Review of Queen Demon by Martha Wells

Every so often I read a book I had convinced myself I was excited to read only to discover I wasn’t. Not “I was excited but this book let me down” but rather “I thought I was excited, and now I realize that excitement was something else all along!” That, unfortunately, is the fate of Queen Demon by Martha Wells. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Tor in exchange for a review, and I had somehow convinced myself I had loved the first book in this series and was on tenterhooks for this sequel. Oops.

As usual, spoilers for the first book but not this one.

Similar to Witch King, Queen Demon alternates between the past and present. Both timeframes feature Kaiisteron, aka Kai, as the protagonist. The past details Kai’s campaigning with Bashasa to expel the Hierarchs from the Rising World. Along the way, they encounter enemies who should be allies, and Kai has to show them … reason. In the present, Dahin thinks he has uncovered clues as to the whereabouts of the Well of the Hierarchs, their source of magical power. But he isn’t the only one, politically speaking, with an interest in the Well.

I will level with you: I was super excited to start Queen Demon, yet as I read the first few chapters, I found myself confused and increasingly distraught. It didn’t help that I remember hardly anything of Witch King (not Wells’s fault by any means—that is my poor memory for you). Wells provides precious little summary or backstory, so I wouldn’t recommend picking this up without reading the first book and recently…. Beyond that, however, I was just … bored? Like I didn’t feel invested at all in either timeframe or Kai’s missions.

So I went back and reread my review of Witch King, something I should have done before, only to discover that I gave it only three stars (I thought, for some reason, it had been a five-star read), and suddenly it all made sense. I had the same issue last year with Wheel of the Infinite, a considerably older fantasy novel by Wells recently republished by Tor.

I think Wells’s approach to writing fantasy isn’t quite for me, which is a shame, because there is a lot I like about it! I actually think Kai is a super cool character, not to mention Tahren and Ziede. The ideas behind the demons and the underearth, the Wells and the expositors and Hierarchs, etc., are all very solid. Finally, Wells is very talented at setting up political intrigue and making it feel very real and complicated.

And yet … Witch King featured a great deal of Kai’s coming-of-age as Enna and a cousin of the Saredi. Readers get to see him come to terms with his life among mortals, see those hopes dashed, and then see him compromise as he fights back against the Hierarchs. There’s a significant change in Kai along the way. Not so with Queen Demon: the Kai of the two time periods herein is relatively the same, and neither experiences much that challenges them to grow.

Indeed, none of the characters in Queen Demon is all that different from start to finish. The past time period is a brief episode during the war, and it’s interesting enough but doesn’t do much. The present time period has a lackadaisical pacing belying its supposedly urgent quest, and Kai and his comrades are mostly just there more so than driving anything forward themselves.

All of this leaves me … shrugging. I just read a fantasy novel, yep, but to what end? With each Murderbot Diaries story, it feels like Wells is saying something interesting about personhood while also telling a neat science fiction/action adventure story. With Witch King and Queen Demon, I feel like Wells is reaching for something interesting about personhood in the form of Kai; at the same time, I don’t think she succeeds as well as with her other series.

Queen Demon is, to be clear, a perfectly competent high fantasy novel. I can totally see why so many dig it. I want to dig it. But I don’t. If you found the first book confusing, or you are put off by a lot of names with little exposition, it’s not going to be for you. If you want deep, aching characterization with high stakes for your characters, I don’t think you’ll find that here.