Sometimes there are those who would rather burn the world down than bend to it.  Wyatt, MC of the "The Witch King" by HE Edgmon, is a trans witch with a predestined royal love, uncontrollable magic powers, and rage for days.  This one is an epic urban fantasy / portal fantasy about fighting tooth and nail for who you really are and who you love and deciding if the world is really worth saving or not.  Wyatt's best friend is an absolute keeper and brings the levity to what could otherwise be a heavy.  This is the best kind of epic YA #PridesSFF #book, full of teenage angst and power.

This was a super fun read. The protagonist is hilarious and I love the inner monologue from this writer. Literally I was laughing the entire book. Even with how funny it was,  the plot and characterizations never suffered! 

4.75, rounded up.

Before I start, I would just like to say: afab people using binders, do NOT use a binder the way Wyatt does. He contemplated sleeping in one and I nearly had a stroke. Don't sleep in your binder, don't exercise in your binder, don't wear it for more than 8 hours, take it off if it starts to hurt. Be safe.

Normally when I like a book, I don't bother with a super detailed review, because I'm lazy. In light of the extremely mixed reviews on this one, however, I've decided to take a different approach. THE WITCH KING isn't for everyone. It's unabashedly queer, it's written in the voice of a terminally online abuse survivor who's difficult to love at times, and the humor can be a little--to quote some of the 1 star reviews--cringe.

All that being said, I ADORED this book.

I think if you were raised on MG/YA books like Percy Jackson, like I was, you may have been a little spoiled. Despite all the magical bullshit and no therapy, Percy and his friends remained lovable, relatable, quirky kids we could find ourselves in. Wyatt is not that guy. I didn't really start to like him until about 70-80% of the way through, and even then, it was frustrating to keep reading in his pov because it was so clear that his dynamic with Briar was not sustainable and that Emyr loved him, but he wasn't doing what he needed to do to get better. But that's life, isn't it? You go through some terrible shit, and sometimes you don't rise above. The self-hatred makes you a worse person, unable to see what's in front of you, unable to see who you are and what you can do. And so, you lash out. You make the wrong choices. You depend on other people to take care of you when you really need to take care of yourself.

To tell the truth, I think a lot of the reason I didn't like Wyatt at first is that he reminded me too much of me. Not the parts of myself that I like, not the parts of me that are lovable and relatable and quirky. The hard parts. The parts of me that build codependent friendships and push away love and make deals with the devil. I read to escape that, not to confront it. I think it speaks to Edgmon's skill as a writer that even though I didn't like Wyatt most of the time I was reading this book, I got him, and I wanted to know what would happen to him next. Moreover, I think Edgmon deliberately putting forward a difficult protagonist (and admitting that he felt very close to this character!) speaks to their courage. It would have been far easier (and probably more profitable) to write a story with a bland, vaguely likable protagonist in which the heroes upheld the status quo and saved the monarchy. That's not what Edgmon chose to write, and I'm immensely grateful. By the end of the novel, Wyatt has conquered (most of) his demons and made a commitment to love and to be better, and while it was a long journey to that point, I'm so happy to have been a part of that. I really think Edgmon is going places. With everything going on in the world right now, we need writers who encourage their readers to heal themselves and dismantle these systems in the process.

And they did it so well! My jaw was on the floor when Spoiler he revealed that Briar was part-witch and had opened the door to Faerie. I truly think that was some of the most masterful writing in the book. Wyatt's voice contributed so much to the effectiveness of that twist: he thinks of Briar as this perfect angel who can do no wrong, as a fragile human he needs to protect, and so we as the audience are lulled into this way of thinking along with him. The illusion breaks, and we see her, really see her, at the same time he does. Absolutely fantastic. THIS is the kind of writing I want to see from up and coming authors.

To briefly touch on what I didn't like: the book dragged for a little bit after the crew got to Asalin, there was one part where Wyatt describes a Black woman's hair as looking like an "elegant bird's nest" which I'm sorry, no, unacceptable, and Spoiler the twist with Clarke was not NEARLY as well set up as the one with Briar like Clarke was saying "oh everyone's already pieced it together" bestie no I did not because you being evil came COMPLETELY out of left field . But overall, I'm really impressed with this, and I'm excited to read the next book!

Really wanted to like this one, but found myself constantly frustrated, really only finished it because I got attached to the characters

Pros:
-Lots of diversity and queer rep
-Lovable characters, maybe worth it for that if you can deal with the rest

Cons:
-The metaphors are VERY heavy handed and often literally explained by the characters, and frankly most of them feel very shoehorned in
-The pace was all over the place
-The plot didn’t really have a satisfying build or conclusion
-The writing itself doesn’t feel very polished, kind of jarringly edited in some places
-I found the world building really frustrating

you find out in the last few pages that witches actually have much stronger magic than fae, so how did the people with more power end up as the oppressed ones in this society?

-Too much attention is given to things that don’t matter, at one point several pages are spent giving detailed physical descriptions of a long procession of people we literally never see again, near the end of the book, when we could have been wrapping up plot points that were instead left unaddressed