Review: The Witch King

 

I liked almost everything about this book. Asalin and the rest of the magical world present a fresh, creative approach to the fae that carries the feeling of a fae story, as well as some of the traditional elements like changelings and bargains, without feeling like any fae story you’ve read before. It also integrates technology and the rest of the modern world in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen – most urban fantasy novels bend over backwards trying to explain why technology doesn’t work. Wyatt is also pretty unique as far as transgender leads go. His experience with gender isn’t watered down or simplified for a cisgender reader, and he doesn’t tolerate any assumptions about his experience, either – in fact, he directly shoots down the straightforward “born in the wrong body” narrative. And the plot develops slowly enough to allow the reader to get to know Wyatt as a character, as well as the world of Asalin and Wyatt’s experiences both as a trans person and a witch.

    In fact, the plot doesn’t really become clear until the end of the book – which did make the ending feel a little bit chaotic and rushed. It didn’t seem like the plot and the emotional ramifications totally had time to play out enough to make it feel satisfying, and I would have appreciated either a longer ending or maybe just ending the first book earlier and giving the end drama of this one its own book to play out. Also, although in general the world-building was pretty solid, there were a couple of things missing for me.

    First, the whole plot basically revolves around how witches like Wyatt are discriminated against in fae society. Wyatt faces that discrimination on a regular basis, and it’s also the reason for most of his trauma. But it doesn’t seem like we as the reader ever see why exactly it is that the fae hate witches so much, or at least what the arguments are against them. Are they seen as unnatural? Was there some kind of major conflict in the past between the two groups? When a marginalized group is under attack in society the more privileged group typically comes up with justifications for the continued oppression, and it wasn’t super clear what that justification was meant to be.

    On a somewhat related note, fae society is also fairly conservative when it comes to the gender binary; Wyatt doesn’t expect his identity to be respected and regularly encounters microaggressions. But again, why this is the case is really unclear. At one point in the book Wyatt explicitly mentions that because fae are from another world their society doesn’t include pervasive racism like human society does (though human society may have rubbed off on fae society). So then why are fae ideas of gender so similar to human ones? It seems quite logical to me that a society from another world that had never encountered humans would have developed its own ideas about gender as well, so I don’t understand  why those aren’t present. Now, none of these things ruined the book or anything like that, but I would have liked to see them addressed. Regardless, I’m still quite excited to read the next book, and would definitely recommend this one.