Witch King

I loved the beginning, I admire the lore and the world, I like the characters, but in the end, if it wan't a Martha Wells book, I would probably have dnfed it. (And I realised hate split timelines.)

The story starts out with a 'what happened before' scenario with the protagonist entombed, and the plot unravels from there. How did this happen? Who captured the Witch King and why? And who the hell are these characters we're meeting at the very beginning? All of this is embedded in a very rich world with its very own system of magic, mythology and politics. From the very start I was eager to find the answer to all the questions above and more. And it's very promising that they might get answered in two timelines (past and present). Unfortunately the book quickly gets deep into exposition of court politics and and introduces a lot of groups and people at once without explaining a lot. This made it hard to follow for me, while on the other hand the characters - who seemed really intriguing in the beginning - are hard to grasp. So even though the world is really well thought through and like nothing I've ever read, I just couldn't fall into the world and could not go deeply into the characters and their inner life and motivations. For me the book was all description and facts, but not enough emotions and passion.