I had wanted to read the book for many years but, for some reason, always hesitated to start. Finally, riding the wave of the well-known game about Geralt the Witcher, I decided to give it a go.
Honestly, I expected much more. The saga starts as a collection of short stories about various contracts of the witcher, a monster hunter. Then, the author decides to turn it into a full-fledged epic saga. And this is where the tension started to weaken. The witcher gradually stops being a witcher, essentially losing all the traits that defined him (at the very least, he doesn’t use them at all). The intrigue keeps building and building, often interspersed with frankly tedious and unnecessary lyrical digressions that don’t add much to the main plot. Book after book, but the saga feels very uneven. Sometimes you fly through the pages, unable to put it down, and other times you want to skip entire chapters. And finally… it ends with a whimper. With nothing. There’s no clear understanding of what it was all for, and the “deus ex machina” feels contrived and unconvincing in terms of the characters’ logic. Even after that, there are a few more chapters that don’t give a sense of closure.
However, overall, I think the character of Geralt the Witcher far outshines the quality of the book itself.
My rating: 3/5
