That's just all been really helpful.This is something that some readers may have trouble with at first, depending on how much handholding you like in your fiction. Wells explains various ideas when they will add the most to the story and not a moment sooner, meaning you’ll likely have lots of questions as you read. That can require a bit of trust that the author won’t leave you hanging. I think I'll just pin it on terrible pacing. I am so disinterested that the bit of humor and banter didn't even make me smile once.

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.MW: I'm definitely writing a sequel. There’s some stuff I set up in the book. I guess to avoid spoilers, I won't tell you what it is. When you read it, I think it's a little bit more obvious what I wanted to enlarge on. I kind of have a habit from when it was very difficult for me to sell books; I don't tend to start a series, I tend to do a standalone book that has the potential to have a sequel so that I don't end up putting out a book with a cliffhanger or there's an unfinished story and then I'm not able to finish it. And so I am writing a sequel now, so hopefully that'll come together as I write. I'm hoping it will. And after that we'll see where it goes next. Sam Danis: Hi, this is Sam Danis. I am Audible’s sci-fi and fantasy editor, and I am just elated to be chatting today with the amazing Martha Wells. Martha is, of course, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the ongoing series the Murderbot Diaries. She is also the author of many works of fantasy, including the Books of the Raksura series, and her latest, the title I'm looking forward to talking about today, Witch King . Thanks so much for being here, Martha. As it was, I was able to figure out who we are fighting and who we aren’t in any given scene, and that was enough to get me through the book, which is basically one long action scene with periodic pauses in which the characters read maps and argue about politics before being flung headlong into another action scene. There’s so much drama that even the quiet scenes feel like action scenes. My favorite moment in the book involved someone finally falling asleep and everyone whispering so as not to wake him up. SD: Yeah, and I think a lot of sci-fi and fantasy listeners can really relate to that feeling. These worlds kind of provide us with very interesting angles to approach that theme. I appreciated that in this novel in particular. Your characters defy gender norms as well. Kai inhabits bodies irrespective of their assigned sex or gender identity during life. We also see a lot of gender norms kind of turned on their head in Witch King. A lot of nonbinary characters in your work as well. Why is that kind of representation important to you?