Queen Demon
core novel 2025 Witch King
Record
| First published | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.14 (4,411 ratings, collected 2026-08-19) |
| Page count | 382 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781250826916 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
Queen Demon, published by Martha Wells in 2025, continues the Rising World series after Witch King. Kai and his allies, including Ziede, Tahren, the scholar Dahin, the witch Tenes, and the former street urchin Sanja, have banded together as the Rising World coalition to resist the Hierarchs, an oppressive power that once dominated the region. The novel moves between two timelines, one recalling the coalition's earlier campaign to retake the city of Benais-arik from Hierarch control, the other set in the present, where the group uncovers troubling evidence that the Well of the Hierarchs, believed to be the very source of the Hierarchs' power, may not have been destroyed after all. Racing to determine the truth before their enemies can act on it, Kai and his companions must decide how far they will go to prevent history's worst cycle of conquest from beginning again.
Where it sits
- Universe: Witch King
- Series: The Rising World core; position 2 of 2 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Martha Wells
Notes
- From the series record (The Rising World): Martha Wells's return to secondary-world fantasy after a decade focused on the science-fiction Murderbot Diaries; unrelated to her earlier Ile-Rien fantasy novels (The Element of Fire, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, City of Bones), a separate continuity not researched or admitted. No third book has been announced as of the latest update.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Rising World: position 2 of 2: previous Witch King (2023)
Sources
← Witch King dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.