The Last Wish: Introducing the Witcher by Andrzei Sapkowski
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.
Review:
If I had not “met” Geralt of Rivia before, I would have hesitated starting this book based on his description. See while I am more than interested in “gray” characters, cold blooded killers are so not my cup of tea in the vast majority of the books I have read.
Luckily I have “met” him before. I read the first three or four books in this series a long time ago, probably two or three decades ago, in Russian translations. I remembered very little, so little that I was not even sure that I had read this book before (now that I finished, I think that I did). The only title I remembered was “Blood of Elves”. I also remembered that I really liked Geralt. I have not seen the Netflix show based on the books yet, but I was curious to see if I enjoyed meeting him again.
The blurb is actually not that bad. Geralt does kill monsters for money, but what was way more interesting for me is to see whom and why he does not kill and saves from all kinds of misfortunes. Basically he is a guy with a moral code and while he admits that he wrote his own (as most witchers do if I remember his comment correctly), I liked his code very much.
This book is basically a collection of short stories which show Geralt’s various adventures as well as stories of Geralt recovering from an illness (when the book ended, I still was not sure if these were more mental or physical) in the monastery and telling those stories to someone in that monastery.
Of course the whole book has plenty of beings from folklore (Slavic mostly, but not only). I love contemporary takes on fairy tales and some of the stories are not even the complete retellings; it is as if the writer truly took an inspiration from the original tale and took it in a different direction.
What character may have been inspired by Snow White for example? I am telling you, for me this was quite an unexpected take.
I am not sure if I completely enjoyed the structure of the story. I don’t require my fantasy to be a non stop movement and fighting, but the scenes of Geralt in the monastery were strange. I mean I get that he needed to recapture his balance, but I also felt like the author tried to make him a more philosophical character than he really was, if that makes sense.
I was pleased that I liked him as much as I remembered from my youth though and will probably read another book in this series soon. B
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After reading your review, I kind of have vision of a fairy tale Murderbot.
The review led me to look up the Netflix series based on the books. May be something to glom while waiting out the pandemic.
Susan yeah I want to see the show too .
Jayne the analogy kinda works for me . I get the impression ( I stopped Murderbot after three novellas ) that Murderbot is not really murderous after whatever took place in their past. Witcher does kill but they both can get philosophical for sure .
@Susan/DC: Oooh, that does look interesting.
I read all the books last fall and loved them, but Sapkowski has some quirks with his storytelling that might be frustrating. I also think English readers may need to bear in mind that these are translations.
I watched the Netflix adaptation with very mixed feelings. If I hadn’t read the books, I would have been a little lost, and they made some frustrating changes—left out some stories while combining others in a way that glosses over the emotional impact they have in the books, and then filling in a backstory for Yennefer and a few others that wasn’t in the books or just barely alluded to over the course of the series and not early on. Ciri is aged up, which changes things, too. However, Henry Cavill is great as Geralt (or maybe just fun to look at) as well as the actor who plays Dandelion.
I binged the Netflix show a couple of weeks ago and it was … scary how much I liked Geralt. I was a little obsessed for a bit. Blonde Henry Cavill definitely had a lot to do with it (I sort of skim watched the non-Geralt parts), but I thought his acting was really good too. He can get a lot across with just a look or a grunt.
I can see how he might be reminiscent of Murderbot. Through the whole show, people kept asking him if it was true Witchers didn’t have feelings when it was clear he was one big feeling. He was always saving a creature everybody wanted to kill.
I haven’t read the books and wasn’t really confused. I did read a lot about the show so I knew to expect it to have a random timeline. I’m glad to see a good book review from someone I’m familiar with. After watching, I tried to get this book from the library but the wait list was in the eighties so I’m … waiting. :/
MaryK I tried to see if the book is lendable from Amazon so maybe I could loan it to you, but sadly doesn’t look like it is and looks like from your and RND’s comments I should check out the show, I just need to get Netflix first :)
I’d seen gifs from the show and am fortunate to have access to a family member’s Netflix account so I thought why not. Frankly, I was there for the eye candy. I was not expecting to like the character and show so much. One of the articles I read said HC asked to play the role because he was a fan of the books.
@MaryK: Always cool when an actor is a fan of the book/s if you ask me.