(no subject)

[skygiants]

I tried very hard to go into reading Witch King without thinking too much about MZDS or The Untamed, and I did not at all succeed despite the fact that beyond the initial starting point of "notorious demon guy gets woken up after being dead for a while and has to spend some time in a new body solving the mystery of Why" they really don't have much in common. Martha Wells has redefined the word 'demon' to her own purposes and built a whole culture around it that is part of a broader complex political dynamic and magical system, which has always been one of her strengths as a fantasy writer, and is good and interesting. She is also exploring the aftermath and recovery of a major generational catastrophe and the way that the scars of that do and don't heal over the course of a couple of generations, and that's interesting. And her prose of course is always pleasant and readable. In and of itself, this book should have worked well.

I don't think it does work -- or at least, it didn't work for me -- and in trying to figure out why I did against all my best intentions keep going back to MDZS.

Like MDZS, this is a braided-timelines book: we are introduced to someone with a Notorious Reputation and certain existing relationships at a certain point in their life, and the current plotline in which that person unravels a mystery is intertwined with the story of that person's youth and the decisions they made that led to the acquisition of the Notorious Reputation and the state of their relationships.

At all points in the novel, these timelines are directly talking to each other. The first scene in the present introduces the protagonist and some important relationships and the ways that Wei Wuxian thinks about those people in relation to himself at the end of the story; the first scene in the past re-introduces those important relationships and the very different way that Wei Wuxian thought about those people at that time, which already recontextualizes some of the information that we just received about the present day. Right away, we have a compelling tension: how did we get from Point A to Point B? How will the things we learn, as readers, about the past, shed new light on the things that we have seen happen in the present, and make us understand the characters differently?

The first scene in Witch King introduces the protagonist and his most important relationships in the present -- the best friend who's been woken up with him, and two other people that they're very worried about -- but when we go back to the past, it's too early to meet any of those people. Instead, we're introduced to a different set of characters and a completely different context, none of which has been mentioned by Kai in the present-day context: structurally, that already leads me to expect that these characters, and this context, will not be important for long, and therefore I probably shouldn't emotionally attach to them. Nothing in that first scene in the past hooks into any of what we just saw in the present. It elucidates the protagonist's backstory and draws an interesting culture, but it doesn't set up tension, or build attachment to and interest in the rest of the cast.

The braided timelines in the book felt a bit to me like a zipper that doesn't really zip. It's not that either the present or past timeline is bad per se; it's just that they don't even begin to resonate with each other until towards the end of the book. They're not holding each other up structurally the way that they should. Moreover, though past-timeline Kai does eventually meet the characters who will be important to him in the present, all the meat of their relationships to him and to each other is set after the end of what we get in the past timeline, which makes it feel like emotional center of the book is just missing. There's no moment of cathartic understanding, as far as the character dynamics go; no point where seeing how characters interacted in the past made me look at their present-day relationships differently. The perpetrator of the mystery is someone we meet in the past, but since present day Kai had literally never thought about that person before they reappeared again at the end of the book, it didn't really hit as a betrayal the way I think it was supposed to.

The moments that did hit for me -- and there were several! -- mostly had to do with haunted places: scenes where we'd see Kai visit an abandoned location in the present and then contrast that against what happened there in the past, like the camera in Titanic panning up and down from a drowned ballroom to a crowded one. Some of those bits made me feel like I understood what Wells was trying to do with the book, and got me thematically interested in the way that a society reshapes itself around massive trauma. It's the tension of contrast again: it doesn't have to be about characters, in some ways character tension is the lowest-hanging fruit, it can be about locations, or cultures, or all kinds of things to be effective. But again that doesn't happen until midway; I think maybe what is supposed to be propelling the tension in the early part of the book is just Kai himself going from Naive to Grim, and that was not enough to hook me in because there's nothing unexpected about it, that's what protagonists do.

Either way, I am glad that I finally got around to reading it; although I think it's a structural swing and a miss, it got me to think about structure in ways I probably would not have done if I hadn't read it.

Comments

[lacewood]

omg, someone else who has read BOTH BOOKS. I read this in December and then spent so long mentally chewing on why it wasn't working for me that I ended up writing a post just to get it off my chest orz

I agree with a lot of your thoughts about why the ideas are good but the book as a whole doesn't quite work, I think many of the elements are classic Wells but the braiding structure was more complicated than her usual and maybe she couldn't quite figure out how to pull it off.

(I have a very specific and prescriptive thought that Kai's demon species background is actually TOO complicated and she should have simplified it to cut the origin chapters because - /waves hands crankily before she writes an entire essay on why both timelines feel like the WRONG section of the timeline)

[skygiants]

aha thank you I have now found your post and I also agree with your thoughts!

(NO I THINK YOU'RE RIGHT, like the demon species background thing is very cool but I do think a HUGE part the way the braiding doesn't work is the fact that the origin chapters set everything off-balance by introducing a ton of elements that don't have any weight in the present. We are getting the wrong sections of the timeline! Everything is mis-aligned so that the timelines aren't talking to each other! I keep coming back to film terminology but basically the book needs so many more match cuts.)

[chestnut_pod]

I had the same problem, but I think the opposite affective way -- the culture and characters of the past struck me as so much more rich and interesting than anyone, including Kai, in the present! So I had the same feeling of "why are we bothering with this structural device, then?"

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think if we'd been introduced to the backstory first/without the present story I wouldn't have had anywhere near as difficult a time sinking into it, because you're right, it was more interesting and the characters were more interesting in it! The present story felt like it set up this mystery and then decided that it was okay for that to be the only narrative engine, and unfortunately the mystery in and of itself just did not have the horsepower to keep things going.

[radiantfracture]

I find these useful thoughts in thinking through structure -- of course it makes sense to choose or build moments that resonate with one another along a key formal route -- I'm often working intuitively, so it's a great principle to bring into revision. For example, if people don't come back, there should be a pressing reason they don't come back.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I also am often working intuitively when writing and I feel like the way I learn best is by figuring out what does/doesn't work for me in other books ... will I then put what I am thinking about into practice in my own works? UNCLEAR but it does feel like at least knowing the tools are there makes it a little more likely.

[rydra_wong]

Moreover, though past-timeline Kai does eventually meet the characters who will be important to him in the present, all the meat of their relationships to him and to each other is set after the end of what we get in the past timeline, which makes it feel like emotional center of the book is just missing. There's no moment of cathartic understanding, as far as the character dynamics go; no point where seeing how characters interacted in the past made me look at their present-day relationships differently.

AHA. Thank you for articulating this; it pins down a lot of why the book didn't ever grab me, even while it kept being interesting and readable.

"notorious demon guy gets woken up after being dead for a while and has to spend some time in a new body solving the mystery of Why"

It's also interesting that Kai is dead for such a short period (relatively speaking). "Character comes back from the dead" feels like it should be a set-up for a big time jump, with him discovering that characters have changed in significant ways or are in different situations since he last saw them, but that barely happens; he was around and involved for almost all the time that stretches between the past timeline and the present one.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I was really surprised by how little of a timegap there was to fit the Mystery into -- once again, it sort of raises the question for me of why we are starting in res this particular media? what makes this point in time an interesting and relevant Change to focus on?

and you can of course fit interesting questions into a short period of time ("what happened after I got blackout drunk at that party last night" is tried and true) but when the span of the story as a whole is so long, it does feel a bit mismatched ...

[shati]

I considered reading this just because I liked the MDZS braid, so this is good to know.

Sorry to demand more comparison after you've said they aren't that similar, but I'm curious now and not sorry enough not to: I agree the beginning of MDZS creates tension with the past/present contrast in individual character relationships, but I think also with the contrast between Wei Wuxian's reputation (which the past has to explain) and ... Wei Wuxian -- does that compare (or contrast ...) at all to the Naive to Grim? Or is the protagonist just sort of being naive/grim in a corner, unobserved?

[skygiants]

It was honestly very hard for me to tell! the protagonist definitely has a Reputation in the future but I wasn't sure at all how much we were meant to read the rep as blown out of proportion or inaccurate to actual events because it seems like in most cases the rep is "scary but we respect him" rather than "Disney villain" & the one thing he does that crosses a cultural line is a line only in his culture so it doesn't matter to most of the people he's interacting with ... & like there's definitely a Sucks Life Force Out Of Enemies || Acts Kindly And Ethically To Small Children contrast to his behavior broadly speaking but again that reads as pretty standard protagonist stuff to me, there certainly isn't the immediate "this guy is scary! ... wait, this guy is the one who's supposed to be scary?" that you get with WWX.

[lizbee]

I don't know MDZS, but I didn't finish The Witch King because I simply couldn't follow it. I couldn't figure out the context or the characters, and Wells is also very bad at establishing settings, so everything was essentially happening in a void as far as my mind's eye could tell. (This is also a problem I have with Murderbot, but at least there I'm in no doubt of whose narrative I'm following.)

[skygiants]

I also have 'talking head in a void' problems when writing so I can't really in justice complain too much about setting, but I feel quite justified in complaining that I couldn't latch on to the characters, which is not usually a problem I have with Wells!

[princessofgeeks]

I enjoyed it very much but like you the intertwined timelines did not work for me at all.

And I kept thinking that the most interesting parts of the story happened offstage or were already over by the time this novel happened.

But I did really enjoy it and will reread someday.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it really feels like the most interesting things happened in the gap between timelines that the story didn't cover -- and I've gotten a vague impression from comments on this & other posts that perhaps there's intended to be a sequel, but a.) it's not marketed that way or indeed as anything but a standalone which really calibrates expectations in a certain way and b.) the first book in a series still has to work as a book ....

[starlady]

Yeah I think this was ultimately a lesser book and I was sort of surprised to see it make the Hugo shortlist. I enjoyed it and read it in like two sittings, but I think you've hit on the underlying reasons why it didn't quite grab me emotionally. I also wonder to what extent the sequel will resolve/smooth over some of these difficulties retroactively; it also felt like it ended somewhat abruptly to me.

[skygiants]

Honestly, I wasn't surprised to see it make the awards shortlists despite that it's probably the least favorite book of hers that I've read -- I think Wells has reached the point in her career where more or less everything she writes is going to just purely based on name recognition. And on the one hand in an ideal world name recognition would not be the main criterion for the Hugo shortlist; on the other hand she's certainly earned her success and there are writers whose lesser works would annoy me MUCH more to see as an auto-nomination on a ballot.

As a sidenote, this comment & another DW post I saw yesterday were the first indications I had received that a sequel was expected ...

[sovay]

Moreover, though past-timeline Kai does eventually meet the characters who will be important to him in the present, all the meat of their relationships to him and to each other is set after the end of what we get in the past timeline, which makes it feel like emotional center of the book is just missing.

Ack.

(I haven't read the novel, the unzippedness of the timelines from one another just sounds rough. It doesn't even sound like the kind of book where two apparently unrelated narratives converge. They're related just enough to be frustrating.)

[skygiants]

Right -- as you say, I was thinking about this in context of 'several apparently-unrelated POVs' books, which I don't think need to structurally talk to each other across chapters in the same way a braided-timeline book does; those just have to all be compelling enough narratives in and of themselves that the reader isn't like 'ugh X again, I could be spending time with Y'. I think the time thing is harder because it runs such a risk of feeling like the past timeline doesn't matter; the timelines need to be in conversation in order for both of them to feel like they have forward motion, whereas two apparently unrelated but converging stories can each march merrily along on their own.

[rydra_wong]

all the meat of their relationships to him and to each other is set after the end of what we get in the past timeline, which makes it feel like emotional center of the book is just missing.

Yeah, I don't know whether there's a sense that ... hmm, we are all fanfic literate, so we can infer the Grand Romances that are about to happen without them being depicted onscreen for us? I can see the logic of trying that, deciding that maybe it's more interesting to explore the characters' first meetings and the moments before that starts, but it still ends up feeling there's an emotional weight that should be in the book somewhere and (for me) wasn't.

[rydra_wong]

I can see the logic of trying that, deciding that maybe it's more interesting to explore the characters' first meetings and the moments before that starts

And thinking about it further: that feels like something that actually could really work for me. You know, take it up to the point where you see the first UST/romantic tension (or intensity of platonic bond or spiky antagonism -- I could go for something that made me go "WTF, those two got together???"), but leave the resolution inferred as something that happens in the gap between timelines.

But it doesn't go quite that far; it gets them to "initial trust and working together", but not to a point where I felt I had any particular investment in these particular relationships.

[sgac]

I was very surprised to find I was at the end of the book. Wait, what? But there's stuff we haven't done! There's relationships we haven't explored! There's guns still on the mantelpiece! If it had been called Book One of the Demon Trilogy, I would have been fine.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I would have at least understood a lot more what the structure was intended to be!

[merit]

Neither storyline felt sufficiently robust to be story by themselves. The past has some interesting elements but spanned such a great period of time/events/characters. The present storyline then just rushed through events. I like unreliable narrators but this felt more like keeping secrets from the reader.

[skygiants]

I didn't even feel like Kai was particularly unreliable tbh, I think I would have enjoyed it more if he were! Something a past/present timeline shift can do very well is highlight the ways a narrator is unreliable, and I think I would have enjoyed the structure better if it was giving me some kind of insight in that way.

[kate_nepveu]

you were much more thoughtful about it than I, I basically shrugged and said "either her bills grab me from page one or they don't, and this one didn't, oh well."

(the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy is great, though)

[skygiants]

I gotta go back and read more of her fantasy stuff from pre-Murderbot days because I have broadly speaking really enjoyed the ones of those I've read!

[larryhammer]

Now I want to go back and do a similar structural analysis of The Dispossessed ...

[skygiants]

YOU SHOULD and I would love to see it!

[schneefink]

Great job putting into words why the two timelines didn't quite work for me. I was especially disappointed that I didn't feel like the betrayal at the end was particularly affecting, I usually love that kind of thing.

[skygiants]

Yeah, same! I wanted to be hit by it but felt nothing but mild regret.

[asakiyume]

I haven't read The Witch King, but I have watched The Untamed, and I really appreciate what you've written here about the structure! I consumed the series in the most naive, passive-viewer sort of way... but it's a pleasure to see how it works on a more sophisticated level, and I am definitely nodding my head and agreeing that if you use that structure, you really do want the pieces to interlock and resonate in the way you describe. Fascinating.

One of the earlier commenters mentioned the most exciting things happening off screen. That's something that comes up with surprising frequency in books, and I'm wondering what that means about the authors' conceptions of the stories: why is it that the things that [at least some] readers anticipate as prime moments aren't what the author ends up focusing on?

[skygiants]

I always feel a bit disingenuous writing this kind of critique, tbh, because I know how easily I could fall into the same pit traps -- there are definitely times that I know in my head that a moment should appear on page in order to be interesting or exciting, but I the writer don't feel confident in my ability to pull it off in a way that will live up to the hype and so I dodge it! I'm quite bad at action scenes, for example, so if I can possibly find a way not to write them I will ... even when I know if I was doing my own critique, I'd be shaking my head at myself for not putting the most exciting bits into the story ....

[rydra_wong]

How will the things we learn, as readers, about the past, shed new light on the things that we have seen happen in the present, and make us understand the characters differently?

Whch gets underutilized, I think -- we get more information on the characters' backstories as we proceed, but I don't really recall any moments where something we've seen gets dramatically recontextualized.

[skygiants]

I kept waiting for it to happen and it never does!

[sophia_sol]

ok so this is a FASCINATING analysis, I say as someone who has actually not yet read Witch King. I do intend to! I have heard some intriguingly diverse opinions on how well it works as a book, and I think the things you say about the failures of the braid of time periods makes a lot of sense as a failure point for it. mdzs does SUCH a good job of zippering its timelines in resonant ways and a failure to make that work is definitely a failure in a book that's trying to do a multi-timeline thing, as good as the content itself might be!

[skygiants]

I'll be really curious about your thoughts whenever you get around to it! I do think it's interesting to look at in light of what it's trying to do.

[bookblather]

I got very jealous of the worldbuilding and did a lot of thinking about it, which I think is why the disconnect in the timelines didn't get to me; they were exploring more of the world that I was interested in. I didn't care much about these people I didn't know, but there was more world stuff, so I think it worked better for me.