Andrzej Sapkowski

Geralt is a Witcher, tortured and experimented on from childhood to bring out magical abilities, and works as a mercenary, disposing of monsters and rescuing kidnapped baby princesses. Shunned by society for doing their dirty work, but also not allowed to make a living any other way, he lives by his own moral code which often causes him to butt heads with the powerful. This is a frame narrative with a collection of vignettes, stories about jobs he has had and adventures he has gone on, many show more of which will feel familiar to readers of fairy tales. My favorite was the one based on Beauty and the Beast, which is also my favorite episode of the TV show.

You’d expect the book an extremely popular video game is based on would be a little lame but this book absolutely rules. I don’t know why it’s not more popular! The world-building is exquisite and the integration of folklore is so well done. Absolutely read it if you enjoy the video games or the TV show, or if you just like good fantasy. show less

I read and enjoyed the Last Wish after getting I hooked on Netflix’s adaptation. I liked it enough to immediately start this second story collection. The book opens with one of my favorite parts of the Netflix show: the hunt for the dragon. The gold dragon and his warrior women bodyguards is just as much a delight in the book as in the show.

The show was fairly faithful in adapting the dragon hunt. The main difference comes with Geralt and Yennefer. In the book, she is downright hostile to show more him, and for good reason. Some long time before, he slipped away from her in the night, unable to commit to her! This sets the stage for their push and pull throughout the collection, but also develops their characters and relationship more than the show. She is still very much an enigma since the book is always told from Geralt’s POV, but she’s more than just a mysterious femme fatale. The stories are still action-packed, with the violence and sensuality kicked up a bit from the first collection (still never explicit).

One thing that surprised me: I like Dandelion! The Bard annoys me on the show, but is an excellent foil for the Witcher in the book. And Geralt’s affection for his friend is also more apparent. This collection also introduces Ciri – ending in the same way as the show: with hers and Geralt’s reunion after the invasion of Nilfgaard. Her role is minimal, but sets the stage for the trilogy to come. Overall, I thought this built solidly on the potential of the first anthology and I cannot wait to start the first novel of the series. show less

The Last Wish, a collection of short stories centering on the monster-hunting "witcher" Geralt, is the first book in the series from which both The Witcher video games and Netflix's 2020 series The Witcher are adapted.

Overall, I really like this collection. A few things stood out to me as particularly good: the book's clever and well-executed structure, the rich and immersive worldbuilding, and the portrayal of moral complexity.

Unfortunately, there were also some things in this book that show more made me very uncomfortable, and kept me from rating it a full four stars, notably the text's attitude toward sexual assault.

The book is structured around one longer story set in the present whose chapters are interwoven with shorter, self-contained stories set in Geralt's past. The events of the shorter stories serve to illuminate, explain, or give further context to the chapters of the longer story with which they are juxtaposed. This structure is amazingly effective, especially as an introduction to Geralt and the world he inhabits.

Which brings me to the next attribute of this book that really stood out to me: the worldbuilding. The Last Wish and the rest of the Witcher series are secondary world fantasy, and Sapkowski renders that secondary world for the reader with tremendous skill. By casually peppering the narrative and dialogue with place and political names and references to religious practices, gods, historical incidents, and politics, Sapkowski creates a world that feels deep and real and lived in - a world that feels like it exists beyond the borders of the page, and continues to go on when we close the book.

Another thing that makes the world of the The Last Wish feel so real is the way that the morality of the situations portrayed in it are invariably complex and impossible to boil down to a simple right vs wrong binary. Nobody in this book is perfect, and even the worst of characters has an argument that's difficult to simply dismiss out of hand. Like all of us, Geralt is trying to do the right thing in a world where 'the right thing' is rarely obvious or unambiguous, and nearly every choice involves compromising some ideal in favor of another.

All in all, well worth a read, and I definitely recommend it, with the caveat that those particularly sensitive to topics like sexual assault might want to skip both this book, and this series. show less

Honestly I love how much this fleshed out the show for me. I had some questions and this book definitely filled in the gaps! I loved how many of the monsters had backstories from fairy tale lore that we all know and love (Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White). The stories are told mostly through flashbacks as Geralt recovers from wounds he got while fighting a Striga. From meeting Yennefer for the first time, to travelling to the "end of the world," to the law of surprise - show more Geralt has many an adventure. Nearly all the stories in the book are told during season one of the Netflix series, The Witcher. Freaking fun and I definitely plan on reading more in this series. I want to know more about the man and his adventures! show less