"The Last Wish" by Andrzej Sapkowski
Rating:
Despite being a collection of short stories, the interludes in between each story provide a gentle connection that makes this feel more like a cohesive whole than any other short story collection I’ve read. It’s manages to piece together a world that feels rich even though we really don’t get to see that much of it, only bits and pieces are fed to the reader over the course of the book.
I lamented in my review of Blood of Elves (the so-called “The Witcher, #1”) that while it was fine given my familiarity with the franchise through the games, there was a lot of context, world building, and character establishment that was entirely missing. This isn’t super relevant as the intended order is to read this first, it just annoyed me at the time. This is the precursor to that novel, and it checks most, if not all, of those boxes.
My one complaint is really that I would have liked to see more. There’s a baseline here, establishment of characters,
I’m also not sure how to read into Geralt’s objectification of women, the way he observes people (very intentionally) comes off as creepy and off-putting, especially in the final, titular short where it was on full blast. The world of the Witcher is rough, violent, and in many ways debased—which is part of its intrigue and charm—in a way that is uncomfortable and occasionally feels gratuitous.
On an unrelated note I really liked the references and nods to various fairy tales scattered throughout. It’s not something that I recall ever seeing in Blood of Elves, so I assume it’s something that filtered out of the series as it better established itself and its world. Taking advantage of commonly known stories and twisting their tropes or characters into something that fits into the world of the Witcher was a fascinating way to allow the reader to learn more about the world.