Queen Demon (The Rising World book 2) by Martha Wells (book review).
After casting down the conspiracy to make prince-heir Bashat emperor, the coalition of the Rising World meets once more. Kaiisteron, Fourth Prince of Underearth, has no time to rest, however. His friend Dahin has a theory about the origins of the Hierarch’s power, which refers to the immortal foes that sought to subjugate the entire world until their bloody defeat years ago. Can the power of the Hierarch’s Well be found and unleashed once more? Can Kai and his companions stop them returning after so many years of peace?
The sequel to ‘With King’ and the second book in the ‘Rising World’ series, ‘Queen Demon’ takes place both in the present and the past, swapping between Kai’s final battles with the Hierarchs and the new quest to locate and destroy the centre of the Hierarch’s power once and for all.
You remember what happens in the last book, right? With just a basic dramatis personae to nudge your memory along? No? Too bad, this book won’t wait for you.
The world-building is great and what carried me through when my memory failed me and there were just names filing past my eyes as the plot continued. As my memories of ‘Witch King’ came back to me, I remembered the characters and their places, and as everything came together, the plot took off away from modern political upheaval and plotting to an ancient tomb and an equally ancient evil. This is a fantasy that acknowledges the genre formulas but doesn’t feel the need to stick with them.
Martha Wells is probably best known for their ‘Murderbot Diaries’ series, now adapted for television on Netflix. ‘Murderbot’ is one of my favourite series, but ‘Witch King’ and ‘Queen Demon’ are not ‘Murderbot’, which is amazing. These are so different. They really prove Wells to be a capable writer that can suck in a reader into more than just the mind of an anxiety-ridden murder machine in an SF techno-dystopia.
This book is worth buying in hardcover, not something I say often or lightly. Both ‘Witch King’ and ‘Queen Demon’ are back in my to-be-read pile for a reread, and I’m sad that it will be a while before they reach the top. If you like N.K. Jemison’s ‘Broken Earth’ trilogy, try this one out. If you like traditional high fantasy like Raymond E. Feist’s ‘Magician’, try this one out for the world-building and for a move away from the orphan boy on a quest to adulthood and glory conventions.
LK Richardson
December 2025
(pub: TOR, 2025. 400-page hardback. Price: $29.99 (US). ISBN 977-1-25082-691-6)
Check out the website: https://torpublishinggroup.com/queen-demon/?isbn=9781250826916&&format=hardback