#i like how in the last two books sapkowski just decided that geralt gets to let evil sorcerers catch these hands now

[hanzajesthanza]

i had a realization last night that this prequel makes geralt, yennefer, and ciri…

THE REVENGE FAMILY 🤝🤝🤝

[falcqns]

𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖊𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖘 𝖑

☼ 𝔭𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰: Geralt of Rivia x modern!Reader

☼ 𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: you get dropped into a mysterious universe. luckily, its the universe from your favourite book series.

☼ 𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔨𝔫𝔤𝔰: nothing really?? spoilers for Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski, but that's it.

☼ 𝔞/𝔫: i was going to have this be a one shot, but i ended up liking this as a series a lot more! eventually will have a Marvel cross over!

As you opened your eyes, it occurred to you that you were someplace unfamiliar.

You weren't in your bed, in your apartment, where you’d fallen asleep watching The Witcher. You were laying on leaves soaked with both water and mud, a stream flowing quickly beside you.

You sat up slightly, and over the batch of trees in front of you, you could just make out a wall of mountains that appeared to be a greyish white. You heard the clopping of horses' hooves behind you, and swiveled around just in time to see a mop of curly brown hair flashing by on top of a brown horse, the source of the clopping. Your brows pinched, but you ducked back down as you heard footsteps pounding the path behind you.

You saw a flash of white hair, and your heart stopped. The girl, who appeared, at first, to be a boy but you knew better, flitted past you, in pursuit of the horse and mop of hair. You stumbled to your feet, and stepped onto the path, looking towards the direction the two had come from. What you saw dropped your heart into your stomach.

A gigantic tree trunk supported by two boulders, covered almost completely in moss, just like it was described in the book you had begun re reading the night before last. As you looked around you, you noticed more similarities. As you walked further up the path, you could see the narrow path that would no doubt lead you out of the forest you were in. you thought about doing just that, but decided against it, not knowing what laid in wait out there for you. Monsters, no doubt, waiting for the right moment to snatch you up as their next meal.

You walked up the path even more, listening as carefully as you could for any noises, but it was eerily silent. The more you trekked, the more you knew. This wasn't your world, and this certainly wasn't any normal path in normal woods. You were on The Trail, or as Witchers called it, The Killer.

You gulped.

You were a human. A human from a much different world than this one. A human who had barely any knowledge of monsters from this realm, much less how to kill them. You were from 2021, and you were in an alternate universe, in 1267, when Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, and Baptism of Fire take place. Your eyes trailed up the Killer in front of you, and you could see where the Trail cut across the ravine, called the Gullet.

You raced towards the Gullet, knowing that Triss and Ciri were close. You didn't know what you would say to them, but you could only hope that Triss, a powerful enchantress, would understand what was happening, and help you get home. You had read Blood of Elves more than a normal person would, and you didn't want to be around for the ending. You passed over the Gullet just in time to see Ciri take a tumble, and Triss hop off her horse and run to her aid. You could hear Triss’s voice, but no matter how hard you focused, she was still much too far away for the words to be intelligible to you. You approached slowly - heart beating, stomach churning - wondering what the outcome of your run in with the two of them would be. Ciri, while only being in training for 6 months currently, could no doubt best you, a college student working part time at a coffee shop. Unless the battle was to see who could make a latte the quickest, the mini witcher would surely win. Not to mention Triss, who was not that far behind Yennefer in her skill set, not to mention friends with the other enchantress.

The two of them continued to exchange words, Triss bent over Ciri, who suddenly sprang up from her spot on the cold ground. They exchanged a few more words, and you didn’t have to be near them to know what the conversation was about. Ciri helped Triss up, and the enchantress finally spotted you, standing slightly off the Trail, in your grey sweatshirt that had a depiction of Geralt’s medallion on it, and a pair of black fabletics leggings. On your feet, almost laughably, were a pair of air force ones. You had no idea how they managed to get there, considering the last thing you remember being you falling asleep in your bed, no shoes to be found on your feet.

“And who might you be?” Triss asked, and your mouth opened and closed like a fish. You couldn’t form any words, but before you could freak, you felt the tiniest amount of pressure against your temple, and you saw Triss’s face change. You gulped once more, feeling uneasy as she perused your thoughts like the magazines you read on your break when your phone inevitably died from too much time on TikTok.

“Ah, I see. You’re Y/N.” She said simply, and beckoned you over to her. “You’re not from here, are you?” she asked, and you immediately shook your head no, your eyes drifting and meeting Ciri’s emerald ones.

“H-How do I get home?” you asked timidly, and a sad look came over Triss’s face.

“Let us venture into Kaer Morhen, and talk to Vesemir. He may have more information than I.”

Divider

Your heart was beating out of your chest as you approached Kaer Morhen. It looked exactly as described in the books - “in front of them, at the end of the tunnel, a straight, vertical line suddenly flared with red light. Growing taller and wider it became a door beyond which was a faint glow, the flickering brightness of torches stuck in iron mounts on the walls,” - you recited quietly, drawing the attention of Ciri, Triss no doubt listening in as she led you two into the cast that no doubt stood tall and proud at one time.

“What was that?” she asked, and you stuttered.

“N-Nothing.” you said, and she gave you a confused look, but dropped the subject.

“Where are you from, Y/N?” Triss asked, no doubt growing more suspicious of your sudden appearance.

“New York.” you said, and Triss’s eyebrows furrowed.

“That doesn’t sound like any place around here.” She commented. Her eyes studied you, clearly wary of you, wary of the way you didn’t react when Ciri launched into a prophecy-like state, and even more wary as you didn’t say anything about the way they were dressed either.

Her eyes drifted down to your sweatshirt. “Where did you get a piece like that, and why are you wearing it so proudly? Most people are afraid of Witchers, even more so of their medallions.”

You pulled the ends of your sweatshirt over your hands, the cold mountain air nipping at your skin. “Where I’m from, Witchers are somewhat of a fantasy, but people do know of them. We even celebrate them.” you explained, and Triss nodded, accepting the explanation.

Triss removed her fur coat, and you found yourself gaping as she shook her head, her hair cascading down her shoulders like a waterfall. Just as you opened your mouth to compliment her curly chestnut strands, a gruff voice came from the darkness behind you.

“Welcome to Kaer Morhen, Triss.” You recognized that voice, but couldn’t quite place it. Not until you turned around.

You flipped around, and were gazing into amber coloured eyes. Snow white hair surrounded the eyes, half of it tied up behind the Witcher’s head. The amber coloured eyes narrowed in on you.

“Who are you?” Geralt asked, gruffly. “How did you travel here?”

“I-I’m Y/N. It’s nice to meet you Geralt.”

[grumpyoldsnake]

Liveblog: Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

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Context: I caught bits and pieces of several scattered episodes of the Netflix Witcher series while at my parent’s place, and have had my curiosity piqued! I’ve already read The Last Wish since then; you can find my thoughts here.

Further context: I don’t actually know anything about storytelling techniques. High school English classes were a long time ago, hah. But… I am currently actively trying to learn via observation. So! A lot of my comments are going to be on that topic: what I’m seeing, why I think it’s been done that way, how well I think it’s working, etc

Disclaimer: Names might be misspelled, and most quotes will be paraphrased. I’m reading via audiobook at work. That said… there should be a bit more cohesion this time, since I’ve decided to actively comment as I go rather than dump all the thoughts I’ve had after already getting 2/3rds of the way through the book, hah.

.

The Bounds of Reason

 Getting a bit more insight into how Geralt generally expects to be treated (badly) and how he responds to a random friendly overture (positively), which is neat!

 Sapkowski continues to write about women in ways that make me wince. Is it the end of the world? No. Is it rife within fiction? Yes. Do I have to appreciate it? Also no. Am I going to largely ignore it because it isn't a conversation I'm interested in carrying, and has been carried out much better by other folk? Also yes.

 Oh hey! This is a storyline from an episode that I did catch snatches of. Wasn’t paying the closest attention though, not sure how well I followed the plot. The one guy is the gold dragon, and Yennefer wants her own biological baby? And everyone is very upset and argumentative at the end.

 Good grief, what the hell did Geralt do to Yennefer? They seemed to be on genuinely positive terms at the end of The Last Wish, even if in the framing narrative (Voice of Reason) it was pretty clear they weren’t anymore… guess I was just expecting to see the cause of the falling out more directly than this?

 Unless I genuinely did just miss it because it was a sentence or two of “and after they were very sweet and Yennefer claimed to be touched, Geralt snuck off in the night without a word,” in which case. Mm. Well. There are drawbacks to reading via audiobook while at work, and brief lapses of attention when something that major is written that briefly is one of the biggest. :��)

 If that is it, then good grief their positive interactions did not last long. 😂

 Anyway!

 …oh okay yeah we’re still somewhat touching on the theme of Geralt’s social life and the lack thereof.

 Geralt’s here like ‘yeah half of them don’t like me, but at least they interact with me normally about it, so yes, I’m sticking around’ and that’s just. Oof. :(

 Let’s see… Nenneke, Jaskier, those are both positive relationships, even if Nenneke fusses and annoys Geralt. He seemed pretty friendly with the Alderman in Blaviken but, well, that went down in flames. He calls Vesemir his father. He may or may not have kept in touch with that Not!Beauty and the Beast guy. Yennefer is complicated. That’s… about all we know of, so far?

 And look, having only a few friendships isn’t necessarily a bad thing when those relationships are strong.

 But it is pretty rough when nearly every other interaction in your life is fraught with tension and when you don’t so much as see those friends for semi-long stretches of time. :/

 And then obvs. the hostility of the world is upsetting in its own right as well

 Holy fuck. Uh. Yennefer does definitely have opinions about childbearing, doesn’t she. >_>; Ma’am you are… a bit tangled up inside.

 I still… hm. I still don’t always quite follow Geralt’s reasoning, I’ll be perfectly honest. And not in the ‘why do you feel like this’ way that I grumbled about with Yennefer, that’s a perfectly common experience for me, but a rather more literal ‘genuinely what the fuck is motivating this I haven’t the faintest idea.’

 Not sure if it’s a reading comprehension issue on my part… maybe I’ve just gotten too used to books that are a little more inside their POV character’s head?

 Or it could be a translation issue with some nuances lost.

 Or it could genuinely be an issue with & shortcoming of the writing. Idk.

Anyway in this case… why in the world was Geralt gearing up to go fight the dragon?

 He’s spent the entire past book and the beginning of this book insisting that he doesn’t hunt dragons. He turned Yennefer down. Even if he hadn’t, he vaguely agreed with Dandelion’s request to try not to kill the dragon, so… that’s not going to get Yennefer what she wants? What is he hoping to accomplish?

 Seriously I am lost. He says it’s because there are “limits to the possibilities I will accept” (murdered that paraphrasing but listen you know what I mean) and I’m just. What the fuck is that supposed to mean in this context???

 Truly if any of you have thoughts I would be happy to hear them, hah

 …ah. Well. That degenerated quickly 😂

 Dandelion is an ass

 …baby dragon is adorable <3

 …Yennefer has both decided against dragon slaughter after all, and somewhat forgiven Geralt, and I don’t know the cause for either change of heart :’D

 Well okay no she did seem touched by baby dragon. That bit makes sense. Still not sure abt Geralt though.

 Much friendlier parting terms than I expected! That must have been a plotline invented for the show, or at least accelerated and included earlier than it might otherwise have been.

.

…wow okay I’m a lot more longwinded this way. Maybe I’ll. Uh. Split this book up by arc. 😂

Next part to be posted whenever I find the time!

[bookcalanthedaily]

okay so what’s up with geralt and calanthe? why do i ship them, why do i love them so much, and a little bit about how i believe them to be the book example of courtly love.

okay so let me start with the fact i read the books for the first time back in 2012, no spoilers, no previous knowledge whatsoever and up until the point where calanthe’s death was announced in sword of destiny, i believed, or maybe hoped, that they would end up together.

it started during the feat in a question of price, with their obvious flirting and how geralt seemed to be mesmerized by calanthe. the way I see it, the narrator sees the world with geralt’s eyes, and the way calanthe is described is truly like nothing else. There aren’t any words that directly describe her as beautiful or sexually appealing, no description of her breasts or otherwise her body (which I feel is weird for sapkowski??) . She is described in ways that in a very unobvious way show her grace, her dignity, the aura that she has around her. but despite that there are, still, a few moments that obviously point to geralt’s attraction to calanthe; 

‘But hasn't fascination with my beauty and charming personality clouded your judgement?‘ ‘So I'm honoured and proud to be sitting by Queen Calanthe of Cintra, whose beauty is surpassed only by her wisdom.’ ‘Very well,' said the witcher. 'I ask for your green sash, Calanthe. May it always remind me of the colour of the eyes of the most beautiful queen I have ever known.'

so it is obvious that the lack of more obvious descriptions of her beauty isn’t caused by her, well, not beaing beautiful, but rather because the physical aspect of her appeal is the less important one.

she not only invited geralt to her table. she sat him on her righthand side and treated him like a human being, not a mutant. she is the first character in the books to have this sentiment;

'It's true,' said Calanthe. 'Geralt, present here, is a witcher. His trade is worthy of respect and esteem. He has sacrificed himself to protect us from monsters and nightmares born in the night, those sent by powers ominous and harmful to man. He kills the horrors and monsters that await us in the forests and ravines. And those which have the audacity to enter our dwellings.'

and ever since that feast, geralt is known as the witcher whom even kings invited to their tables, just because calanthe was kind enough to do it. 

after that, geralt dreams about her not once, but twice. 

dream 1:

"A bower, warmth, the scent of flowers, the intense, monotonous hum of bees. He, alone, on his knees, giving a rose to a woman with mousy locks spilling from beneath a narrow, gold band. Rings set with emeralds–large, green cabochons–on the fingers taking the rose from his hand. ‘Return here,’ the woman said. ‘Return here, should you change your mind. Your destiny will be waiting.’ I shall never return here, he thought. I never… went back there. I never returned to… Whither? Mousy hair. Green eyes."

this is basically geralt reliving calanthe’s invitation for him to return to cintra, or even stay in cintra, if that was his wish. he never returned, and when he did want to return, it was too late. 

dream 2:

‘There is no destiny,’ his own voice. ‘There is none. None. It does not exist. The only thing that everyone is destined for is death.’ ‘That is the truth,’ says the woman with the mousy hair and the mysterious smile. ‘That is the truth, Geralt.’ The woman is wearing a silvery suit of armour, bloody, dented and punctured by the points of pikes or halberds. Blood drips in a thin stream from the corner of her mysteriously and hideously smiling mouth. ‘You sneer at destiny,’ she says, still smiling. ‘You sneer at it, trifle with it. The sword of destiny has two blades. You are one of them. Is the second… death? But it is we who die, die because of you. Death cannot catch up with you, so it must settle for us. Death dogs your footsteps, White Wolf. But others die. Because of you. Do you remember me?’ ‘Ca… Calanthe!’ ‘You can save him,’ the voice of Eithné, from behind the curtain of smoke. ‘You can save him, Child of the Elder Blood. Before he plunges into the nothingness which he has come to love. Into the black forest which has no end.’ Eyes, as green as spring grass. A touch. Voices, crying in chorus, incomprehensibly. Faces.

to me, in this dream, calanthe is the physical embodiment of geralt’s guilt. of his belief that calanthe, pavetta and perhaps the entire cintra were hurt because he refused to face destiny. there is also the mysterious sentence from eithne; 

“You can save him, Child of the Elder Blood. Before he plunges into the nothingness which he has come to love. Into the black forest which has no end.”

and while some might say that she was saying it to ciri... ciri is not present even for a moment during that sequence.

and finally, there is their farewell moment; 

He looked into her glaring green eyes. She smiled. He could not decipher the smile.

There was a rosebush growing beside the summerhouse. He broke a stem and picked a flower, kneeled down, and proffered it to her, holding it in both hands, head bowed. ‘Pity I didn’t meet you earlier, White Hair,’ she murmured, taking the rose from his hands. ‘Rise.’ He stood up. ‘Should you change your mind,’ she said, lifting the rose up to her face. ‘Should you decide… Come back to Cintra. I shall be waiting. And your destiny will also be waiting. Perhaps not forever, but certainly for some time longer.’ ‘Farewell, Calanthe.’ ‘Farewell, Witcher. Look after yourself. I have… A moment ago I had a foreboding… A curious foreboding… that this is the last time I shall see you.’ ‘Farewell, O Queen.’

and to me, this is one of the most romantic scenes in the entire series. the way she brings the offered flower to her face, the words ‘pity i didn’t meet you earlier’ and how he cuts her off with a simple ‘farewell’, because thinking of what they could have been hurts too much.

and finally, his reacion to her death, where dandelion had to cut his story in half, stop mid-sentences to make sure he was fine.

in conclusion, i believe that geralt loved calanthe. perhaps she was even his first love, before he met yennefer. but he was a witcher, a mutant, and she was a queen. and he did not believe he deserved her, he did not believe he deserved being ‘saved from the darkness he has come to love’.

now, how does it tie in with the idea of courtly love? 

courtly love is a highly conventionalized medieval tradition of love between a knight and a married noblewoman, first developed by the troubadours of southern France and extensively employed in European literature of the time. The love of the knight for his lady was regarded as an ennobling passion and the relationship was typically unconsummated.

and i personally believe calanthe and geralt check all of these boxes. geralt is a knight/warrior who falls in loce with a married noblewoman but that love never gets to be consummated. but, in the end, that love does ennoble him. 

he goes from 

'Duny,' said Geralt seriously, 'Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That's why there are so few of us. We're growing old, dying, without anyone to pass our knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left.' 'Geralt,' whispered Calanthe.

to 

‘I wouldn’t take the child. I couldn’t assume the responsibility. I wouldn’t agree to burden you with it. I wouldn’t want the child to tell you one day… As I’m telling you—’

and it is my belief, that her remarks, such as this;

‘I’ve pondered long over this,’ Calanthe continued, now without a smile. ‘And I’ve come to the conclusion that the selection of the children at the stage of the Choice has scant significance. What difference does it make, in the end, Geralt, which child dies or goes insane, stuffed full of narcotics? What difference does it make whose brain bursts from hallucinations, whose eyes rupture and gush forth, instead of becoming cats’ eyes? What difference does it make whether the child destiny chose or an utterly chance one dies in its own blood and puke? Answer me.’

were a part of what made him change his mind. geralt ends up, even after calanthe’s death, becoming very close to ciri, learning through her that neutrality that had been beaten into him as a young witcher in training was not the way to go. calanthe, and through calanthe also ciri, had a huge impact on geralt’s entire character

so, all in all, this is how i see it. a love, that was never meant to be. and whether you choose to see it as a platonic-friendship type of love or, like me, as romantic love - calanthe’s impact on geralt’s growth is undeniable. 

[sheepisreading]

Books I finished in febuary

My first “review” (kind of a generous term for what I’m writing), books I finished in febuary 2022!

Emma, Jane Austen, 1815

I picked up Emma because I heard Jack Edwards (I recomend his YT videos, he makes book content!) say that it was his favorite Austen novel. I thought “Hey, Jane Austen is a classic, you should read some of her stuff” and since Emma had been endorsed by Jack, I went for it. I enjoyed the voice of the narrator, and actually the whole book a lot more than I thought I would. It’s a very fresh and light read, despite it being 570 pages (which intimidated me like crazy, the last book over 400 pages I read was The Secret History a year and a half ago). Overall very much readable and enjoyable even now, it’s just a nice lighthearted book !

Street Haunting: A London Adventure, Virginia Woolf, 1930

Okay, so I was looking around the bookstore, stumbled accros the Woolf section and ended up getting this short text because I liked the edition so much (nice cover art and nice, smooth, high grain paper, mmmh). It’s good! Our friend Virginia tells us about how she enjoys strolling through London so much that she’ll invent herself an excuse in the form of an errand to run to be able to go on a walk. I could definitely relate, I’ve done that of which she speaks often after a long day, or just on a free afternoon. A nice moment.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs, Caitlin Doughty, 2019

In case you’re not familiar with her work, Caitlin is a mortician and youtuber (visit her channel Ask A Mortician!) and does popularization of topics surrounding death. I read her previous two books a few years ago and found them quite good, and was meaning to read this while for a bit. I finally got around to it this month and yeah! Good book. Her voice is funny, informative, nerdy (affectionate). If you’ve seen her videos, you might already have heard some of what she’s talking about, since she answers commonly asked death questions (asked by kids) in this book. I would still recommend it, I found it entertaining despite having seen all her stuff, it’s a garanteed good read if you already know her, and I would recommend it to people whose relationship with death is complicated as well.

Edward II, Christopher Marlowe, 1593

Edward II is a play by Elizabethan writer Christopher Marlowe. I previously read Dr. Faust by Marlowe and was quite into his characterisation and transgressive themes, so I decided to give this one a go. Also, some of my favourite lines are from this play (“Come death, and with thy fingers close my eyes/Or if I live, let me forget myself” for instance (I know, quite emo)). I quite enjoyed the betrayal/conspiring/following-of-one’s-heart-against-all-logic in this play. Some beautiful lines, nice intrigue, characters (quite liked Kent, who changed teams like 27 times in five acts). Interesting ! Definitely looking forward to reading more Marlowe.

The Witcher: The Last Wish, Andrzej Sapkowski, 1993

Well alright. I finally caved. I finally watched The Witcher on Netflix, after trying so hard to ignore it since 2019. And the worst is.. I liked it. Aaaaaah. So yeah, I initially thought the show was based on the games, but after watching the show I looked it up on Wikipedia and saw that it was based on books! Long story short (not that short I guess) I decided to start reading the series. The first season of the show actually follows the first book almost perfectly, and it was cool to see the original text. Plus, it’s been such a long time since I read a fantasy adjacent book, and I remember why I used to enjoy the genre so much. Also, they fucked up Geralt and Jaskier’s friendship like crazy in the show ! They’re actually such good friends in the book, and generally Geralt is a lot less grumpy and monosyllabic as his show-portrayal, which surprised me but was cool! Yeah, all in all pretty good book, I’ll probably read the other ones in the next year!

[hikingofthenoldor]

a 2021 book meme

@thiswaitingheart tagged me (or did your book blog tag me? I can’t remember.)

I am answering these questions while looking at my goodreads list and... oh well... I binged the Witcher series earlier this year and didn’t read much else since. So please keep that in mind.

1. Best book you have read in 2021 so far?

Probably Part two of the Witcher Saga by Sapkowski “Time of contempt”. My goodreads review was brief, 4 stars and a not saying that it was so thrilling that I need to keep reading. There are a few more books, which received 4 stars but little one-liner really makes it stand out.

2. Best sequel you have read in 2021 so far?

That would be the same answer as above for obvious reasons.

3. A new release you want to check out?

I am absolutely not up to date with new releases. I am not reading as much as I would like to, so I tend to buy used books whenever I see one that sparks my interest and my tbr pile is quite big. I also tend to pick up older works. However, i just saw that two new novels by Alexey Pehov were translated into German and I tend to enjoy his stories. So maybe I should check those out. 

4. Most anticipated book release of the second half of the year?

Ah, wait! I am of course excited for the Nature of Middle-Earth! How could I forget about this gem. 

5. Biggest surprise?

This has nothing to do with the books themselves but I had picked up The Tolkien Reader at a library sale in Canada and a @nonejohnnywithleftslime had gifted me the German edition of Tree and Leaf a long time ago. Both were sitting on my tbr pile. I decided to read them one after the other. I wasn’t aware that Tree and Leaf was included in The Tolkien Reader along with other material. So in the end I read Tree and Leaf twice, in English and in German because I quite licked it. And the original essay about fairy tales was in fact much easier to follow than the translation.

6. Biggest disappointment?

My followers will probably remember my big book rant in June when I was more mad at a book and its final chapters than I’be ever been before. Yes, I am talking about the last few chapters in The Lady of the lake by Sapkowsky. I disliked the whole book. But the finale really took the biscuit. Yes, I am still mad and pretend that book didn’t happen. i am by now glad that Sapkowsky doesn’t like the games, because I hope that they will redeem this universe for me. 

7. Favourite new author (either new to you or debut)?

I am really enjoying The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller right now. Everyone said that it would be good. No surprise, it is really good. She has a nice style.

8. Favourite new fictional crush?

Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach but explicitly the book version, not the one from the Witcher Netflix series. Loved the character and the story arc. The way he was introduced into the story *chef’s kiss* But as the story goes on... we do not talk about that. The character is still great. just the story gets progressively worse. But as I said, let’s pretend that awful book never happened. 

9. Newest favourite character?

Same as above, I’m afraid. Or maybe Geralt of Rivia, particularly the way he is portrait in the short stories. I didn’t expect to like him as much as I do now.

10. A book that made you happy?

Sapkowsky’s Season of Storms. After the catastrophy that was Lady of the Lake, this collections of short stories assured me that this author is in fact capable of writing interesting stories. At least sometimes. So, while it technically didn’t make me happy, it at least appeased me. 

11. A book that made you cry?

Thus far, I didn’t cry while reading any book this year. Lady of the Lake almost made me cry angry tears tho.

12. Most beautiful book you have bought or received this year?

I think I only added two books to my collection this year. The name of the rose (still on my tbr pile) and The song of Achilles. They both look nice but extraordinarily beautiful.

13. What book do you need to read by the end of the year?

I want to finish both books mentioned in the question above. But I don’t think i will be able to make it. University just keeps me way too busy and I also started playing video games again. And because this post turned into a Lady of the lake hate post, I can also add that I am playing The Witcher 1 with the goal to suppress and replace the bitter aftertaste that this book left me with with something better.

14. What book do you need to re-read by the end of the year?

I want to re-read quite a few books but I don’t see any re-read happen this year. Also I will regain access to my bookshelf only in late December, so until then it’s just me and the two books that I have with me here in Finland. 

If you read this far... wow. You made it through my Witcher love/hate post. Because i feel like this is what this has been mainly about.

[janiedean]

Well congratulations. Your fandom has successfully erased the woman of color main character and love interest and replaced her with a white dude. So much for Yen mattering. You won.

… listen, I don’t know what lann/incest shipper are you out of the usual bunch of extremely sad people who are trying to make sure I end up arguing with either yen fans or yen/geralt shippers when I have absolutely no bone to pick with any of them, I make sure I don’t tag anything but the ship in my witcher posts, I have written 10k of threesome with all three of them on top of that and I absolutely don’t want drama for this fandom ffs but honestly, you’re ridiculous.

one: idk what this is about but if it’s that post I reblogged this morning about joey b/atey being billed like a main in articles about characters returning to the show in S2 when he’s the first billed of the not-mains you honestly need to fucking chill because wow, a fan favorite character is mentioned in an article written to inform fans of who’s coming back next season? AFTER, in order, henry anya and freya? like. fucking chill.

two: as much as you presume I don’t know that, do you realize that saying ‘my fandom’ erased successfully a female character who is second-billed in the show, definitely co-main in the books from what I’ve read so far, the canonical love interest of the MAIN CHARACTER that she’s obviously BOUND to CANONICALLY (I’ve read the last wish, did you?) and who is most likely fucking going nowhere in the show? like pal until netflix comes out with a statement saying ‘according to fan reception we decided to fire anya and make geralt and jaskier stick their tongues in each others’s throat in the first five minutes of 2x01 you’re welcome’, which is obviously never going to happen because that’s not the plot and we all know that, no one has fucking erased anyone from the narration or from the show, like wow what power would I have if just by being in a fandom with a lot of people in it I could wish things out of existence! then 8x05 of GOT wouldn’t have happened and I’d have been spared dnd’s boner for c/ersei lannister ruining the entire damned series, but that didn’t happen now, did it? *shrug* and guess what I’m here writing fic and waiting for grrm, not up in your fucking blogs trying to make me stir drama with a fandom I’m not even in 100% of the time and where I just want to have fun with my ONE goddamned ship I like and without getting into shipwars idc for. so like, you have eight books of canon material plus you’ll have the show canon material, and we ‘erase’ her?

newsflash, my genius anon, indulging you even if I know it’ll be useless: it’s the way of most major fandoms that the largest ship is usually m/m and if it’s people who are friends in canon that’s usually also a thing, and I’ve been in very few fandoms where the majority of shippers were m/f, which is another discourse we could get in but I absolutely have no patience for it and we all know how it is. most of the fandom content being m/m is about typical for 95% of the fandoms in existence and that does not negate canon nor does it mean that most people into m/m actually are batting for it to be canon or want the female characters to bite the dust for the m/m ship and the fact that a few idiots do in these tiring times where your shipping preferences apparently = your morality doesn’t mean that the majority agrees or expects the female character to drop dead. good fucking grief. people will ship geralt and jaskier in fandom until their fingers fall off while geralt and yen have their canon romance that no one is gonna protest because it’s canon and if you can’t handle even that basic thing then it’s 100% obvious you’re from jc fandom and never shipped a popular m/m pairing in your damned life, because most of us who do know they’re never going to be canon.

also, fyi, yen is nonwhite in the show but she’s white in both books and game so you can take that ridiculous racism nonsense out of the window because it’s not a case of ‘we’d ship it if they both were white but the moment she’s poc we don’t anymore’. also ‘not mattering’ pal some of us like yen and have absolutely nothing against her but also, consider it, a tiny bit, just like, as an option, some of us like jaskier as a character more than yen or find him more relatable than yen regardless of whether he’s white or a dude or not, which happens because we all relate to/like characters for our own goddamned reasons and if I, a woman, have more fun writing jaskier pov than I’d have writing yen’s pov and I find geralt/jaskier a dynamic I’m way more interested exploring/writing than yen/geralt because of reasons I don’t owe you (and also because geralt and jaskier is the first fucking time my ideal m/m dynamic almost to a T is to be found in a popular ship differently from the other ship I have with that dynamic that’s stuck at nineteen fics on ao3 so excuse me if I’m a bit starved for content), then it’s my fucking business because the only people who could successfully erase yen from anything witcher-related are a) andrzej sapkwoski, b) the netflix showrunners, c) the videogame devs and guess fucking what, neither me nor anyone in this fandom is, WOW, either sapkowski or the netflix team nor works for the videogame company, so excuse me if no one is erasing fucking shit.

if you really are this invested into the character - which again I doubt because I know y’all are jc people and I have plenty of proof of that so you can go tell that story to someone else - you can do an interesting thing named write your fucking own fanfic, which btw you didn’t do even in jc fandom and it shows because you wouldn’t bother other people if you were busy creating your own content, and fyi I think yen would really fucking hate the guts of your favorite leading lady considering how she treats her goddamned children but I guess that’s beyond the point.

tldr: stop trying to make me argue with people in a fandom you’re not in, stop with this nonsense and stop being this pathetic because honestly it’s been a year and a half by now and you’re here stirring drama over a show that’s not even your main fandom? please get some help already.

[kattahj]

Thoughts on Sword of Destiny

I finished reading Sword of Destiny weeks ago, but never got around to posting thoughts, in part because commenting on every story took some effort, but also because... well, a lot of it is complaining, and I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. But OTOH, there's a part of me that really really wants to gripe, and I did enjoy some of it. So, thoughts.

Story 1: The Bounds of Reason

I have already talked about how the descriptions of Tea and Vea made me feel like I was inside teenage Andrzej Sapkowski's locker room. There's some other not-great stuff too with Yennefer - she gets tied to a wagon, has her shirt ripped off, and the dragon baby seeks comfort in her intimate parts, all of which has Jaskier going "nice!" STFU Jaskier, you're intolerable in this.

(Note to people wondering why I'm still calling him that, I've primarily read the Swedish version, which calls him Riddarsporre, and if I used that name no one would know who I'm talking about. Calling him Dandelion feels weird, since it's neither his original name nor the one in use in the translation. So Jaskier it is.) I even got the English e-book and started taking screencaps of all the passages in this short story that made me roll my eyes over the sexism, and after 15-20 something screencaps I went, "This is way too long for a tumblr post." So now they're just lying around.

Apart from that, it's a nice story. Some things are the same, others very different. There are more people around, which is fine, but I think it was the right choice to cull the herd a bit for the show. There's more explicit discussions around hierarchies, what makes a hero, what makes a monster, and so on.

Interestingly, Geralt and Yennefer's plotline is rather reverse to what it's like in the show. In the book, she arrives pissed as FUCK at Geralt and claims she'll never forgive him, yet by the end of the story they're cozy with each other again. Which of course also means that there's no quarrel between Geralt and Jaskier either. In fact, Jaskier arrives separately and is all, "Oh, hey Geralt, I thought I'd hang around and write a new ballad," and the rest let him stay because, as they put it, he's not of any use but he's not any bother either.

I guess the way it went down in the show was in order to return Yennefer and Geralt to separate storylines for the finale and make sure Geralt is properly isolated too. (And properly grumpy - as someone pointed out, the episodes including Jaskier tend to be lighter than the others, because that's the way he sees them.)

Story 2: A Shard of Ice

In which Yennefer is fucking Geralt and Istredd on alternate days, and Istredd wants to close the relationship and tells Geralt to fuck off because he's an emotionless Witcher, and Geralt pouts. Then Istredd wants to fight to the death, and Geralt accepts, and Yennefer dumps both of their asses, and Istredd wants to fight to the death anyway, and Geralt is like, "uh, no, I'm not here to help you commit suicide" and leaves. Also there's some Snow Queen imagery shoehorned in that really could have been used better.

Yeah, this was pretty much my least favourite story of the lot. I don't like love triangles at the best of times, and this wasn't even a particularly good one. Plus, any time that guys think they can decide between themselves who gets to date a girl, they deserve to be dumped. So I was all, "good for you, Yen, go find someone better." Though of course she won't.

I also started wondering if Yennefer's based on one (or more) of Sapkowski's exes, because there are so many times where Geralt's all, "Why does she act in such a way!?" and I'm all, "I bet if you two ever TALKED PROPERLY you'd find out!"

Like. Damn. I know people complained that their love story in the show was sudden and forced, but I ship them more there than I do in the books so far.

Story 3: Eternal Flame

I quite liked this one! It's a fun little romp and expands nicely on the concept of dopplers, as well as introduces the Nilfgaardian religion. I have a feeling that I've seen the concept somewhere before, where a person imitating a merchant does a better job doing business than the merchant himself. But if it's based on a fairy tale I can't remember which one.

There is some groan-worthy stuff between Jaskier and his ex-girlfriend, but that's so minor it doesn't mar the story much. (I have to say though, book Jaskier is SUCH an asshole, and yet book Geralt is so much nicer to him. It really makes me question Geralt's judgement.)

Story 4: A Little Sacrifice

This one started with some pretty shitty stuff with the little mermaid (showcasing the recurring themes of a) boobs and b) women making demands that can be easily dismissed as unreasonable), but then we got Essi Daven, who was a good, likeable character. I enjoyed reading about her. Even Jaskier was more tolerable in this story! I was all, OMG Sapkowski, you're actually writing a woman well, go you...

...but then of course she instantly fell in love with Geralt (cue Juliet's gay friend: "You met him SUNDAY!") and we're told that she wears his pearl until she dies of smallpox a few years later. Which, of course. Of COURSE a girl who has flirted with the great Geralt of Rivia can't just get over him and live her life in peace. Oh no, it HAS to be disappointment, disfigurement and death.

So ultimately, the bits I liked made me even grumpier about the bits I didn't like. But still, Essi was fun while she lasted.

Story 5: The Sword of Destiny

This is the first one where I actually don't have any complains about Sapkowski's writing of women. The dryads are okay, their story is interesting, and the interactions between Geralt and Ciri are very cute indeed. It's rather sad that we lost those interactions in the show, though it would have been hard to include them with the way it was written, since it all depends on neither Geralt nor the reader knowing who this little kid is. (Though I'm pretty sure even unspoiled readers could guess.) Still, it makes the destiny feel more natural and not just the "family at first sight" thing we got on the show.

I basically only have two gripes, a small one and a big one.

The small one is that it's VERY HARD to take the dryads seriously when part of their Elder Language is barely disguised English slang. I don't know if this was a thing in the Polish edition, or if it happened in the English translation and was then carried through to the Swedish one, but it snaps me right out of the story when they say things like "Bloede arss!"

The big one is that either Sapkowski has no idea how children mature, or Geralt doesn't, because no WAY is Ciri ten or close to it in this story. Now, Geralt is presumably a big guy, so it's not impossible to think that he could carry a smallish 10-year-old on his shoulders... but I have a hard time seeing a 10-year-old allowing it. Or walking around snotty without caring. Or just in general talking and behaving the way Ciri does here.

To put things in perspective, 10 years old is one year younger than Harry Potter is in The Philosopher’s Stone, and two years younger than Meggie Folchart in Inkheart. The only way I can make ANY sort of sense of Ciri in this story, is by thinking that Geralt, being so old himself, has no concept of children's ages, and she's actually five or six.

Which would mean she's also being betrothed at five or six, but hey, Scandinavian Queen Margaret I was betrothed at age four, and I wouldn't put it past Calanthe. If she can sell her granddaughter at ten she can probably sell her at six too.

Story 6: Something More

Listen, I soaked up Geralt's injured hallucinations on the show, and the book is no different. Some of the dialogue with Visenna is exactly the same. I'm purring. The circumstances are different, but both versions work well. I like the way the transitions were done between reality, memory and dream, and the ending is very sweet. I have no complaints. :-)

[pixelgrotto]

A penny for my Witchery thoughts

The Witcher Netflix series was released at the tail end of last month, giving Geralt of Rivia the interesting distinction of a literary character who’s now a well-known TV protagonist but just happened to achieve international fame through video games first. (Aye, there was a Polish film and show in 2001 and 2002 which called Geralt a “Hexer” instead of a “Witcher,” but they’re not exactly good, though perhaps worth a peek on YouTube for chuckles.) 

Geralt’s adventures - both in the stories written by Andrzej Sapkowski and the games developed by CD Projekt Red - are close to my heart. I’ve spilled a fair amount of digital ink writing about the franchise, and my playthrough of the games and subsequent devouring of the books from 2014 to 2016 reignited my appreciation for fantasy and served as the impetus that got me reading more genre fiction and eventually delving into tabletop RPGs in 2017, leading to my current obsession with Dungeons & Dragons. I’m naturally protective of material that means a lot to me, so when the Netflix series was announced I viewed it with only subdued optimism. After all, with the possible exception of a certain HBO thing based on George R.R. Martin’s books (which now seems to be viewed worse in retrospect after the final season), fantasy doesn’t have a great track record on the small screen. I also wasn’t especially impressed when Henry Cavill was cast as Geralt, since I primarily know him from the recent Superman movies, which paint the guy in such a dour light and force him to constantly grimace like someone who’s just taken a dump only to discover that there’s no toilet paper in sight. 

But now the show’s out in the wild, and after scanning some mixed reactions (not to mention one truly baffling “review” by two Entertainment Weekly twats who only watched the first episode) I cautiously consumed it with my girlfriend over Christmas break...and can happily report that it’s good. But, it’s also a show that expects its viewers to skip through some mental hoops as we bear witness to three intersecting story lines, all of which are taking place in different eras. Then you’ve got your standard variety of fantasy names, terms and themes, several of which might be tricky to grasp if you’ve never read the books or played the games. For instance, I don’t think they ever bothered to fully explain the “Conjunction of the Spheres” (the time when planets aligned and monsters and humans came to the world, uprooting the indigenous elves and dwarves) or the “Law of Surprise” (when a person’s fate is intertwined with something unexpected - usually an unborn child). I can also see how the show’s numerous mentions of the word “destiny” could seem like wacky dialogue to viewers unaware of the fact that Sapkowski’s realm really does have a strong undercurrent of inescapable fate running through its veins. 

Unique structure and terminology aside, the first episode was more of a slow burn than I’d imagined. It starts with an awesome sequence of Geralt fighting a Kikimora, but then transitions into a fairly serious interpretation of “Lesser Evil” from the first short story collection, The Last Wish. The episode then cuts into the exodus of Ciri from the kingdom of Cintra, an event mostly described in flashback in the second short story anthology, Sword of Destiny. The scenes of death and destruction as Ciri flees her burning kingdom are fairly meandering, as are the interspersed interactions between Geralt and Renfri, a woman with seven loyal followers who was supposed to be a grittier version of Snow White in the books. There are some great fights near the end, but as I watched, I couldn’t help but think that I probably would’ve made the opener speedier and a bit pulpier, especially since the tone of these early Witcher tales was more “tongue in cheek fairy tale deconstruction” than plodding epic fantasy. 

The second episode also took its time, though the decision to detail the plight of Yennefer the sorceress before she uses magic to change her hunchback form into something that she sees as more conventionally attractive is a good one, since this was once again only flashback material in the novels. But the cream of the hour was certainly Jaskier the bard, who’s going by his moniker in the books rather than the “Dandelion” translation that the games used. He’s played by actor Joey Batey with a perfect blend of magnificent bastard bravado, surpassing his portrayal in the games with a larger than life theme song that’s now something of a cult phenomenon, and his characterization made me feel like the show knew what it was doing at the end of the day.

Episode three is where things truly came together for me, since we barrel straight into the Geralt versus Striga battle from Andrzej Sapkowski’s first Witcher short story. It’s a full-on horror interpretation (which I liked but my girl found too spooky), and also full-on fan service for someone like me who still watches the intro cinematic to The Witcher 1 on occasion. And in later episodes, as my head began getting used to the nuances of the three character timeline, the show seemed to find its footing with this delicate blend of fan service, pulp and seriousness. By the time episode 8 rolled around and the character arcs of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer came full circle with the Battle of Sodden Hill - yet another event that Sapkowski mostly wrote in flashback - I found myself wishing that season two would arrive sooner than 2021, and my girlfriend felt similarly. I also realized why the showrunners decided on the unorthodox timeline - this is a series that’ll probably excel on rewatches, particularly if you already have an idea of what to look out for. 

Series producer Lauren S. Hissrich (who’s quite a joy to follow on Twitter) has mentioned in interviews that this is a show that expects a tad of patience and effort from viewers, but will give a lot in exchange. I’m inclined to agree, and while this depiction of Sapkowski’s lore has some initial roughness around the edges, it ultimately reminds me of how The Witcher 1 was janky even upon its 2007 release but exhibited a unique magic to anyone who stuck with it for more than a handful of hours. Many professional reviewers tend to avoid giving fantasy shows patience and effort (Game of Thrones is an anomaly), which may explain some of the negative reviews. But The Witcher seems to have found a strong-as-nails following from audiences, who made it one of Netflix’s top efforts of 2019, and even friggin’ Anne Rice liked it. (Geralt of Rivia now possesses the other interesting distinction of being a literary character/TV protagonist/video game hero who’s been mentioned in the same breath as Lestat the vampire.) 

Speaking of Geralt, I owe Henry Cavill applause. I didn’t think much of his casting, but he pulled through in the end, delivering a silver-haired hero that’s clearly influenced by the games - particularly in the voice and the occasional spell slinging - but still very much his own take, with nary a “where’s the toilet paper” grimace in sight. Audiences can now take their pick between an iconic video game interpretation of the White Wolf and a likely-soon-to-be-iconic TV version, which is a rare choice to have in fandom, especially for a franchise that was once little known outside of Poland. Toss a coin to your Witcher, indeed.

[hanzajesthanza]

appreciation for sapkowski's geralt

i wrote a long post for r/wiedzmin sooo i'm also going to post it here (feel free to comment on both platforms if you use reddit):

in the midst of everything that's going on with h*nry c*vill and li*m h*msworth, i want to foster some love for the original geralt of rivia, who first emerged in publication in december 1986, way before any netflix show used the name or any actor called himself “geralt.”

because to me, there's only one original, real geralt, and that is the geralt of the books. no one is geralt, except geralt himself.

so, reblog and comment (or leave in the tags) any favorite scenes, moments, qualities, or character development from geralt, or about his relations with other characters in the series, that you appreciate from the book series. and please keep it sapkowski's canon-only, if you can (the books, the short stories, even the non-canon something ends, something begins).

i’ll start:

what i love about geralt is that he holds complexity as an inversion of the trope of the hero. he feels very real to me — he just wants to be left alone, to do his job, but he also gets lonely and he’s overall a sensitive and emotional character underneath the black leather and silver-studded surface. while he’s practical-minded (like in bounds of reason and a shard of ice being annoyed that eyck takes money for hunting monsters because it hurts his business, or demanding that he gets the right amount of agreed-upon pay for the zeugl contract), he also is compelled to do what is “right” (like in the lesser evil, the last wish, or something more intervening with renfri in the marketplace, saving yennefer from the djinn, deciding to go back to cintra to get ciri after all)

i love how he’s always so conflicted, hesitant, and troubled. he often overthinks things, and makes decisions that often don’t benefit him personally, but are either selfless or good-natured. i don’t think he’s a grouch or unfriendly — i think he responds quite reasonably to the world and situations around him (like in baptism of fire, he’s pretty whiney and upset for the majority of the book, but his daughter is literally missing and his broken arm and leg are barely healed, of course he’s distraught.)

he’s complex and yet he’s also simple, as dandelion writes, “straightforward as a halberd shaft.” he doesn’t scheme or plan, which is refreshing in a world of shady sorcerers and spies. he’s straightforward with his feelings and intentions. he loves his family and friends, and that's his real motivation throughout the series.

my favorite scenes for and with him are probably (in chronological order):

the voice of reason iv, where he speaks with iola about his past, his origins at kaer morhen, and his life as a witcher, how he was initially filled with certainty that the world needed him.

the voice of reason v, where he speaks with dandelion about his troubles as a witcher and finding work.

the last wish, when he falls in love with yennefer at the end and thinks about how beautiful she is, how he knew she would become everything. how he regrets scrutinizing her and hurting her with his eyes, vowing to never think like that about her again. how he saves her life with no ulterior motive — the fact that yennefer hears the wish and says that he’s condemned himself to her… they both have such low self-esteem, they’re both traumatized and troubled in their own ways, from their own trainings, but he, as one vulnerable person, reached out to another, equally vulnerable person, implying ‘let’s not tear each other down, let’s try to heal together.’

eternal flame, when he tears his brand new, twenty-two crown jacket, trying to mend it in vain by the fountain. and when he can’t kill dudu, and when he softly laughs at the end, agreeing to go with dandelion & dudu, dainty, and “chapelle” to the passiflora.

sword of destiny. i love how selfless he becomes once ciri enters the picture, and he didn’t even initially know who she was. he doesn’t bemoan his fate as a witcher, burdening a child with his troubles. he acts so kindly and appropriately towards her, entertaining her, protecting her…

something more. all of something more, but especially when he finds ciri, dropping to his knees and holding her so tightly 🥺 promising they’ll be together forever.

blood of elves ch. 1, when he wakes ciri from her nightmare and covers her with the sheepskin, reassuring her.

blood of elves ch. 3, when he instructs ciri to give up her sword, they fight a disagreement, and he makes an impossible leap to catch her.

blood of elves ch. 5, when he swears to philippa that if any harm comes to ciri, he’ll… and then immediately passes out from loss of blood.

time of contempt ch 3, when yennefer wouldn’t let him wear his “pretentious” headband, and he’s messing with his hair and whining about it.

time of contempt ch. 5, when his voice breaks telling dandelion that ciri needs him, that she cannot be left alone.

baptism of fire ch. 1 and 4 & tower of the swallow ch. 3 and 5, every time his knee badly pains him.

baptism of fire ch. 5, when he has fish soup with his newly formed company and grumbles about how they're "a team of heroes, a fellowship of idiots, united by a common goal which none of them understand."

baptism of fire ch. 7, when he speaks with milva, and then speaks with regis, refusing to go through ysgith upon learning that milva is pregnant and after talking to her she decided to keep the pregnancy. he says that he thought he was ready to go to ciri at any cost, but this is too high a cost. he’s not willing to risk milva and put her in danger for himself, her child for his child. like, his company became another family to him, forged in the fire of war.

baptism of fire ch. 7, when he and cahir hold the jaruga bridge together!

tower of the swallow ch. 5, when he mistakes angoulême for ciri, goes hot and cold at the same time, tries to calm himself with axii, and it doesn’t work! and then cooperates, “only for her sake.” because even if she’s not ciri, he recognizes she’s a young girl who needs to be rescued and brought into a family, very much like ciri.

tower of the swallow ch. 5, when he speaks with fulko artevelde and cleverly denounces and dissects authoritarianism as a governmental philosophy. it’s such a good dialogue!

tower of the swallow ch. 6, when he apologizes to cahir for losing his temper and his mind in the mine, and also for accusing him of being a traitor.

tower of the swallow ch. 7, when he finds out that his company is in danger and immediately demands to leave and ride to them.

lady of the lake ch. 2, when he calls regis his friend in the caves underneath mount gorgon.

lady of the lake ch. 3, when he and dandelion part ways and he “gasps audibly” upon hearing dandelion wants to stay in beauclair.

lady of the lake ch. 9… when he and yennefer finally find ciri again, and he greets her “ciri,” he answered, with a lump in his throat, “i’m glad to see you again.” him not feeling anger, grief, or hatred… just fatigue and with a great need to be done with it all. when he looks towards the corridor that ciri came out of, “as if expecting someone else to come from there. ciri shook her head. he understood,” like, he didn’t forget about his hanza, he didn’t forget about cahir and angoulême, even though he probably already sensed they had died… he still was hoping that they would survive. him not interrupting yennefer and ciri’s hug until a long time had passed, recognizing and respecting their mother-daughter bond, not being jealous of yennefer but encouraging their love. and as they descend down the marble staircase, he instructs ciri, still a father to her after all this time and after all these trials, with yennefer behind them, him telling her that everything is just a symbol, and commenting on her swordplay, saying “calmly,” “stick close to me,” and that if ciri ever tries to deflect a crossbow bolt with her sword like that again, she’ll get a spanking 😭

lady of the lake ch. 12… you know why. ψ but to be more specific:"very well," said the witcher, walking towards the exit. "but this is the last time! dammit, it really is the last time!" and "stop," he wanted to cry," where are you going? it’s enough that i always piss into the wind."

season of storms epilogue, when “he” speaks with nimue on her way to aretuza. he says that even more than a hundred years after his death, that geralt of rivia would be happy, if people remembered him, if they remembered the name of his horse. yes, he would be happy… if only he could know it. then they discuss how witchers will always be needed, for evil always will lurk in the darkness. and he reassures her to follow her destiny, which she does, and because of this, ciri follows her destiny at stygga castle!

his very specific aesthetics: his white hair, his weird eyes or as angoulême rhymes, "oczy dziwoczy!", his "hideous smile" and "hideous squint," his angular features, large nose, his (tower of the swallow ch. 7) torn ear and lost medallion, his sword over his right shoulder (and silver sword kept on roach), his black leather gloves and jacket "bristling with silver spikes," and his silly leather headband!

a complex character, a tragic hero, and really, just a normal man trying to survive, do the right thing, and protect his loved ones in a world of war and contempt.

[thehanniecorner]

Yes, I realize that this post is coming out nowhere near January, but I have been finding it difficult to keep up with blogging lately, so it is what it is, right?  Hopefully, things have calmed down enough in my life that I can get back to writing semi-regularly, but no promises yet!  Regardless, I read a lot in January and am eager to share my thoughts with you.  Let’s get started!

I hope this reaches her in time – r.h. Sin

Rating – 1 Star

Unfortunately, I started off my year with what may turn out to be my least favorite title of 2020.  I hope this reaches her in time is a poetry collection, and while I like to pick up poetry once in a while, I didn’t connect with this collection at all.  First of all, it felt like there should have been a little more editing, as I found a number of sentences and word choices that I think might have just been typos.  Beyond that, the poetry itself reminded me of the “Tumblr style” where poets just break a normal sentence into multiple lines to make the words feel deeper than they really are, which is not a style I enjoy at all.  The good news is, however, that my reading can only get better from here, right?

Emergency Skin – N.K. Jemisin

Rating – 5 Stars

After reading an incredibly underwhelming title, I decided to give N.K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin from Amazon’s Forward collection a try, figuring that an author this popular couldn’t possibly let me down.  Thankfully, my instincts were right and I loved this short story so much.  Given how short this experience is, I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that this is a phenomenal science fiction story with the best usage of second person narration that I have ever seen in literature.  This was my first title by Jemisin and I can’t wait to read more of her work in the future.

Randomize – Andy Weir

Rating – 3 Stars

Since I loved Emergency Skin so much, I wanted to give another short story from the same collection a try, which led me to Andy Weir’s Randomize.  This wasn’t bad at all, but I didn’t love it to nearly the same degree as Jemisin’s work.  The hardest part for me is that the central premise, involving the security of gambling machines and whether they can be hacked or not, felt both flimsy and info-dumping in its setup.  The ending was pretty satisfying and I had fun reading this, but I came away from the story feeling like not enough had really been done with the universe.  I’m hoping to get to more of the Forward short story collection a try in the coming months, so I hope I enjoy the others more than I enjoyed this one.

Interview with the Robot – Lee Bacon

Rating – 4 Stars

I decided to pick up an Audible subscription recently in order to read more audiobooks, and Interview with the Robot was one of the Audible Original productions available one month, so I decided to pick it up.  This short audiobook with a full cast follows a robot who looks like a young child.  She gets apprehended by the police and has to tell her strange life story to a social worker in charge of her case.

While listening to this story, I had a smile on my face from beginning to end because it was just so charming and adorable.  That said, however, there were a few pretty good twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and definitely made me feel a lot of empathy towards the protagonist.  Overall, my main complaint is that it was just too short, at around three hours of listening.  I want more from this world in the future, so I hope some sort of sequel comes out eventually.

The Last Wish – Andrzej Sapkowski

Rating – 3 Stars

2020 is the year that I work my way into adult fantasy, and other than reading Game of Thrones last year, reading The Last Wish is one of the first titles that I have ever picked up in the genre.  This series follows Geralt, a witcher, which is a type of mutated human that fights monsters, as well as the many people that surround him.  This specific book is a short story collection that follows, for the most part, Geralt as he goes from contract to contract, killing monsters.

I love the lore and world of the Witcher universe, but I’m not totally convinced that I appreciate the writing style.  It’s hard to tell if this is because of the translation or this is the intention of the original author, but there was a lot of distance between the narrator and the events happening, which made me feel disconnected from the story.  I still intend to continue on, especially after I completely fell in love with the TV series, so I hope that I will connect more with future books and get used to the writing style.

The Outsider – Stephen King

Rating – 4 Stars

Stephen King is an author that I should read way more than I do, because I only pick up one or two of his books in a year, but I almost always enjoy them.  As it turns out, The Outsider is no exception.  This horror novel follows a group of detectives as they investigate the death of a young boy in a small town.  The obvious suspect is the town’s little league coach, as the evidence is quickly mounting up against him.  As the case opens up, however, conflicting details emerge and the truth becomes more difficult to grasp.

Overall, I really enjoyed the mystery and couldn’t stop reading for the entirety of this 600-page tome.  Stephen King has a way of making long books feel like they go by in an instant.  Unsurprisingly, however, the ending was incredibly underwhelming.  Additionally, The Outsider is connected to the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, which I didn’t know, and I got pretty spoiled for the events of that series, which is unfortunate.  On top of all of this, I would like to take a moment and point out that the graphic depictions of the child’s death did not really need to be so detailed, much less have those horrific details brought up at least a dozen more times over the course of the book.  It just felt gratuitous after a while.  I enjoyed this book immensely, but the details I mentioned above kept it just barely out of five-star territory.

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

Rating – 4 Stars

Since The Outsider was quite a lengthy read, I wanted to pick up some shorter titles again, leading me to finally pick up the start to a fantasy series that has been on my radar for a long time:  Every Heart a Doorway.  This series follows a group of children that found doorways to their own personal versions of Narnia and Wonderland.  At some point, however, their newfound homes kicked them back into the normal world and they have to learn how to cope with returning to their own life.  A halfway home of sorts was founded for children struggling with this task, and as it turns out, bringing a bunch of children together who have all gone to vastly different worlds can cause some pretty crazy antics and disagreements.

I love the characters, but didn’t find the plot of this overly engaging.  Given that my rating is still high, it’s clear that my disinterest in the plot wasn’t a deal-breaker by any means, but I just struggled to stay interested, especially given that I guessed the big plot twist almost immediately.  Since these books are so short, I will definitely be reading the sequels.  In fact, given how late this wrap-up is, I can say with great certainty that my February wrap-up will have a lot of news regarding my progress on this series.

Outer Order, Inner Calm – Gretchen Rubin

Rating – 3 Stars

I like to try reading books that push me out of my comfort zone, and it has been a long time since I read anything that might be considered a part of the self-improvement genre.  Therefore, as a chronically messy person, I thought reading Outer Order, Inner Calm might be an interesting adventure, given that the whole book is dedicated to getting rid of unwanted junk to keep life peaceful.

This was an incredibly easy read.  The writing style was simple and easy to digest.  Reading it was actually a pretty pleasant and relaxing experience.  That said, however, I’m not sure how useful I actually found the book, as the advice felt like it was playing it pretty safe.  For the most part, the tips went like “Get rid of things you don’t use anymore” and “Clean your house” with about 75 different variations, each.  I’m glad I read it, but I don’t think I got much out of it.

Everything My Mother Taught Me – Alice Hoffman

Rating – 4 Stars

My final read for the month of January was another short story from an Amazon collection like the Forward collection.  This is Everything My Mother Taught Me, and it’s my first attempt at reading Alice Hoffman.  This follows a young girl who is living at a lighthouse and trying to navigate coming of age with her dysfunctional mother around her.  I can’t say much more than that given how short the story is, but I did really enjoy this.  This is a common complaint for me with short stories, but the main reason it didn’t get five stars is because it just didn’t feel fully fleshed out.  When I read Emergency Skin, I felt like Jemisin did a phenomenal job of packing a full story into a short amount of pages, and Everything My Mother Taught Me didn’t manage this as successfully.  I’m still quite eager to pick up more books by Hoffman, however, as I enjoyed her writing style.

Well, now that it’s almost March, I have finally shared what I read in January.  What did you read in the first month of the year?  Let me know in the comments below!

  January 2020 Reading Wrap-Up! Yes, I realize that this post is coming out nowhere near January, but I have been finding it difficult to keep up with blogging lately, so it is what it is, right? 

[itshaykuni]

ON HOW I FELL IN LOVE WITH READING

“Read. If you have finished reading something, read more.” This is what I used to hear when I was a little restless schoolgirl whose mind was full of vivid dreams and fantasies. For a child whose tiny brain was fully occupied by imaginary universes and characters, there was no space left for those created by someone else’s imagination. And since my eyes were always in search of something close to my imaginary worlds - colorful, engaging, breathtakingly adventurous - staring at the dull wooden white pages filled with nothing but black letters seemed to be a torture to me. 

On the other hand, I was the youngest in my family and in the circle of friends, and to be taken seriously, I had to gain authority and trust among them. So I was looking to be an excellent student and reach farther than my peers to establish my authority. And I knew - reading is something that brilliant kids do, whereas the weaker ones hate, so I have to do it as well. This would be a huge additional bonus on my way of getting praise and trust. 

This attitude was my first and biggest misconception about reading - doing it only to get praise and recognition, not delving into the mesmerizing new worlds yet undiscovered by me. And alongside this rather toxic attitude, I stumbled upon a serious problem in my elementary school years. Regardless of the fascinating speed, as claimed by my teachers, at which I could process any information I was given, I soon noticed a thing that started to worry me more with each passing year. I was always the last to finish reading something in my class. Reading one page took me 2 times more than my peers. My mother's first response to this was, naturally, that everything was fine, and my classmates were just too lazy to read every word of every sentence. That is why, she’d say, I could process information better than them - because I read everything thoroughly. Her explanation sounded convincing enough. It was only 15 years later that I came across the term ‘dyslexia’.

With time, I noticed that, after reading a couple of pages in a row, I was feeling physically tired, even though I was an eternal engine as a child. It felt like I had sprinted a couple of kilometers with my tiny legs. Dizziness, low levels of energy would play cruel tricks with my eyes and brain. With each passage, it was becoming harder for me to connect one word with another, sometimes I would spend a minute to see and read one word. Not that the letters jumped around as rabbits, just keeping the attention on the character deciphering was hard. And it sucked, I felt an extremely unpleasant discomfort. 

Physically painful and heavy - a human will do anything to avoid a task that has these two qualities, at least for as long as that human is at middle school. And if reading takes those qualities upon itself, adding even a grain of dullness to a text can instantaneously make finishing it impossible. Whatever our teachers assigned to read were particularly uninteresting - none of the stories about simple village boys and their grandfathers related to me - a girl who had never been in a rural community and, in her fantasies, was riding a green-scaled dragon over the mountain forests and exploring the seas with Sinbad on a longship with enormous sails. And the poems about our favorite Holy Mountain would literally drive me crazy. Literature classes mostly seemed bullshit to me, and I wasn’t sure if I was right or if I just couldn’t find and see and understand the beauty in those pieces.

At high school, I gave up on pleasing the grown-ups and getting out of my own skin to be an excellent student. Instead, I started to explore my own likes and dislikes, thus not feeling too obligated to read whatever we were assigned. Even though the authors and literary pieces we studied diversified a bit over time, I admitted one simple truth -  Armenian literature was not for me. So I started to give attention to stories that were able to capture my attention. Still, whatever interested me the most wasn’t translated into my native language, making reading way more difficult and even slower than usual, no matter how well I could comprehend the language. And as a top cherry, I was a dramatic teenager more interested in socializing, getting stories first-hand from real people rather than closing up in a room and staring at the pages of heavy books. 

As I was graduating from high school and applying to a bachelor's degree, I had to do a ton of obligatory reading, having left no time and desire to find something that would truly relate to me. Things started to slowly change by the variety of books offered on the internet and my improved skills in foreign languages. I had the opportunity to explore online libraries as a student, but still, no matter how deep I searched, none of my findings would really come close to my heart. And my reading speed just didn’t seem to improve with time, which was truly enraging me.

With my ‘Oh well, okay’ reaction to whatever I read, soon I thought I had to accept the fact that reading simply wasn’t enjoyable for me and come to terms with that once and for all. So, I abandoned my attempts of forcing myself to like reading and allowed myself the luxury to only read whatever I really wanted, whenever I wanted it and for as much as it was light and enjoyable. Instead, visual media is what I could swim in like a fish. As I fell in the addictive loop of mindlessly checking social media pages and quickly found my way out of it, I discovered invaluable resources on the way like TED Talks, online courses in history, art, psychology, design, photography, videography, journalism, and even literature. These platforms opened new galaxies for me. As I explored so many new topics, global social problems and authors, I soon started to figure out my taste in everything, literature as well.

Due to self-reflection that had grown roots during my high-school years and gradually increased over time, I realized something incredible. My emotional intelligence and non-verbal communication (especially analyzing and understanding the latter) had grown unbelievably. I surely knew it wasn’t only due to growing up, and not the “enormous” experience from communicating to different people. It was also the reading’s doing. I glanced back upon some of the authors I had read- Weber, Hesse, Palahniuk, Akutagawa, Mayne Reid, Christie and Doyle, Fitzgerald, Phillip Dick and many others. To be honest, very often the real value and meaning of the books I read would come to me much later after certain events had taken place in my life. No matter how slow I’d read, no matter how uninterested I was in the obligatory literature, no matter that over 15 years I hadn’t been able to find a book that I would actually like, literature had a great influence on shaping my personality, empathy and perception. That brought hope back to me - perhaps I wasn’t as pitiful as a literature person as I thought I was.

Soon I stumbled upon several books from reading which I received a marvelous experience. The first one was just a 300-page self-help book I purchased in Berlin. Even though it was way far from being a literary masterpiece, I was in need of those pieces of advice and reminders, so it only made a positive influence on me. What mattered the most, though, was the speed with which I finished the book - 10 days only, during travel! That was a personal record for me that raised my hopes a level higher - hopes that I’ll be able to read a book (with normal speed) and enjoy it like normal people do.

After that, I again abandoned my attempts to commit to reading. But one fine spring day when I was browsing my YouTube recommendations, I found a stunning documentary about the most impressive bookstores in the world. In it, the author Mas Joseph shares his anxiety about reading and his endless love for books and bookstores. Nothing could relate me more than this film. In fact, it relates to me to the point where I was crying over the sights of the enormous bookstores that exist to bring us millions of new worlds, realities, fantasies, ideas and invaluable information. “I just found my church,” I thought to myself, “bookstores should be the real churches, the real centers to connect to the higher powers of the universe, not the lifeless cathedrals that have nothing to offer but a stunning architecture. Bookstores contain all the wisdom of the world, and it’s worth it to spend our lives exploring those pieces of wisdom.”

I came across another book that I enjoyed reading from the first sentence to the last. It was a super-captivating detective story that developed around Istanbul’s cultural heritage - something I’ve had a great interest in recent years. But the book was rather heavy - almost 800 pages. And since I still wasn’t getting used to a high-speed committed reading, it took me about a year to finish it. I had abandoned the book a couple of times before, not because it wasn’t engaging enough but because I wasn’t able to commit to finishing it. But it was such a joy when I did, and realizing I had guessed the killers correctly from the very beginning really excited me. 

Being so inspired, I set my mind on making reading a daily habit and decided to go back to the most interesting books that I had abandoned and finish those as well. As a result, I read 30-90 minutes every day, finished 3 books in a month and even fell in love with one of them - “The Last Wish” by Andrzej Sapkowski, a collection of short stories about Geralt of Rivia, the famous Witcher that instantly captures gamers’ hearts. The obsession with the Witcher universe and my excitement of improving reading skills brought me a new challenge - to commit to reading all the books of the series. Currently, I’m on the 2nd tome, “Sword of Destiny”, and I’m totally loving it! The book is with me wherever I go, despite the heaviness of my bag. 

Nothing can be compared to stare at the dull black characters written on the yellowish pages and hallucinate like you’ve swallowed a mushroom. The more I read, the faster my reading rate gets, and my imagination enhances, giving me a wider variety of colors, perspectives, patterns and settings to explore the story in. Reading is not about getting acquainted with the story and learning what happened eventually. And by no means, it is about getting recognition and appraisal. It’s an experience that fully activates my brain, and when I say fully, I mean it. I can hear each character’s voice, the subtle trembles of their speech, see the goosebumps when the wind softly runs over their skins, I can smell the stinking corpse or taste the delicious freshly-baked cheese-pie in the noisy inn where Slavic traditional music is playing. I can see the subtle mimics when characters flirt, and how they cross their legs, and how a person not related to their story is silently watching them from the corner. 

Only now I can genuinely believe the famous quote by George RR Martin: 

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

[pommeverte3]

Reasons why some people don’t like Yennefer

Having been part of the witcher fandom for more than a year now I have had all the time I needed to watch the never ending waifu war between Triss fans and Yen fans. And I've read a lot of things. Among other things, Triss fans saying again and again and again that “normal” people should choose Triss and that the one choosing Yen must have some kind of serious issues. On the other side, Yen fans seem so often desperate about the fact that the other team doesn't see Yen's true self and vulnerable side. I've also read so many times Triss fans saying that we don't see Yen's flaws and can't stand it when people point them out. Today as a Yen fan (who happens to like Triss as well by the way, but this is not the point), I'm trying an experiment. I'll try to find an answer to the “how can people not like Yennefer” question.

Well first I think that it was intentional from the very beginning. And when I say beginning I'm not talking about the games. Sapkowski himself stated that he never intended to write Yennefer as a likable character, as a character who would “please the reader”. And indeed to be honest Yen can be hard to like. First because she hides who she is very well behind a cold and emotionless mask. And thing is, a lot of people won't try to look beyond that mask, simply because a lot of people think that actions define who you are as a person. So if you act cold then you are cold. If you don't show emotions then you don't have them. If you pretend you don't care, then you don't. But fact is, life is not that simple. A lot of people actually hide their emotions in order to protect themselves, we all do to some extend. Yen is a master at that game and who could blame her knowing her past? That is a side of her personality to which I very strongly relate because I'm very much the same. For this reason maybe, I have become very good at noticing masks and people who use them and I always try to see beyond those masks. It's something I do naturally, without even realizing it. And there are two things I learned from it : first, people who use masks and hide who they are at first are usually great people and they are worth the trouble, and second : some people will never be able to, or want to look beyond the masks. For that reason, to some people Yennefer will never be more than the cold, bossy woman you can see when you first meet her. And maybe they are not entirely wrong, because in a way Yen IS that cold, bossy woman, in her actions she is in any case. Plus I think it is not entirely wrong to say that what you choose to show the world about yourself defines you in a way. But I still think some people are missing half the information they need to see the big picture.

I know what some of you will think at that point : “But I'm pretty sure I understand Yennefer perfectly and I still don't like her”. Well I think that's very possible and once again very intentional. Because let's face it, even beneath the mask Yennefer is not perfect at all. I love that character very much. I love how strong and resilient she is despite all she has been through. I love her self confidence probably because I would like to have a little bit more of that myself. I love the way she is willing to give everything she has and everything she is for the people she loves because I'm very much the same and can really relate to that. I love her wits, I love her sarcastic sense of humor. I love how smart she is, how much she loves to learn things, how good she is at teaching other people. I think she really has a good heart too, and as a matter of fact there are several examples of her randomly helping strangers in the books. That being said I understand very well that there are downsides to all that. I understand that her self confidence can be seen as arrogance, especially when it leads her to make mistakes or to think that her way of getting things done is necessarily the best. I get that some people don't like sarcasm. I know that sometimes Yen will see some sacrifices as « necessary » to protect the people she loves and will not hesitate to make these sacrifices and I get that some people will see that as selfish. And I think all of this is great. I think it shows that the character is very realistic and very well written. Because here's a fact : one cannot please everyone. The thing you love about someone could be the very reason why some others will dislike that person. And I love the fact that this is true of Yen (and every single character in the witcher books). I love that Sapkowski took that HUGE risk. Because yes most writers, especially fantasy writers, will prefer to write their main characters as unrealistic to make sure that every single reader out there will like them and thus like the book. Either that or they will write about a huge cast of characters, because when you write about a lot of characters every reader can find one they like (that would be, let's say G.R.R Martin's style). Sapkowski didn't do any of that. He kept a small cast of three main characters and yet decided to write them as flawed, and realistic, and somehow not entirely likable. And I admire him for that, it makes me love his writing and Yen as a character even more.

So yes, Yennefer cannot be liked by everyone who reads the books, that's a fact, but what about the games. Well even though the games are not perfect regarding the way they wrote her I think overall they did a really great job, and to some extend everything I've said so far about the books stays true in the games. But I also think that CDPR's take on the universe gave people more reasons not to like Yennefer, artificial reasons this time. First, well obviously Yen is not in the first two games and CDPR presented in those games the Triss romance as “obvious” without giving the player any background from the books. I must say that I have played the games first and well I kinda liked Triss and I kinda liked the romance with her. I wasn't THAT much of a fan, it wasn't one of my all time favorite ships, but well it was kinda nice. And even though I didn't think the chemistry between Triss and Geralt was that great I still thought of Yen as a bit of an intruder before playing the third game. So I can very well imagine the way some people, the ones who were really invested in the Triss/Geralt relationship, felt about it. I mean it happens to me sometimes when I play a new game, or read a new book to kinda “hope” that it won't be that great because I want my old favorite stuff to still be my favorite and I feel kinda guilty about feeling otherwise. It's stupid maybe, but I get that sense of loyalty to something you like very much. And in order to protect that love you have for the old stuff sometimes you voluntarily don't see how great the new stuff is. I'm not saying here that all Triss fans still prefer Triss because they are being reluctant to let go of her and see how great Yen is. But I think it does have an impact on the way some people see Yen as a character. I think they “have” to dislike Yen in order to make sure that she won't interfere with their canon romance, with the picture they have in mind.

Finally, I think unfortunately that the games have had an impact on the way people see the books, and this is the thing that makes me just a little bit sad. Because the last point I think is relevant to understand the way people see Yen is the fact that everyone is reluctant to change their opinions on things. Once you think you know something and have made up your mind about how you feel about that thing it takes a very open minded person and some kind of courage and effort to change your point of view. And even though I really like CDPR's take on Yennefer, I do think that they didn't show the entire picture. And I've seen so many people reading the books after having played the games and taking their opinion on the characters with them and transposing those opinions into the books and having an interpretation of the books which is in some way based on the games. And I think it's a shame. Because fact is, whether you like the books or the games better is up to you BUT the games are based on the books, not the other way around. Meaning that CDPR's characters are an adaptation of the books characters, they are CDPR's view on the characters. So transposing CDPR's characters into the books is a little bit like choosing deliberately to see only one side, one interpretation of the characters instead of seeing the whole picture and making your own interpretation. It's a bit like seeing the sunlight through a green glass and then being able to only see it through that same glass even though you are missing on a whole part of it. Or to use Sapkowski's own words it's like mistaking the stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the sky.

I have to add there that I don't intend to start yet another waifu war with this post, I'm not blaming anyone, just trying to understand the way people see Yen as a character and how the games can have an impact on the way people see the books. I am fully aware that this is not a one sided thing, that some Yen fans also have a need to dislike Triss for some reason, that some of them won't like her in the games because of the books, or the other way around and that could probably make a topic for another post just like this one. This post only intended to make people reflect on the issue so please read it with an open mind.

[thehonestreader]

The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski

Rating: F

After traveling through the portal in the Tower of Swallows, Ciri finds herself in another world ruled by elves. Thinking that escape through the portal was her salvation, it ends up being a trap. Now she has no way to leave their world until she agrees to have the king’s child and pass on the Elder Blood. Or, at least, that’s what they’ve told her. But Ciri is the Lady of Time and Space, and the power that flows in her veins prevents her from being held anywhere she doesn’t want to be. Meanwhile, Geralt is still set on rescuing Ciri, even though he has no idea where she is, and he’s wasted a lot of time in Toussaint.

--

It’s over! It’s finally over! Hallelujah! This series is exhausting. I’m so happy I’m done with it and now I can go read some books that I actually care about and want to read.

I’m breaking this review up into bullet points because there is so much about it that I either didn’t like or outright hated and that makes it easier. So... let’s go. There will be cursing.

1. Flashbacks. Unnecessary flashbacks. Flashbacks in flashbacks. Flashbacks in flashbacks in flashbacks. Every book has been this way or had these elements, but this book takes it to a whole new level. There’s one point early on in the book where I think the story had entered four levels of flashbacks. That’s three too many flashbacks. Have I used the word flashbacks enough yet?

2. Unlikable characters that I like from other adaptations. Anna Henrietta in the Blood and Wine expansion of The Witcher 3? Interesting person. She definitely had a temper and she made decisions I didn’t like, but as a whole I enjoyed her character. In this book? She’s a shallow, vain, stupid woman who’s played for laughs. Let’s all laugh at this dumb lady who rules her dumb fairy-tale country and executes people for being mean to her because, haha, women. I hated it. I have to say, it says something that other people managed to do a better take on an author’s character than the author himself.

3. Geralt is MIA for most of this book. He’s gone for probably 70% of the story. He fucks off into a snow storm and we don’t see or hear from him again until almost the end. Excellent. Love it.

4. This book is boring as fuck. Nothing even happens for the first 200 or so pages because the group is just wasting time in Toussaint. The previous books have also done this, but once again I feel like everything that I hated in the past is so much worse in this one. I just don’t understand how the last book in a series can have so much nothing happening in it. How? How can you do that? Ciri is the main focus here, which I wouldn’t mind if what she was doing was actually, you know, interesting. But it’s not. Nothing is. She bounces around from world to world for far too long and what little plot there is grinds to a halt.

5. The ending of the war is stupid as fuck. Here come spoilers, I don’t give a shit. Nilfgaard has been waging this war for years, seizing land in the north, with the ultimate goal of Emhyr getting his hands on Ciri. Emhry is also Duny, Ciri’s father, but I knew that already from the games, so that part didn’t come as a shock to me. And do you know how all this comes to a head? Emhyr sees Ciri and just decides he’s done and give up. He walks away without her. He ends the war abruptly, and gains almost nothing from it. Three out of five of the books in this series already felt like a waste to me since they’re basically nothing more than filler, and then to top it off the fact that the series ends saying that nothing mattered just makes me that much angrier. You’ve wasted my time. For five novels and two short story collections you’ve wasted my time.

6. The ending itself is boring and stupid as fuck. An unnecessary amount of the end is spent covering useless things. Again. The plot skips ahead to all the kingdoms coming together to discuss how to settle things. The main focus is how the Lodge is interfering and how they’ll play all the countries to get what they want. This is how the author decided to wrap things up? By not focusing on the characters we’re supposed to care about? I don’t care about the fucking Lodge. I didn’t spend the last five books reading about the Lodge. I want to know what’s happening with Geralt and Ciri and Yennifer. I don’t want their fates to be shoved to the very end like it’s an afterthought. And, yes, that’s what happens. What the actual fuck.

Here’s what I’ll end on: to the people working at CD Projekt Red, thank you for taking these boring, pointless books with lifeless characters and making them into some kickass games with characters I care about. Good job. In all honesty, that’s probably why I liked the first few books more than the later ones, because I still had the glow of the games clouding my vision.

-Review by C.M.

[gayregis]

Hello, I've been following you for a bit and have grown to like and understand your opinions with the witcher in general and decided to finally send you an ask, you seem really sweet so might send you multiple if you don't mind :) Anyway I have recently come into possession of the last wish book and I can't wait to read it. I was wondering what you're favorite part is? And how much you like the book in general? You've probably answered similar questions but couldn't hurt to ask for myself :)

thank you for the ask!! im so happy for your new acquisition! i personally really like the last wish and i think it’s one of the strongest witcher books. it sets all of the world and characters up really nicely for the sword of destiny and for the saga later on. ciri doesn’t make an appearance, but a question of price sets up her storyline nicely. every character has a very interesting and in-character debut scene which gives them something to grow from later on in the series as they develop more.

i don’t have just one favorite part, i have many... but here we are:

dandelion’s debut scene in the voice of reason 5 ... i love how it sets him up as geralt’s best friend, as an educated idiot, vodka enthusiast, flirt, etc... his character just seems very strong in this, and i love how his introduction comes as a kind of relief as his presence makes geralt less tense and anxious, geralt laughs genuinely in this scene for like one of the first times the audience has seen, and since we read from geralt’s perspective, this is very welcomed... when geralt gets so upset, it makes me upset as a reader trying to get into his mind... and i like how dandelion isn’t shy to rebuke geralt and tell him what for, i mean that’s their relationship in general, but this is the first time we’re seeing it. he levels with geralt and provides some advice but doesn’t coddle him and doesn’t shrink from him. he’s introduced as an equal and he stays an equal. maybe i like this scene more now due to twn, but it sticks in my head.

geralt and calanthe’s conversation in a question of price ... i think this scene really demonstrates what sapkowski is capable of with dialogue, how everything sort of turns back on itself and comes full-circle with being an “interesting dinner companion” ... and also, i love the urcheon/duny’s reveal, how calanthe is so clever to get him to reveal himself and take off his helmet! i love dramatic reveals of monster/inhuman/etc characters as i say in the next point, but it’s steeped in such courtly intrigue that it puts an interesting spin on it, because they have to (or at least try to) contend with official and legal manners of dealing with things

the fight with vereena in a grain of truth ... really great poetic writing in a combat scene from sapkowski here. i love how things become kind of disembodied towards the end, i feel the pov shifted to vereena as she died, with elements such as “floating, floating, floating...” and “there are fewer and fewer monsters? and i? what am i? who’s shouting? the birds? the woman in a sheepskin jacket? the roses from nazair? how quiet! hoe empty. what emptiness. within me...” ... it’s extremely haunting. in addition, i love the beginning and middle of the combat scene, too, i love how vereena just communicates in slight nods, a growing smile on her lips, until she smiles so widely she bares her fangs, geralt is taken by surprise and barely has time to yell before she screams him down, and how she transforms into a bat and slaps him in the face, how geralt casts heliotrope but is seeing spots in his vision anyways, how a slash which should have sundered the beast in two only produced a thin little red sliver which was healing already... its soooooo epic and it just demonstrates that even though geralt is a witcher, he is not powerful at all, and nivellen actually has to step in to save him.

torque’s reveal and the reading of the great booke in edge of the world ... maybe it’s just me but i love this silly goat. and i love how it’s dandelion’s arrogance that gets them into trouble with him, and how a small little sylvan can scare off two men with just some iron balls. and then they find out the villagers armed him with the iron balls themselves, and geralt and dandelion both slip into the archaic dialect of lower posada... it’s just funny ... just “careful, it’s contagious...”

yennefer’s debut in the last wish ... i like how yennefer doesn’t entertain geralt, doesn’t bow to him, and when he uses sarcasm she just electrocutes him with lightning from her hand. i love how her character is just sincerely not giving a fuck about anyone around her, especially because of how she develops later on.

geralt’s debut in the witcher ... it’s only a few pages, but i love his descriptions and dialogue, how he speaks “as if unsure,” how his leather jerkin is old, his boots are dusty, how no one carries a sword on his back except for him, and how he gets into the fight just because people fear and despise him for no reason besides he exists, it’s really heartfelt to also see him speak later in the short story and in the rest of the book, because we see how intelligent and funny he can be, that he’s no dangerous brute, but people see him as one.

all nenneke moments ever in the voice of reason. i love how she tells geralt “im not your mother” but she really is fulfilling a kind of motherly role to him, i love how she gives her opinions on yennefer and dandelion, i love how she threatens falwick and the knights with the jar... 

honorable mentions, scenes i think are well written but they’re just not personally my favorites:

the ending of the last wish ... really great writing from sapkowski here, it’s very poetic, it’s sexual, but not graphic at all, it seems to dwell on the concept of love and what it means to be loved and to be vulnerable rather than the very specific sensation in the moment that geralt and yennefer experienced. it’s a sex scene, but it’s not pornographic, if that makes sense.

the conversation between geralt and filavandrel in edge of the world ... geralt is so eloquent and filavandrel is too, geralt describes how he has been othered but how he has to live with it, it is a conversation not between two characters, but it becomes more universal, a conflict that relates to the real world.

also sorryyyyy i dislike the lesser evil because it depresses me, as does the witcher... it’s basically the tower of the swallow of the short stories as it dwells on so much abuse and dispair of girls, it makes me uncomfortable to read. but they’re good stories, they just bum me out so i can only read them once or a couple of times (and not over and over again like with the other stories). so much death.

[sheepinthesky]

The Witcher - The Sword of Destiny

I haven’t written about the Witcher in a long time, have I. I did finish reading the second title – Sword of Destiny. A little fun fact in the beginning – the original Polish version was released before The Last Wish, aka the first book. Interesting!

Sword of Destiny is another collection of short stories based in the Witcher universe. This time, it’s just six stories (the first book had 7!), however they’re all good. I’m not fan of first book’s “A Question of Price”. Not at all.

The first short story is called The Bounds of Reason and it’s a really good story to start a book with. It has action, it has talking and politics. And, the best characters take a part in this story. Talking about Dandelion and Yennefer. Sure, they’re “main characters”, that doesn’t mean they’re in every story, though. Anyway, the story starts off with Geralt, who has been hired to kill a basilisk. The people who hired him were impatient and they thought that he was dead already and they decided to take his belongings. However, they have been stopped by Borch Three Jackdaws, accompanied by two Zerrikankian women. In the end, Geralt keeps his things and fortunately gets paid. Three Jackdaws invites him to a local inn and there they befriend. The next day, they decide to continue they travels. They are stopped at the border though, because king Niedamiris hunting a dragon there. And then it gets interesting. Many people are there to help the king – mages, dwarfs, warriors, even Dandelion. Geralt, even though he’s a Witcher and they do not kill dragons, joins this mixed crew. Because not all of them share the same motives and even goals, they soon start to argue and Geralt decides to leave them. However, it gets crazy and he just can’t easily leave! I liked this one story, because it did have all. Dragons, action, politics, jokes. And plot twists.

A Shard of Ice is my least favourite story of his book. It tells us more about the relationship of Yennefer and Geralt, however… It’s kind of boring. Geralt meets Istredd, who is Yennefer “lover”, which makes him angry, because, well, they have a thing together, too. Istredd thinks that Yennefer couldn’t be happy with Geralt and Geralt thinks the same about Istredd. And that’s the story. A fight for Yennefer. And Yennefer concludes the fight with her ice-queen style.

The third story is called Eternal Flame. In this story, we learn about the dopplers and how Dandelion created one of his better-known ballads. Dopplers are shapepshifting creatures and one of them took a shape of Dainty Biberveld, a halfling. This doppler Dudu concludes many deals and makes a lot of money. The real Dainty finds out, though, and he doesn’t like this identity theft. And of course, this all is happening in Novigrad, where the Eternal Fires prosecutes all “monsters”, dopplers included. And by prosecuting, I mean they kill them.

A Little Sacrifice is the fourth short story and this one is inspired by the Little Mermaid. In this story, we learn the tale of two lovers, Sh’eenaz the siren and Agloval. Agloval is a regular human who is in love with the siren, however he doesn’t seem to make any compromises. Agloval doesn’t speak her language so he hired Geralt, who honestly isn’t that great either. Sh’eenaz gets offended, because Agloval wants to marry her. With legs, not with tail. She thinks it’s unfair, because just for him she sits on a rock every single day and it hurts. She gives him all she can and he just takes. Because of this, she leaves and Agloval is angry at Geralt, thinking it’s his fault. And so, Geralt doesn’t get paid. In the meantime, Dandelion arranges a performance on a wedding and so Geralt and Danelion have something to eat and somewhere to sleep. During the wedding, Geralts meets Agloval once again and he hires him, this time to investigate the deaths of pearl divers. This story had a nice atmosphere and it did show us that we, humans, can’t rule all land and all water.

The fifth short story is The Sword of Destiny. This is the story in which Ciri gets introduced! Geralt is on his way to deliver a message to the queen of the dryads. He finds two corpses and the baron of Valen, Freixenet. Freixenet is looking for a princess, who ran away. Before Geralt can do anything, dryads surround them. One of them, Braenn, takes Geralt to Duén Canell, to the queen. Freixenet is escorted by the other dryads. Along the way, Braenn and Geralt find the princess, who has been attacked by a giant centipede. Braenn takes them both to the queen and she must decide, what to do with Ciri. Normally, she would be raised in Brokilon to become a dryad, but Geralt asks Eithné, the queen, to let her go. Eithné knows that Ciri is in fact a child bound by fate to Geralt (as we learned in book 1) and she does use this knowledge while making decisions.

The last story, Something More, is very, very nice. The story begins with a merchant, who has difficulties during his travel. Thankfully, he meets Geralt and he decides to help when merchant says he’ll give him whatever he desires. Geralt asks for what he finds at home yet doesn’t expect. He gets in a fight, and is injured. The merchant tries to heal him and Geralt takes some of his potions, which makes him unconscious and he dreams of past events. We learn of the second battle of Sodden, of the battle of Cintra… All the sad stuff! We also meet someone from book 1. The best thing is what Geralt receives in the end. J

There is no need to read the first book. If you’re into fantasy and can’t find book 1, grab book 2. Doesn’t matter. It’s a good introduction. As I said earlier, I love Sapkowski’s writing. It’s very detailed. And there isn’t much action, however, it’s not boring. He uses this casual humour. I suppose that’s what makes The Witcher great.