We at Grumpy Nation have been huge Martha Wells fans since high school. She was a must buy for #1 and an occasional read for #2 (who grumbled "sausage fest" about Death of a Necromancer). I checked hardbacks out of the library as soon as they came available and bought the paperbacks (and occasional hardback!) as soon as I could and read and reread.
At the time she was writing really interesting fantasy, generally new and different fantasy not set in Lord of the Rings fan fic worlds. There were vast deserts and lush riverlands. Time spun differently. Sometimes it wasn't clear what was magic and what wasn't. She was sometimes similar to Zelazny in good ways -- you were always thrown in the world (no need for an American to be transported there) and you generally didn't figure everything out until the very end.
Death of the Necromancer was a bit different in that it was set in a standard Steampunk universe (though note from the link there it's an early Steampunk book)... though also, as we find out in the Raksura trilogy, it's actually much larger. (Also I'm still annoyed about who she killed off and how between those books. Makes Death of a Necromancer a true sausage fest.)
These books (with the exception of Death of a Necromancer) are generally not easy reads. They require thinking and memory and probably some level of intelligence.
I bought, but did not read, The Cloud Roads series which was her last series before she went silent, re-emerging as the best-selling Murderbot author. They looked hard, and they were about dragons and I'm not really into dragon books (and at the time the US markets weren't either-- they were into Vampires, dragons having finally gone out of fashion a few years prior). DH read the first one for me and said I probably wouldn't enjoy it so I didn't make it a priority.
I've reread Death of a Necromancer several times since having children, but haven't actually reread the other dusty Martha Wells novels on my shelf. (It doesn't help that I loaned a few to DH in college and he gave them to his brother so I no longer have the full set that I used to have.) I've only read the Raksura books once, and only while traveling. They're just to hard to read and keep up with everything else going on in my life. I read crappy romance novels that follow tropes where it's obvious what is going on, everyone knows how they're going to end before they start, and I'm so familiar with the shared trope-ic setting that my brain can fill in any missing pieces.
(I admit, I have not read Murderbot either. DH has read them all. #2 has read them all. I will probably get around to reading them, but DH says they're not really my thing and he's usually right. My understanding is that as novellas, they're a bit easier on the brain than her usual fare. Which is possibly why they took off to stratospheric heights while her earlier work was just popular. More accessible, though not necessarily actually better.)
But Witch King is her first new fantasy book in years and I had to get it. I actually got it from the library since Christmas is 6 months away and I wasn't sure what format I wanted it in (all of my Martha Wells books except The Cloud Roads are in paper, not kindle). It took about a week, but I have finished it. And I have Thoughts.
First off: I don't think it's a good idea to get the kindle version. They didn't include X-ray, so it is pretty clunky to get to the first pages of the book where it lists the dramatis personae. You may have a better memory than I do, but I really needed that list. X-ray where I could easily skip to the last time we saw that person would have been even better.
Some minor spoilers below:
The book is actually two novellas that have been interlaced with each other. One is about the past. One is set in the present.
What really doesn't work for me is the interlacing generally happens at cliff-hangers rather than natural stopping points. You'll get to a really exciting part and then BAM suddenly you're back to the present time and trying to remember what the cliffhanger a chapter ago was, OR you're in the present and hit a cliff-hanger and need to remember what the cliffhanger in the past was 3-5 chapters ago. It is unnecessarily hard on my brain. [DH notes that sometimes the present has a chapter that ends in a cliffhanger and then the next chapter doesn't pick up from the cliff! He's like here's what you were complaining about but it's on the next page.]
I don't think the book would actually be improved by reading all of the past chapters first and then all the present chapters next. The past chapters are much more thrilling than the present chapters [DH notes that the first two past chapters are contained prologues and not that exciting, and I will agree they are not as exciting], and I think that ordering would be a bit of a let-down. I do plan to try this in the future, however.
The book has the standard Martha Wells compelling characters, exciting scenes, being thrown directly into the world, and not really knowing what was going on until the end. Unfortunately, for the present-day storyline I'm not 100% sure I really got what happened in the end. DH is checking the hardback out from the library (huge lines for the audio version and the ebook, but their single paper copy was actually in stock) and he will read it and explain it to me to see if I got it right. (If I got it right, the present day ending is a bit of an out-of-nowhere let-down. If not, then it's probably cool and interesting.)
It's shorter than most pre-Murderbot novels. I think she could have easily made an epic fantasy trilogy with this world, these events, and the events that happened between the two novellas (which could have been your standard Star Wars style: battle/empire strikes back/victory, though the events in the present time are actually post-victory). But I don't think that would have sold well with the Murderbot audience. And it's risky to try. It's not clear to me that there's another obvious book in this series, so it may be a one-off, like so many of her earlier works. Though there are a lot of unanswered questions leftover, including one that seems like a teaser.
Also: The Witch King is definitely not a sausage-fest. The world is at least 50% female, maybe more. And gender is a spectrum. Gay marriage is normal and important for the book's plot (in fact, is part of the present-day MacGuffin).
Are you a Martha Wells fan? Have you tried Witch King? How do you like your fantasy?
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