Geralt of Rivia is a witcher. A cunning sorcerer. A merciless assassin. And a cold-blooded killer. His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good… and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

A collection of short stories introducing Geralt of Rivia, to be followed by the first novel in the actual series, The Blood of Elves. Note that, while The Last Wish was published after The Sword of Destiny, the stories contained in The Last Wish take place first chronologically, and many of the individual stories were published before The Sword of Destiny.

Published 2007

MY THOUGHTS:

First, I received the second book in exchange for my honest review.

I have never played the Witcher games… ya, ya… I’m an author, and I love epic video games, but this one never happened for me.

Therefore, my review will have no influences and be completely based from an author/reader standpoint.  I should note that I love fantasy books, series, and I write them too.

When I got this book, I had no idea what to expect and found myself pleasantly surprised to see a series of stories, each based loosely on fairy tale tie-ins. The main character was your perfect fantasy swordsman, brooding, skilled and troubled.  He also seemed sincere and humane.  I followed the plots of each story easily with a few hiccups along the way that made me frown but not deviate from the flow too much.

There’s a mixture of humor and adventure, some serious conflicts that dredge up a bit of philosophical perplexity and character growth that hooks the reader in just to see what mess the MC will get into next.

I loved this book and plan on reading the next.

Sapkowski did well in building his worlds and laying out each scene skillfully.  He didn’t hesitate to expose his character’s weaknesses and human-like behaviors while maintaining the driven aspect of his character searching for answers to plaguing concerns.

I gave this book: