The Last Wish – Andrzej Sapkowski

Published: 7 June 2007
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 280
Series: The Witcher (Book 0,5)
Format Read:

Blurp:

Geralt is a witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent. He roams the country seeking assignments, but gradually comes to realise that while some of his quarry are unremittingly vile, vicious grotesques, others are the victims of sin, evil or simple naivety.

Thoughts:

It has taken me close to a month to try get my thoughts in order regarding this review. How can I do a good job of reviewing this novel, this book 0,5, this weirdly sculpted introduction book into the Witcher series without screwing it up for others or making other people shy away from experiencing the same things I have in the past few months? In this case it is easy, it can be devided into a few categories;
1. You will easily enjoy this as a fan of the games that spun off of this series.
2. You like new avenues of storytelling that take on old fairy tales and gives them a bit of a twist.
3. You saw the Netflix series and are kinda intrigued and would like to know some more about the world.
4. You saw the Netflix series and couldn’t give a toss about the world and it’s setting (totally understandable)
5. As the last, you have no clue that this is even a thing (it is a thing for quite a lot of people…)

I, for one, fall into almost all of the categories mentioned above at some point in life. I have known about the Witcher from the first time I saw my older brother play the first game as far back as 2008. I did not even know at the time that it came from a book, but it only took a year or two to sort that out. Forward a few years later and we now have about 4 Witcher games, a Netflix series, an animated move taking place way before the events of the games and books as well as a mobile game based of of the popular card game from the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt game. To say that Witcher has some sort of bigish fanbase nowadays might be an understatement.

But enough about that, what are my thoughts on this book? I have to say that I liked it over all. There is a small bit of a problem seeing as this is supposed to be the introductory book, but characters in it already seem to have been established, but that did not put me of a lot. I have known some of the characters for a while now. Last Wish is essentially a bunch of short stories involving Geralt of Rivia’s adventures as a Witcher. While they are all in some form or way a retelling of classics such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel too name but a few, there are also filler chapters in between that tells it as a whole thing as well as set up scenarios for further books to come?

Like I might have mentioned in previous posts, I picked this up after I started playing the Wild Hunt game and I am glad I did as some parts of what is referenced in game takes place in this book. I had a blast reading through it as well as I am still having going through the game. I might be a bit biased on my over all score of this book so just forgive me for that. I gave it a 4 out of 5 on GR, I could easily recommend it to people that find the blurp and my introduction to this post somewhat intriguing, for the review part I can not say an aweful lot more than has already been written by other bloggers/ mega fans of this series. If you like monster hunting anti heroes, then this is for you. I enjoyed my time with it. I was afraid that translations were going to be a problem as I felt about one book that comes later in the series, but I also think that part of my brain has been better developed in the recent years and could maybe cope better than a few years ago and in this book it was fairly easy to follow. I have a possible buddy read for the next instalments with Jenn who is reading the Horus Heresy series with me, so will be nice to have a friend tag along for the ride. I am not sure if Milou will be continuing the series after the slut Geralt was in a later book, but maybe I could persway her to join me as well. It does mean I have to get my ass in gear tho, got a lot of catching up to do!

That is all I have for now on the Witcher, let us see how Book 1 goes…