I became aware of the Witcher books as a result of seeing the Netflix TV Series advertised in January 2020. One of my sons indicated he had read the books and that he thought they were fantastic. so I decided to do so myself, relying on e-books.
Ok..what's it all about. Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy writer. His series of novels, known as The Witcher Saga, arae a mixture of inter-related fantasy novels and short stories. The series revolves around the witcher Geralt of Rivia. In Sapkowski's works, witchers are beast hunters who develop supernatural abilities at a young age to battle wild beasts and monsters. The books have been adapted into a film (The Hexer), two television series (The Hexer and The Witcher), a trilogy of video games and a graphic novel series. The short stories and novels have been translated into numerous languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Chinese.
There are 8 books in the complete saga. The chronological order is as follows
Chronological Order of Witcher Books
The Last Wish (2007)
Sword of Destiny (2015)
Blood of Elves (2008)
Time of Contempt (2013)
Baptism of Fire (2014)
The Tower of the Swallow (2016)
Lady of the Lake (2016)
Season of Storms (2018
I have read them all via e-book - it is indeed a LONG saga - it took 3 months but every page was worth it. I found myself dreaming about the latest plotline night after night - a great indication of how the story was affecting me.
The world in which these adventures take place is heavily influenced by Slavic mythology. The monsters are many and varies - basilisk, succubus,ekhidna, arachasae, arachnomorphs, ghouls, etc. is this where J.K. Rowling got the idea of the basilisk she introduces in Harry Potter?
Check out the full list at https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Witcher_3_bestiary.
There are a lot of tongue-in-cheek references to common fairy tales, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, etc. It's generally serious but not all the time.
His writing style is quite different from what I was expecting. He jumps back and forth in time, tells the stories from different perspectives and adds lots of little throw-away lines that become more significant later in the story. I re-read the first half of one book and this was really obvious, yet I had missed nearly all of them on the first read.
Sapkowski created a language for the series known as Elder Speech, based on Welsh, English, French, Irish, Latin and other languages. It reminded me very much of Tolkein's elven language.
The characters are well developed, especially Geralt and Ciri. The character of Geralt is painted as multi-layerered. He is indeed a good man who fights to escape his lot in life as a killer. Destiny is the central theme throughout the book. I loved it.
It does lead me to consider the question - is it grand fantasy literature. Defitively YES. I would put it up there alongside Toklein for its scope and imagination.
This is a must-read series.
Having read the first 3 books, I thought I would watch the Netflix series on which Sapkowski served for a while as a creative consultant. Boy, what a disappointment. I lasted 3 episodes and that was enough for me. My two main gripes were
- The poor casting choices. The people chosen just did not do the book figures justice. Say no more.
- The storyline is fragmented and does not follow the books.
- The storyline jumps back and forth. Now that is fine when reading the books but is not easy to follow when watching TV episodes
In summary, the Netflix series is a complete dud as far as I am concerned.
Stick to the books!
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