The story of Kai, Ziede, and the humans and others in Martha Wells’s rich secondary fantasy world continues
Queen Demon drops us right into the action without preamble or prologue or recap.¹ This novel, like its predecessor, is set both in the present and in the past, something that surprised me. However, unlike in the previous novel, the past portions of this one don’t range across the entire life of Kai; rather, they are more narrowly focused, and to thematic effect. In the past, Kai is ramping up to be part of the ultimate struggle against the Hierarchs, the oppressive empire bent on world conquest and conversion to their way of life.² The first book, Witch King, jumped “around” the actual fall of the Hierarchs and how people came together to defeat them. This had the effect of the present day being purely aftermath and the actual rise and fall not as detailed as it might be. This novel takes a look at that portion of Kai’s history. It’s an important and long story of its own, and I see why Wells didn’t even go into it in the first novel, and instead showcased that entire important story here, although I can see how that might have frustrated readers of Witch King.
As for the portions set in the present, it’s about 60 years afterwards. The Hierarchs are beaten, driven away. But their remnants might yet linger, and what of their lost power? Can it be salvaged and used? Does it need to be sealed up even more firmly, like capping an oil well? And what are the costs and risks of doing either of those things? Kai gets caught up in one of his companions’ quest to find the Well, and the consequences of doing so.
So, while Witch King is a variety of things, ranging from a “coming of age” to “coming together to fight an oppressor” combined with a mystery and slow unveiling of Kai and his world, Queen Demon assumes you know all this and are ready for another installment. If we are thinking in musical terms, Witch King was the opening movement in the symphony, introducing us to what Wells is cooking up here. But Queen Demon is different. Queen Demon shows us some nuanced aspects of Kai’s theme, seeing just how difficult it is to get a diverse and often warring group of people to get together to face a common threat. Wells makes this subtext explicit by having Kai and his core companions realize that that is the power of the Hierarchs and their empire—they are counting on the their opponents’ inability to unite their powers effectively. So Past Kai’s goal and mission is to do that. His special focus as the novel progresses are the dust witches, who do not trust the others at all, and are in fact a threat in and of themselves. Kai has a lot of work to do in order to get them on his side. He might have beaten a couple of the Hierarchs already, but it takes more than a village to defeat an authoritarian regime backed by a Power.
In the other part of this movement of the symphony, in the present, Dahin, one of Kai’s oldest friends, is determined to find the source of the Hierarchs’ power. This theme in the symphony is concerned heavily with the costs and needs and necessities of power. One might say that the past narrative thread, as already discussed, is all about political and social power, how to accumulate it, concentrate it, and use it for good. The present-day thread is more concerned with the costs of magical power. We get plenty of detail in both threads, but especially the present day, about Kai’s power and what it costs him to use cantrips and intentions, the two main types of magical “spells”.
There are other ways to get that power, and understanding it and its cost in the case of the Hierarch’s Well is Dahin’s focus, and his obsession is what drags Kai, Ziede and company in a quest to find the Hierarch’s power source. After all, if the Well still exists, someone might resurrect their project. The power from the Well seems bottomless (at perhaps an even higher cost), and the lure and temptation are very real indeed. Kai begins to suspect, as the present-day narrative goes on, that others rather than Dahin might be very interested in getting the power of the Well… and becoming new Hierarchs themselves.³
The past narrative is all about how the band got together to defeat the Hierarchs; there is no doubt that Kai will succeed, only how and what will it cost him and those around him. The present narrative, in a “what’s next?” way of pulling the reader forward, was at times more intriguing from a plotwise perspective—just what the heck is the deal with the Well? Why is Dahin so obsessed? And what are the other agendas in play here? The author does a great job in making the past and present narratives resonate and have their themes speak to each other across time, allowing for a rich, braided story.
This is the point where I pitch the Raksura novels to readers unaware of them. In the time between the end of the Ile-Rien novels and her phoenix-like fulmination and rise with Murderbot, Wells wrote a number of things, some of which are coming back to print. My favorite of those are the novellas (and a couple of novels) of the Raksura sequence. They’re not in the same setting as the Rising World,⁴ but a rich secondary fantasy world of its own. Our main character Moon is a shapeshifting Raksura, who, at the beginning of The Cloud Roads (first in the series), doesn’t even know who or what he really is, only to hide his nature. The story of The Cloud Roads is for Moon to find his people, to uneasily make a place among them. The rest of the stories are their adventures as the Raksura eventually return to their homeland, and the threats, opportunities, friends, enemies, allies and wonders to be found there.
The Rising World novels and the books of the Raksura (or the Three Worlds, as they are called internally) have a lot in common: rich secondary world fantasy, full of characters and relationships (often thorny); a layered universe with a deep history that can come rising to the surface, for good or for ill; a focused point of view on a character who often is, or feels like, an outsider. What’s more, both Kai and Moon are not human, but often have to live among humans, deal with humans, and come to terms with humanity (or humanoids in the case of the Raksura).
Readers of Queen Demon who love the action and adventure against the Hierarchs and their remnants, both past and present, are going to love the Raksura books and stories, the struggles against the Fell, exploring ancient ruins, dealing with dread magics. Readers of these two novels who love the interdynamics of Kai and Ziede, of the cultures where Kai lives throughout his long demonic life, will love the thorny interpersonal relationships of the clans of Raksura, both within and between clans.
As good as the Three Worlds/Raksura series is, and I love it to pieces,⁵ I think that the Rising World books further exercise and strengthen Wells’s secondary world fantasy skills and are even better written. These books are very different from the Murderbot series: even with a narrow point of view, they feel much more expansive than the tight, snarky in-the-mind of Murderbot that we get in their books.⁶ It will take a gear shift for readers who came to Wells for Murderbot to try the Rising World (or the Raksura series), but I sure think it is worthwhile. Wells has a lot of arrows in her quiver, and with Queen Demon, continues to hone the arrow of secondary world fantasy.
The book is a nice and full pair to the first novel, Witch King, but the ending of this one leaves a big open door for further books set in the Rising World. It’s a big setting, there’s a lot out there, and we’ve not explored every inch of Kai’s history. I would love to continue Kai’s story, especially since this post-Hierarch world and its struggles covers something rarely seen: what happens after you defeat the big bad and seal evil back in the can. Happily Ever After takes work to avoid backsliding. Queen Demon, in its present tense, starts to tackle that problem, but it is far from barely beginning. More, please!
Highlights:
- Continues the story of Kai, Ziede and the Rising World ’verse
- Important themes about how to come to together to defeat evil, as well as what happens afterwards, showing an important part of Kai’s life not seen in the first book
- Shows the range of the writer beyond the popular confines of the Murderbot ’verse.
Reference: Wells, Martha. Queen Demon [Tor Books, 2025].
¹ I’ve lamented about this before and I do think that this novel could have used it. It had been a minute since I read Witch King, and while Ziede and Kai and the Hierarchs’ threat were fresh and permanent in my mind, the other characters and other setup of the book were less certain. And yes, this means you cannot really start the series here. You will be lost. There are some references dropped in here and there, but the novel assumes you know what Kai and Ziede are, and the geopolitical setup, as well as some basic facts about Demons and Witches. If you don't know who the Saredi are, or that Witches are descended from Demons and humans, then you are going to be lost and miss some important beats.
² The Hierarchs and their methods and structure remind me of a more magically focused Palliseen (from the Adrian Tchaikovsky books): implacable empire, with an ideology, but in this case backed by a Power.
³ Having a Power backing your magic puts me in mind of the Amber diceless roleplaying game (Pattern, Logrus, etc). If that reference is too obscure, consider 5e warlocks and their pact bonds. Now imagine them pacting to a place of power rather than to a being, and you can see how the Hierarchs work.
⁴ I’ve given this serious thought as a worldbuilder, without actually asking Wells. If the Raksura shared the same setting with the Rising World, it’d have to be on the far side of the planet, on another continent, but the magic systems and lines of power do not correspond. I think the history of the Rising World forestalls it being the same setting.
⁵ I’ve mentioned before that I might not be a fanfic writer, but I borrow ideas and things from books to put into my TTRPGs. The Raksura and Fell wound up in a TTRPG scenario I ran, sticking them in the old Forbidden City Module. The PCs wound up getting caught up in their conflict.
⁶ Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy is a new novelette that breaks this, and gives us a point of view entirely divorced from Murderbot’s.
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
