The Last Wish (The Witcher, #.5) by Andrzej Sapkowski

My rating: three stars

Genre: Adult Fantasy

Edition: Kindle

Goodreads Summary: Geralt the Witcher — revered and hated — holds the line against the monsters plaguing humanity in this collection of adventures in the New York Times bestselling series that inspired the Netflix show and the hit video games.

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.

But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good…and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

I have been playing through The Witcher 3 on my PC for a while, and watched and loved the TV show recently, so I just had to pick up the books. It seemed like everyone had the same idea because when I went to buy them The Last Wish was sold out and the first three books sold out right after I bought them!  That’s why I read the Last Wish on my Kindle, though I would have preferred the physical version.

Likes: I like that since these short stories take place with large time gaps between them we get to see vastly different portions of the world and Geralt’s life. There is a ton of worldbuilding, so many different characters and character relationships, and a bunch of magical creatures that are shown. There is also so much history to this world that I love. I can tell that the author put in a lot of time and effort creating this world and the characters in it. I also liked the magic in this story. I think I might have been confused about it if I had not played the game before reading this because it is not really explained. However, I still like how Geralt uses magic and potions in the story.

Dislikes: I don’t know if it is just because I am not used to Andrzej’s writing style or what, but the book seemed disjointed to me. It would skip from story to story so quickly and with no introduction to the new story, that I was left confused at times. I did like that this book showed so much in terms of worldbuilding because it was made up of short stories, however, I think they could have had a smoother transition. I also feel like some of the short stories weren’t that exciting to me and served no purpose. Some of them I was just not interested in the entire time, and I didn’t see what I was gaining out of reading them.

Overall, I rated this book three out of five stars because I was left confused at times and that decreased my enjoyment of the story. I would have to backtrack sometimes to figure out what was going on, and that wasn’t enjoyable. The confusion that I felt, the dull short stories, and my lack of enjoyment made me deduct two stars for this book. I still look forward to the other ones because I did love the world, the characters, and the magic so much, I was just a little disappointed in this book.