Sword of Destiny (The Witcher #2)

Faithfully following in the steps of The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny is once again a collection of short stories rather than one continuous tale. However, unlike the first entry, the short stories are more clearly leading to a the set-up of a larger story involving several kingdoms and their rulers. Nevertheless, the key word here remains “set-up”, A Sword of Destiny brings new characters, introduces us to the wider politics of the world and develops some of the existing characters and relationships, but up to the last couple of chapters it does not have the story progress significantly and most short stories could easily be swapped in any random order without affecting understanding.

Although, this might be seen as a negative as I found my understanding of certain chapters fairly limited. I’ll gladly put this down as a personal weakness of mine instead of holding it against the book as my partner was not facing the same issues. However, I have found some chapters to introduce too many characters with too little characterisation which made remembering everyone’s names and roles a bit of an issue. This hasn’t been helped by the writing occasionally losing itself in poetry, having characters go on what I felt were needlessly long monologues delivering information in equally needlessly convoluted ways.

There are also some additional writing issues which I find much more difficult to excuse by my own reading ability. Namely, whilst characters are introduced quickly, they can also disappear just as quickly without a mention even when the other characters should be mentioning their disappearance. Action heavy sequences also are a bit more poorly executed with character placement and scenery description being a bit inconsistent. This doesn’t hurt the overall storytelling but it does lead to the occasional mental question mark as to how and where things are happening.

Looking at some more positives, many of the already introduced characters such as Dandelion or Yennefer are getting a significant amount of additional depth. This was particularly surprising (and appreciated) for Dandelion who in both games and TV show comes out as being quite shallow and simplistic. Unfortunately some of the characterisation is dreadfully unwelcome and it unfortunately also concerns Dandelion. SPOILER TAG During one of the chapters, Yennefer is threatened with rape which Dandelion turns into a joke and also leads to comments about her “16 year-old skin” which also adds an age related layer that has the potential of ruining Dandelion as a character as being “the pedophile who jokes about rape” SPOILER TAG

Whilst I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for this one-off instance as it seems inconsistent with Dandelion’s later dialogue and behaviour, I truly hope this is not something that will be repeated in future entries as this would destroy what would otherwise be a very interesting character.

Finally, a note on the general tone of the stories told. Some stories’ endings fell a bit flat for me, feeling very nihilistic in their conclusion, and maybe that was the point, but I am personally not a fan of that style of storytelling as it leaves with a feeling of “why did I even read this then”. Again, this is a personal preference, and again, my partner actually preferred these more nihilistic stories. The overall picture still remains strongly positive, the introduction of key characters I was waiting for from the games or the TV show, the nuanced world building subverting traditional fantasy tropes, and the set dressing for the larger upcoming conflicts have me excited for the next entry. Whilst I’d rate A Sword of Destiny slightly below The Last Wish, there is a consistency in the writing and my partner would actually have this entry over the previous one.