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marthawells at 10:59am on 02/08/2025 under review, rising world, upcoming publications, witch king
marthawells at 10:59am on 02/08/2025 under review, rising world, upcoming publications, witch kingWoke up to a fantastic review of Queen Demon in the August Locus. Here's an excerpt:
This is a fantastic novel, set in a fascinating world with truly compelling characters. It is shot through with grief, with the reverberations of destruction and the aftermaths of trauma: While the past timeline gives us emotional focus on the characters’ griefs, immediate traumas, and desperate choices, the present makes plain the extent of the Hierarchs’ destruction of the rest of the world, the scars in the landscape, in societies, in the vanishing of entire cultures. New societies have built themselves out of the ruins, in the shadow of what was lost and in its absences. While we see it particularly from Kai’s perspective, understanding his losses and his wounds, his scars and his griefs, and what healing has been possible for him between the past and the present, it’s not unique to Kai, either. Loss with all its jagged edges looms over this fragile recovery. These scars wear not only upon the main characters but upon their allies and opponents, too: Trauma, both personal and generational, is a strongly motivating factor and a weight that influences most of the personal relationships and many of the political interactions that we see.
-- Liz Bourke, Locus August 2025
Queen Demon is the sequel to Witch King, and it will be out in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook (narrated by Eric Mok, on October 7
This is a fantastic novel, set in a fascinating world with truly compelling characters. It is shot through with grief, with the reverberations of destruction and the aftermaths of trauma: While the past timeline gives us emotional focus on the characters’ griefs, immediate traumas, and desperate choices, the present makes plain the extent of the Hierarchs’ destruction of the rest of the world, the scars in the landscape, in societies, in the vanishing of entire cultures. New societies have built themselves out of the ruins, in the shadow of what was lost and in its absences. While we see it particularly from Kai’s perspective, understanding his losses and his wounds, his scars and his griefs, and what healing has been possible for him between the past and the present, it’s not unique to Kai, either. Loss with all its jagged edges looms over this fragile recovery. These scars wear not only upon the main characters but upon their allies and opponents, too: Trauma, both personal and generational, is a strongly motivating factor and a weight that influences most of the personal relationships and many of the political interactions that we see.
-- Liz Bourke, Locus August 2025
Queen Demon is the sequel to Witch King, and it will be out in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook (narrated by Eric Mok, on October 7
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