Reviews

The Witch King by H.E. Edgmon

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lilac_moon125's review against another edition

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as many other reviews have said this book is absolutely a mess but i still really liked it and it was also very funny

the_littlest_lion's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

centralia's review against another edition

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This book was fine, I think, just entirely not my thing. It doesn't appeal to me, but I don't believe I'm the intended audience for this book. There's definitely a specific crowd that this book would appeal to, and I hope it finds its way to them. My review's a work-in-progress.

The Main Character-I believe that Wyatt is a well-written character. His inner monologue is as accurate as it is annoying, and you can't tell me he's not listening copiously to Will Wood. I don't care much for his personality nor the decisions he makes, but I think it's worse that his more destructive behavior is either encouraged or unaddressed for the sake of the narrative. He upsets other characters and makes a lot of poor decisions that most of the other characters just let go rather quickly and without discussion. I can understand that Wyatt makes mistakes, that's completely okay, but why does everyone want to make excuses for him? Wyatt goes so far as to say "I'm a complete asshole." (95) like he's just integrated that into his identity, like being an asshole is a personality. I do think it's understandable that he's a very abrasive and defensive person, but he's just not a character I can relate much to personally. I understood him a lot better later in the book, but I think more positive character development would have helped.
The romance was also hard to get behind because this fated mates thing is more than a little bizarre and unhealthy. When baby Emyr is like "if this women raises a hand to him, I'll kill her"(183), and he's referring to his mother...I think it's ridiculous. This extreme emphasis on romantic relationships is entirely absurd. Emyr also says to Wyatt "Look, I want to be with you. Maybe it's ridiculous to you, but I know this is the way things are meant to be. You and I are supposed to make each other happy. And that means, for me, you're it. Whoever or whatever you are. However my life may change because of you. You're it." (295) Personally? Horrifying. I just can't tolerate the fated mates thing, okay? This mentality is not great, especially not for young people. You can live without a lover! You can have a lover and live apart from them! Imagine a cishet man saying what Emyr said if it helps. Just imagine Edward Cullen saying it. You get what I mean. This magical excuse for their relationship really reduces the development of actual chemistry, flirting, and connection between the two. (Oh, and an easy way to tell I'm not the audience for this book: I super don't need to read about 17 year old queer boys having sex, even if it's fade-to-black.)

Writing & Tone- It's hard for me to describe the writing style, but it's noticeable from the first page. There's a lot of Internet slang used, and it could be really dramatic and chaotic in general. So hard to describe if you haven't been around tumblr queers or anyone chronically online. Mind you, I'm not very Internet savvy. I don't know my tumblr from my 4chan, and I've genuinely never read a single fanfic in my life. Anyways, so there might be some personal disconnect there. The antagonists are consistently underwritten, making them into monologuing cartoon villains; all the characters, including the adults and including the narrative itself, speak in the same kind of way; and the writing even goes so far as to explain entire metaphors to the reader (84).
The tone of this book gave me frequent whiplash. We have plenty of kids riding dragons, being horny, and doing whatever fucking hijinks, and then we have "His body looks like it's gone through a blender, scraps of skin torn asunder and decorating the walls of the castle. Blood, muscle tissue, and bone shrapnel lie in puddles across the floor." Personally, I prefer graphic descriptions of gore and violence to serve some more effective purpose than my main character is so awesome and powerful, he just fucking obliterated that guy. Granted that guy had it coming, but also what the hell? Or how about "Organ meat and bone are visible beneath flaps of torn skin, her stomach ripped open." Although of course she's healed (*cough*deus ex machina*cough*) and her partner is immediately making dumb jokes, and then they're fine and in love again. Tonally, it's super fucking weird. Could we get some emotional integrity, some sincerity from at least one character once? And why do we have that kind of extreme violence in the YA gay fairy book anyway? Additionally, after Wyatt and Emyr fuck, Emyr dies- which didn't have any emotional impact by the way since we've established that resurrection is possible- anyways, after he dies and then revives, Wyatt has to say "talk about hit it and quit it", and I'm like w h a t?? But not in a fun way.
Another issue stemming from the dialogue is that I couldn't take any of the adult characters seriously because they speak and operate the same way the youth do. When Wyatt posts a silly video on fae facebook (a social media service that is said to be new among the fae and not popularly used) it's antagonistic, incendiary, and plainly stupid. In the way that such content tends to be. "Cringe" as they say. Yet the adult fae have the reaction that this shitposting is somehow serious or important when if they were actually mature individuals capable of functioning without the Internet and running a kingdom, I have a hard time believing they would have given this any thought. But no! One of the fae kingdoms considers going to war over this! I think they were supposed to be serious about this! Which doesn't make any sense because unless you're entirely incompetent, this isn't a decision any monarch would make. War doesn't happen just for funsies. You have to have funding, support, strategy etc. These monarchs are very juvenile, like they don't understand the implications of their decisions. Oh, that kid said mean things about us, we should expend all our resources and popular support going to war with a kingdom that's actually (probably) our ally, and isn't ruled by him! If these fae are so down for war, if the fae in Asalin are such vitriolic and dogmatic nationalists, you know what violent crusade you could actually get them to support? Recolonizing Faery! I don't know why the king of Asalin didn't consider this...

Worldbuilding-The worldbuilding was the weakest part of this book for me. Not only did this book lack a lot in the way of atmosphere and environment, the worldbuilding that the author did decide to include made absolutely no sense. The author makes unnecessary distinctions between fae and humans and then violates those rules in the same paragraph. For example, it's stated that fae and witches don't have instincts for danger (don't get me started on this, okay, you can't tell me they don't have convergent evolution with humans. They're mammals at the very least, so this is nonsense), and then on the same page Wyatt has this miraculous and unexplained instinct to avoid a dangerous situation, like a normal person? If they don't have instincts for danger, the fae and witches ought to exhibit way more wild and bizarre behavior, right? Also, the author makes a point of saying that infertility, transgender people, witch/fae couples are exceptionally rare, and yet these things feature in the plot in some significant way. Why make it rare if it's relevant to the story? It's not like the main characters seek out these things or have some reason for encountering them; the author just goes yeah, it's actually super rare but anyways they happen to all be here right now for... no reason in particular. The queen is infertile, her son is romantically entangled with a witch, and the witch is transgender, we have another transgender witch employed by the throne in a reputable position, and they're also romantically involved with a fae... the author seemed to want to use these ideas, especially the queer rep, but make it harder for themselves by writing it into the margins of their own world. Queer people are already a social minority, why would you make them even more uncommon in your gay fantasy story??
Something that has been grating on me since I read the book, and I was probably losing my marbles a little bit by this point, is how the fuck Asalin uses USD. It's just the way my brain works, and I need it to make sense. How is there a hidden, magical society that is entirely unnoticed by humans; geographically, technologically, materially, historically, and fucking universally distinct, but they're economically (and linguistically!) integrated? How??? How does that work? Genuinely, I want to understand how Asalin is economically integrated with the United States. The Asalin fae court is said to rule over the entirety of the North American fae too, so why didn't they integrate Canadian dollars or pesos as well as USD? If they're just co-opting currency wouldn't it all be the same to them? And it's not like you can just sustain an independent society on legitimate state currency without the economy noticing, right? People would at least notice, banks would notice...I'm baffled, honest to god, like fuck, where did they get the money?? Where did they get the money? Plus they had their own fae currency that's largely phased out and worthless but still in use? How does that actually work!? How does their economy even work, please guys, I need to understand. Make it make sense...

Politics-The politics were fucking wacky! I can critique the worldbuilding and how unrealistic the monarchies are written in this book, and why is Asalin even a monarchy if they've been in North American for 500+ years, but the problem really stems from the fact that all the politics are intended to reflect current U.S. politics. The incompetency of the kings and queens, the rise of fascism through Derek and the conservative fae, the racism and homophobia parallels, the impotent witch organization etc. Emyr's also this weird neoliberal. He really wants to invest in technology and promise positive changes but of course he can't deliver because he's literally a fae king. The whole thing is strange because of the analogy. So you have this capitalist mentality in a what? Feudalist economy? but the author never does explain how the economy works (I'm not over it). Then by the end of the book the author decides to inject a bunch of last minute abolitionist rhetoric. The sister, Tessa, gets this police captain job, which she accepts, yet talking to Wyatt about it she says "Is this even a job that should exist?...I mean...yeah, maybe I'm one of the good guys. But the Guard has spent so long terrorizing people. Targeting people. Lying and manipulating and twisting the system to their advantage. Maybe we don't need a good person taking control. Maybe we just don't need the Guard at all." Girl, are you okay, because the cognitive dissonance must be fucking wild. And then there's Wyatt trying to radicalize Emyr on page 376, which is weird for multiple reasons. Not a single character shows an internally consistent political ideal or alignment. Briar is supposed to be from a radically left-leaning background, but she's also pro-monarchy? (54 & 155) And I'm trying to hear the author out on some of this, right? I'm a politically conscious queer. I just didn't get the sense the author totally knew what they were talking about half the time, but I suppose his heart is in the right place.

Bonus: The Contract-So there might be some plot holes with this whole magical marriage contract. Like if you have to get married with your "fated mate", if that's a real big deal to the fae culturally and whatnot, and they erroneously believe that's it's essential for optimal childbearing, why are the consequences of violating the marriage contract death? Oh, you got cold feet on your wedding day? You're dead. I don't understand how that works. Are the king and queen not even a little bit responsible for Emyr's death because they made their child sign a blood contract to marry his fated mate? Well, now the kingdom is fucked because of their own marriage rituals and now the only heir is dead. Or if something happened to Wyatt because of that contract, now Emyr is fucked because his fated mate is dead. Who do you marry now? Honestly, they don't need magic contracts to coerce people into marriage. I'm just saying. Humans have been doing it for centuries with regular contracts! I also don't understand how the violations work. So Emyr got emailed that contract or whatever, and 'cause he wasn't going to force Wyatt into a marriage he didn't want, it killed him? But it didn't kill Wyatt every time he tried to sabotage the marriage by working for Derek? Maybe I missed something. But I don't think the point of the book was to make complete sense in every regard. It's all in good fun, right?

Okay, that's all! Never let me write a review again ;P

alyssa_s10's review against another edition

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I really wanted to like this book. But at some point the style of the writing just became too much.

telltalepage's review against another edition

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2.5

So....this book! It was a thing.

There are a lot of reviews on either end of the review spectrum (good or bad) and I'm kind of in the middle.

I don't feel comfortable marking down this book because it was fine, I'm sure there are a lot of people who will love this and for them, I am glad!

There were however, too many things about this book that didn't jive with me. The list includes:
-Poor editing; why did a sentence literally read: "Briar is already asleep, soft snores blowing through her lips as she lies235 curled up against my side, her head on my shoulder"?? Why are there numbers in the middle of this sentence?
-The main character had no development whatsoever. I've also found that a lot of queer characters written in fiction (written, tv, etc) tend to act like all a personality is is "rude/mean + queer identity" and that's it. It makes for a very flat read, boring protagonist, etc. I will say, however, there were some very trans specific moments in this book that were very powerful and I commend the personal beats that were written into this book by Edgmon.
-As much as some of the lines made me chuckle, why was 50% of this book just viral text posts from tumblr? It's gonna make this book age so badly, and already felt like it was distancing me as I was reading it even though that language is often seen around the internet.
-All of the characters talked exactly the same. Tell me, how/why does a society that doesn't interact with humans use all the most common pop-culture and queer culture and AAVE words and phrases? Doesn't make sense.
-The whole world was....flat af. There were hints of fae, but pretty much all traditional fae/fairy stuff just didn't exist. There were a few bits that I read and wondered if it was intentional or accidental. (Like why only 4 courts throughout the world? Thought maybe it was because of the traditional seasonal courts of most fae based stories, but it could have just been a coincidence.)
-Characters turned and did 180's so fast, I'm unconvinced that Wyatt is a reliable narrator. (Again, I don't think this was intentionally done, unfortunately.)
-All of the big issues tackled felt extremely forced and heavy handed. This didn't read as a "person has an adventure and oh they happen to be trans" it felt like a thinly veiled soapbox, just yelling all the injustices in the world out all at once without ever offering any solutions or letting characters truly react and grow and learn. Idk, it just rubbed me the wrong way and I felt uncomfortable a few times, especially after reading a number of other reviews for this book from people who fall within queer demographics that I do not.
and the big one
Spoiler-How tf does one OPEN THE DOOR TO FAERY and there's not a single alarm, not a single fae feels a weird shift in magic, NO ONE NOTICES???? NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENS??????/ for gods damn DAYS. days and days. From everything we learned, I was expecting an army of heathen fae to come tumbling out as soon as Briar opened it. I was not expecting Wyatt to act like everything was fine and go bone his fiance. *facepalm* and then wait like over a week to tell Emyr about it?! jfc

Basically...there were a lot of things I couldn't quite overlook within this. I enjoyed reading it, but it's got a lot of problems.