atrollreads

In chapter four, there is stage whispering. I can't handle whispers, due to auditory sensory issues. I have to pause every few seconds, and leave it be for several days, and then I forget what happens. It's really bad, whispers.

Initial review: Why does nobody know that you don't urge a horse forward by pulling at the reins?

Longer Review below (28/8, 2022)
The biggest problem for me with this book, as seen in the very short review above, and this comes from a horse-girl-turned-horse-man so I'm probably in the minority about this detail being a problem at all, is the way riding horses is portrayed. If you know you know, but you don't pull on the reins when you want to urge a horse forward. Perhaps characters inexperienced with horses could be written to do this, but characters that ought to be fully experienced riders? I think not. Those poor horses. Has Sapkowski never been on a horse or is this down to a translation thing? I do not know Polish, so I can't simply find a copy in Polish and compare it. This might be one seemingly insignificant problem, but it has haunted me through the entire book, even when it's not described done. It simply frustrates me to no end and yes, something so “trivial” made it lose a whole star.

Now for the good parts. Dandelion is both a busybody and a gossip and he is a gem. Even ravenous werewolves agree. He is quite delightful and I love when he makes an appearance. Little Eye is a very interesting character and I would very much like to see more of her. Her dynamic with Geralt is very different from his dynamic with Yennefer, and Dandelion having basically a little sister is really nice. (I quite like the Found Family trope.) It's not that often that you get to see him be the older one in his relationships, so to speak. (Though, this is coming from someone who has only read this particular Witcher book, “The Last Wish”, and watched the two seasons of the Netflix adaption; but I'll get to the other books in time.)

Geralt using Witcher Signs for non-Witcher things was amazing. It's a brief mention, barely touched upon, but I am a person who loves the misuse of magic thing. It's in fact one of my favourite tropes. Something so smiple as using abilities meant for battle for mundane things like fixing a pot fills me with such glee like you wouldn't believe.

The last page of the last chapter of “A Little Sacrifice” made me tear up. I won't go into it, but there's a lot of emotion on that one page. I also like that there is much more emotion in Geralt that people expect, and when he learned about the fall of Cintra, I felt for him.

Sometimes the book did feel a bit disjointed, though I understood after a while that at least in some parts (especially in the last chapter) it was purposeful. It does not change that I was very confused the first couple times the text literally fell down a paragraph in the middle of a sentence.

This is a fairly nice supplement to Critical Role, (mostly) showing off how the members of Vox Machina met. The scene transitions and paneling were a bit choppy in places though, and there were times the flow of the speech bubbles were a bit difficult to follow. The story would have been better a bit more fleshed out and felt a bit fuller if the script had been a bit longer, I think. There's also the way random-seeming words bolded make some of the text stilted, which is so common in USAmerican comics, but that's more of a personal pet peeve of mine.

I really liked the anime, and I really wanted to like this manga adaptation. However, there's just something that makes me... not. There's something in the art, while still lovely, that's just not quite right. There's something in the story, while familiar and one I do like, that's just falling flat.

First off, I gotta say that Faye has a bad taste in men.I already didn't like her boyfriend before he even popped up, but the more he was talking and acting like a dickwad, the more I disliked him. We can all agree on a lot of points that he's a real piece of work, I'm sure. His friend group was also very invasive and icky, and dude did not stand up for his girlfriend at all.As for Rocky, he was just mildly annoying at first, but I just started getting more and more unnerved by him the more he was in the story. My dislike for him came with the typical “main love insterest gets jealous because the MC is going on a date with another guy even though they're not even dating yet and he's sulking like a petulant child” trope. It's such an annoying trope. The lady ain't yours, dude, you're not dating, you haven't made it clear to her that you're interested in her that way, and she has the right to go out with any guy she'd like without it having anything to do with tou. I get it's a common romance trope but it's a tired one.Another tired trope is the whole “marriage it a noose, shackle, etc”; it's so charming. I'm not going to marry myself (being aromantic) but you don't need to put down something that's really important to a lot of people.Then there's the thing where Rocky and Faye just ... continued their date as if nothing happened after running into Rocky's cheating cousin-in-law. Twice. It makes me feel so dirty.

Also, retire the miscommunication and the lack of a desire to talk it out. It's such a big point in romance, but it's so frustrating.

The pushy feeling of “marriage is absolute endgame” with all the engagements and marriage plans coming in quick successions is not anything I like. Marriage can be nice, sure, I guess, but it's not the end-all-be-all to life.

I did like Faye and Lottie's relationship, though.

Faye isn't a super great person either, I feel. She's a bit invasive as well, and obtuse. Like, uh, yeah why do you think someone's upset when you keep poking at their sore spots? Also who says that they have to be maid of honour without being given the role, when asked to be a bridesmaid?As for the audio, there were issues. Sometimes, there are repeats of a sentence, perhaps a miss when editing the audio, but sometimes the words repeated is a rephrasing, as if the manuscript had misses in them, as well. Not great, that. I thought my player had gone weird at first.Lastly, I want to tell Faye that “No D&D is better than bad D&D.” In this case, D&D means boyfriend.