The image above is for the beautiful and somewhat new illustrated hardcovers from Orbit Books. Which, unfortunately, I do not own yet, but feel a devastating desire for. The set from the featured image, are those from the paperback Gollancz set (which don’t appear to even be offered on their site anymore), translated by David French, which I paid an arm and a leg to import to New York. While I own Season of Storms, it is the only one I have not gotten to reading yet. If you are interested in the illustrated hardcovers, you can not only grab them on sale, but also get them shipped while supporting an indie book shop! Check Silverstone Books here.
Below I’ll share my kind of thoughts / review of the series that I have shared over on GoodReads. As ever, if you have not read the series, there may be some spoilers below…I just want you to be aware when moving forward.
The series titles are (in chronological order): Season of Storms (sometimes debated whether you should read the series first though), The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, and The Lady of the Lake.
The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny feature short stories that were originally in magazines when the author first created the character. The style is almost like character/world introductions meshed with monster-of-the-week stories and it really worked well for me. I have actually been brewing a fantasy idea of my own (and may already have 18k written), at least in the sense of the short stories put into one book, because of how much I enjoyed them.
So I think this top portion will be the basis for my review for all five of the Witcher novels.
I feel like it took me a long time to read these, when in actuality, I started the first one in January so that isn’t really all that long. Some of the way I’m feeling may be based off a lapse in memory though because I read around 95 books around the reading of these so I may be hazy.
For starters, I think Andrzej Sapkowski is a phenomenal writer. Secondly, I think David French did an absolutely wonderful job translating these to English. And thirdly, I think the Gollancz paperbacks were amazing–great cover art, nice quality–I actually managed to read them all without breaking the spines.
Sapkowski has such a way about his writing that the dialogue in the novels can be truly captivating. He wields it so well that he has honestly created such a wonderful lush lore within his world that really carried the hundreds of pages he wrote. I think that overall, this attention to detail within every word uttered may actually have been in some ways at a detriment to his overarching story.
So to speak, his great characters, the companions of the Witcher, and even the enemies, all have this way of leaving you wanting more. However, if you were to pull away all of that and the world’s lore, the series itself is kind of about… nothing. I did find myself more than once getting to the end of one of the novels and being like, wait… nothing happened? Destiny has brought the Witcher and Ciri together, and yet they are also destined to never be together… it’s just the kind of realization that stings. If you read the first book you can skip to the final book for the ending because the others are just more of the same. Luckily for me, as I’ve already stated, I enjoyed the dialogue and the world building, I drank that sh*t up. It’s just kind of weird/funny to realize negative things like that about something you’ve rated pretty well. Despite all of that, I really enjoyed them.
In terms of The Lady of the Lake especially, I find that in each novel he kind of played with different ways of storytelling and this one starting with the knight of Arthur finding her really threw me off. It also then didn’t resolve itself for 500 pages. I think at one point I thought it was a ploy and that he was actually one of the elves in the other world? I don’t know, but it was kind of weird. In general, that whole world hopping bit was a little dragged out for me.
Alternatively, in terms of this being the ultimate finale, I loved the level of gore and action. I thought the Battle of Brenna was outstanding writing. The jumping between the battle and the future with survivors of the battle writing about it really worked for me.
I will say though another negative for me was the deaths at Stygga Castle. I know the bad luck surrounding the Witcher and those that follow him, but this kind of heartless, unforgiving killing off of main characters didn’t exactly work for me. It’s not like reading A Song of Fire and Ice where it’s expected, therefore the lack of emotion I felt around them dying was a little lackluster.
Also, I mean come on, we get all the way to the end and everyone dies EXCEPT Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer? In that sense it seemed a little cheesy.
A giant positive for me was that I did not see the twist of Duny being the emperor at all. I don’t know if I was supposed to (?) but WOW. Ciri’s dad the whole time? WOW incest is so absolutely gross (GOT again). Glad it didn’t go there…
I did like the kind of hazy ending myself. Did Yenn and Geralt die? Did they live? No! They got married and several other people we know are dead were said to be in attendance!
I know what the game series wants us to believe. (and I hear there’s another one of those coming anyway)
Overall, I gave the series (0.5/0.7-5) a 9.15/10.
So as I’ve kind of done for all of my series reviews (where relevant), I can’t really just move on without bringing up the adaptations, right?
When the show first started, I was really into it. The mix of monster hunting and getting some of Yenn’s backstory was exciting. Henry Cavill as Geralt, too? Come on now! His love for the source material and excitement for it, it practically sold it for fans. I think he did a considerably good job of it, and his exit from the show is to its detriment.
That, and of the course them taking very large steps away from the source material. To be honest, I haven’t even gone back to the third season. Knowing it will probably get even further away from the books, and the fact that he’s going to be gone after, has completely turned me off to continuing. And, sadly, I really do not like Liam Hemsworth, so even if I was into a recast, it was not destined to work out for me.
This one is a kind of an origin story, if you couldn’t guess. A prequel set over a 1000 years prior to the show series. It was absolutely demolished by critics and viewers alike.
I watched it with my fiancee at the time, and I honestly thought it was a lot better than people gave it credit for. The cast was enjoyable, with some fun action beats, and the general lore background was worth watching for the few episodes they made. I gave it a 6/10. I’m much more a fan of the idea of them breaking off and making content on their own than them blatantly ignoring the actual Witcher source material involving Geralt and Ciri.
So this one might be a bit surprising, but not only have I not played any of the other games, I only played Wild Hunt pretty recently actually–on the PS4 Pro. This did allow for me to play the upgraded, and completed, version of the game including all its DLC. I loved it. It’s a really enjoyable and unique game, and monster hunting comes naturally to me. I gave it a 9/10, I hope a new game on next gen can offer us even more.
Have you played it? Watched the shows? Read the series? What did you think of any of all of it? Comment below and let me know!
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