The Last Wish (The Witcher #1)
Genres Fantasy, Short Story, Adventure
8.5/10
Geralt is a Witcher, a man who after rigorous training and painful and often fatal mutations became a monster killer. Despite benefiting humanity, witchers are often seen as undesirable and their help is rarely fairly rewarded. The Last Wish introduces people to Geralt’s world where fairness, good and bad are all more complicated than appearances suggest.
Highlights
- A good introduction to the world of the witcher
- Can be a bit confusing to follow
- A collection of short stories rather than a continuous story
- It’s clearly a set up book
Another adventure into fantasy but one I was looking forward to for once. The Witcher is a series I have both played and watched but had yet to read. For my partner it is one of their favourite game series of all time and whilst I was far from enjoying it quite as much, I would not think The Witcher 3 to be undeserving of its critical acclaim. The series had left us a bit underwhelmed in season 2, but season 3 is what made us decide to read the original book as clearly the writers of the show had given up on the idea of faithfully adapting the book’s story.
In case you have never heard of The Witcher before, fret not, for The Last Wish is very much a scene setting book. It does not tell a grand continuous story but instead goes through several short stories of past events interspersed with transitory chapters in the present timeline which together set up the world and characters to tell a fuller story in the following books. However, despite its structure and apparent intent to be an introduction to the world, one could argue that as an introduction, The Last Wish is not the easiest to follow along with.
The different short stories do not follow each other chronologically, and there are many character names thrown around in rapid succession. The monsters themselves can take a bit of additional getting used to as you will not always be faced with traditional names like vampires or werewolves and be thrown the odd curveball of striga or kikimora. If you can play along though, this does immerse you into the world a bit more as there is a little detective game going on into figuring out what the monsters are without the story spelling it out for you.
Nevertheless, I was thankful to have been exposed to the world beforehand, allowing me to simply take the events in without having to allocate the extra effort to build up a chart of names and relationships in a corner of my head. In any case, the short story collection format does a great job as a sampler plate of The Witcher’s world. You can read this as a standalone and you’ll know immediately whether you’ll enjoy reading the rest of the books or not. Every short story tells a slightly different tale, one will be focused on monster hunting, one on morals, one on politics, etc, overall giving you a full high level overview of the world and what stories Andrzej Sapkowski will tell in it.
So, The Last Wish is a great book, there is no doubt about that. It’s got some action, some funny moments, some touching moments and it’s a fun fantasy adventure. However, if you have no intention on reading the full saga, then this could be an 8.5/10 you could safely pass as it very much wants to simply get the introductions out of the way to tell a full story down the line.