The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski

Fantasy | Mature Audiences | Overall rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

***Spoilers abound ahead!!***

Blood of Elves (1994 (Polish), 2009 (English, US)) - the first novel is a really nice setup after the two anthology books (The Last Wish; Sword of Destiny) and really dives into what has happened in the immediate time after Nilfgaard’s attack on Cintra and Princess Cirilla’s escape from the clutches of the Nilfgaardian Empire. She’s now being protected and trained by Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher commonly known as the White Wolf, and also the man she’s [spoiler alert] destined to be entangled with. We get to see some really nice fleshing out of characters we’ve met previously like sorceress Triss Merigold, everyone’s favorite bard Dandelion (Jaskier in the Netflix series), the great Yennefer of Vengerberg, and Philippa Eilhart, two more sorceresses with great powers and character arcs. 

Rating: 3.5/5 stars 

Time of Contempt (1995 (Polish), 2013 (English, US)) - This book focuses on the northern kingdoms’ plan from Blood of Elves being put into action, or at least them working on doing so to put Nilfgaard back in its place. There’s a lot of war discussions, but we also get a really nice view of how tumultuous things are with Yennefer, Geralt, and Ciri all together, with dear Dandelion to color everything with some nice music. My favorite part of this book is the lore building around Ciri and her being of the Elder Blood and being a Source for the raw magic of the world. It really heightens the tension of the whole book because this prophecy is still not fully understood by Ciri and Geralt, which causes them some friction. 

Rating: 4/5 stars

Baptism of Fire (1996 (Polish), 2014 (English, US)) - The third novel in the series does have some slowdown compared to the rather breakneck pace of Time of Contempt, but it’s through no fault of dear Geralt’s -- having been dealt a rather serious injury, he’s recovering in Brokilon forest with the dryads and can’t walk very well (or at all, really) for a good long while. We do get to meet a woman named Milva in Brokilon, who joins our Witcher’s party after they depart the safety of the forest. What I really enjoy with this book is we get to meet Cahir, the winged helmet knight of Nilfgaard, who was meant to capture Ciri in Cintra and has been looking for her ever since. He gets some pretty great character development (to start), which is always a plus in my book. We don’t get a lot of Ciri in this book, but with such a large cast it’s bound to happen sometimes. 

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

The Tower of Swallows (1997 (Polish), 2016 (English, US)) - As the fourth book in this series, a lot of things culminate here, which is great for emotional attacks for the reader and also for plot-based gluing to the page. I tore through this book in the series, and it’s probably due to the high stakes involved for both Ciri and Geralt. Ciri has narrowly escaped the grasp of the Nilfgaardians once again with her life and a very serious face injury, somehow jumping time and space to do so. Because we get to see Ciri recount a lot of what happened during the third book when she wasn’t as present, and we really get to see her growing up during this recounting of her travels and trials with Vysogota while she’s recovering. There is, of course, wickedness and other planning afoot, especially among the mages of the continent, which adds a layer of tension underneath all of Ciri’s chapters. 

Rating: 4/5 stars

The Lady of the Lake (1999 (Polish), 2017 (English, US)) - This is the final book in the Witcher saga, and as such, it carries a lot of weight, especially when it comes to all of the lore that’s been building since book one and the journeys that Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer, and everyone else of the “main cast” have been on. Because there’s so much weight to giving these characters some finality, this is also the longest book by quite a margin. Lots of storylines have been weaving in and out, together and separate, for the previous four books, but this novel ends with everyone coming together one last time, for better or for worse. Sapkowski does a really great job of leaving things mildly open-ended with this novel ending for Ciri if he were to ever continue the series, but it also works pretty well as a finite end to these novels. The way a few things were tied up were somewhat unsatisfying to me but that’s probably just me being hopeful. At any rate, this novel ties in the Witcher world with a pretty well-known legend of our world, which I think is really neat. 

Rating: 4/5 stars