Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, major trans character
Published on: 10th June 2025
ISBN: 125033862X
Goodreads
Status is hereditary, class is bestowed, trust must be earned.
When an arrogant prince (and his equally arrogant entourage) gets stuck in Orledder Halt as part of brutal political intrigue, competent and sunny deputy courier Elen―once a child slave meant to shield noblemen from the poisonous Pall―is assigned to guide him through the hills to reach his destination.
When she warns him not to enter the haunted Spires, the prince doesn’t heed her advice, and the man who emerges from the towers isn’t the same man who entered.
The journey that follows is fraught with danger. Can a group taught to ignore and despise the lower classes survive with a mere deputy courier as their guide?
The Witch Roads is the latest epic novel by fan favorite, Kate Elliott.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Listen, I could sit here and tell you that I found the prose kind of clunky occasionally; that sometimes things are awkwardly phrased, or here and there a sentence is a few beats too long to fit the rhythm of a paragraph. I could nitpick all day.
But absolutely NONE of that matters, because The Witch Roads is deliciously, compulsively readable; it’s a book that reaches out and grabs you. When I picked this up, I was stressed to the max; I was moving house, which was all the usual kinds of stressful plus managing our very freaked-out pets; I was terribly ill; and it was the middle of winter, which where I am is Extreme and Extremely Depressing.
(We’re not gonna talk about how smart it was to pick up a nearly 600 page doorstopper in the middle of all this, ‘kay? Kay.)
And in the midst of this – all of this! – I was GLUED to the pages. Fellow readers, I devoured The Witch Roads in three days. Three days of doing everything that needed doing on fast-forward so that I could get back to Elen and the adventure she Did Not Ask For, Thanks A Lot. AND I REGRET NOTHING!
It’s really difficult for me to put my finger on what it is that makes this book so impossibly addictive. Kate Elliott has always been extremely hit or miss for me, and a big part of it is definitely mood or timing – if I’m not in the right headspace (whatever mysterious headspace is required; I can’t identify it) I bounce off her books; but when the stars align, her stories enchant me. But the stars should not have aligned for this one! Not right then! It was the worst possible moment for me to pick up a new Elliott book (again, let’s not get into wtf I was thinking; I do not remember and it’s probably better that way).
AND YET.
Unputdownable. I resented having to sleep! Witch Roads demanded priority, which was very unfortunate timing, but that just didn’t matter.
(Thank all the gods I have such an understanding partner. The things he has to put up with!)
Elen is not your typical fantasy heroine; she is extremely practical, treasures what she has and doesn’t let herself dream of more, has pride in herself but isn’t bothered by others looking down on her. Optimistic would suggest she always expects the best to happen, and she doesn’t, but she is so appreciative of the good things in her life, the small pleasures and small beauties she encounters. I really loved that about her. There is something extremely soothing about her personality; she has a very calming influence, even from beyond the page. In an emergency, she’s exactly who you’d want by your side, both because she’s very competent at anything she sets her hands to, and because she always keeps her head.
Elliott makes it quietly clear, through small asides and subtle blink-and-you’ll-miss-them revelations, that Elen – and her now-deceased sister – have a Mysterious Backstory. Brace yourself for some serious twists, because although Elliott sets you up to think you know what that backstory is, you will be completely wrong. It’s the best bait-and-switch reveal I’ve encountered in a while, and when all the pieces actually come together, it’s with a galaxy-brain moment that makes the wait for it more than worth it!
Quite a lot of the book is like that: there are a number of distinct but intertwined plotlines, taking place across wildly varied scales – and none of them are simple, or obvious, or quick to explain themselves. Elliott drip-feeds us information, and it feels like playing chess with a master. Perhaps in the hands of another storyteller, this could have been drawn-out or annoying, but there’s too much going on right in front of us at every moment – the travails of the journey Elen and the prince are on – for things to feel slow or boring. Elen is so viscerally present, both to us on the page, and in living every moment she has, for us to ever feel divorced from the story. It doesn’t hurt at all that the rest of the cast is wonderfully vibrant too: most especially Kem, Elen’s trans nephew, and the being possessing the prince, who we definitely should not trust but damn, he’s charming!
The empire Elliott has created has a very mild trace of ancient China, with all of its citizens fitted into an immense, hyper-strict hierarchy, much of which is taken up by an extensive bureaucracy. But this is a land beset by Spore, outbreaks of magical spores that horrifically mutate all living matter; where carriages bearing the imperial family are drawn by panthers; and griffin-riders carry the most urgent messages back and forth. Ancient ruins, prehistoric skeletons, and glimpsed non-humans give the setting an immense weight of history without any need to info-dump the reader. But if you’ve read anything of Kate Elliott’s, you already know she’s a top-tier worldbuilder!
If you’re at all tuned in to the marketing around this one, you’ve probably heard that Witch Roads is the book that made Elliott fall in love with writing again. I think that comes through beautifully; it’s as much fun to read as it apparently was to write, has a magic to it that is immediately enthralling. On paper, Witch Roads shouldn’t have interested me much; if I’d been told the whole of the plot, it wouldn’t have sounded like my sort of thing at all. But I’ve already told you how unbelievably and instantly hooked I was, and I challenge anyone not to be.
Easily one of the highlights of 2025!
I want to read this now. And if I do, it’ll be my first Kate Elliot!
I think it’s probably a great place to start with her work! Much more approachable than a lot of her stuff. (Although I do think you’d like how strange her worldbuilding gets in other series!)
I myself am moving house, so it sounds like the perfect time to pick this up! (I don’t know what you mean, stressful times are perfect for fantasy tomes of 600+ pages.)
You get it!!!