I was in Christchurch, New Zealand a few weeks ago when I came across brand new Witcher book, namely Crossroads of Ravens, for sale in Scorpio Books, a local bookshop in that city. And I really mena brand new - it was first published in Poland on 29 November 2024. Fast forward to this year when it was published on 30 September 2025 simultaneously in nineteen languages, including English (translated by David French). I bought my copy in Christchurch less than 2 weeks later, straight off the printing presses, as the original Witcher books are amongst my all time favourite books and have been read twice.
Check out https://timsbestreads.blogspot.com/p/the-witcher-by-andrzej-sapkowski-i.html.
Ok, this is the seventh novel and ninth overall book in the Witcher series written by Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski. It is a prequel to both the Witcher Saga (1994–1999) and the short story collections Sword of Destiny (1992) and The Last Wish (1993).
The plot takes place in Geralt's youth, shortly after he completed his training at the witchers' stronghold, Kaer Morhen, and killed his first “monster”: a rapist. My edition comes in at nearly 400 pages but is very easy to read and does add some context to the other books.
Back page summary:
Before he was the White Wolf or the Butcher of Blaviken, Geralt of Rivia was simply a fresh graduate of Kaer Morhen, stepping into a world that neither understands nor welcomes his kind.
And when an act of naïve heroism goes gravely wrong, Geralt is only saved from the noose by Preston Holt, a grizzled witcher with a buried past and an agenda of his own.
Under Holt's guiding hand, Geralt begins to learn what it truly means to walk the Path – to protect a world that fears him, and to survive in it on his own terms. But as the line between right and wrong begins to blur, Geralt must decide to become the monster everyone expects, or something else entirely.
This is the story of how legends are made – and what they cost.
I recommend The Unseen Library's excellent book review at https://unseenlibrary.com/2025/10/05/the-witcher-crossroads-of-ravens-by-andrzej-sapkowski/. To quote a few snippets
While there is a good focus on Geralt’s independent adventures, Crossroads of Ravens has a larger, overarching narrative, that sees Geralt seeking knowledge of a historical attack on Kaer Morhen many years earlier. Thanks to hints revealed in some of the earlier adventures, a run-in with a complex secondary antagonist, and in-universe notes from intelligence officers keeping watch on Geralt and Preston, readers get the general shape of this matter in the first half of the book, and it lies like a dark shadow over Geralt’s main adventures. Everything comes to a head perfectly towards the last quarter of the book, as Geralt fully understands the threat towards him and those he cares about, and decides to act.
...
Sapkowski makes sure that several open story threads from the protagonist’s previous adventures are also tied together by the end of the book, and it was interesting to see how certain plot elements from these earlier chapters came into play in the conclusion. The result was an excellent and highly enjoyable story that serves well as both a standalone adventure and a prequel to the rest of The Witcher series.
The great news is that, shortly before the publication of Crossroads of Ravens, in an interview for the Polish weekly periodical Polityka, Sapkowski announced that it would not be the last book set in the Witcher universe. Again, he did not provide more details, saying only that “there will be a new book” and “if I set the time horizon to three or four years, it will be without much risk”.
I can hardly wait.
In the meanwhile, I am now going to sit down and reread it.
