Blood of Elves

So I think this top portion will be the basis for my review for all five of the Witcher series (excluding The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny–Kind of, you'll see...)

I feel like it took me a long time to read these, when in actuality, I started the first one in January so that isn't really all that long. Some of the way I'm feeling may be based off a lapse in memory though because I read around 95 books around the reading of these so I may be hazy.

For starters, I think Andrzej Sapkowski is a phenomenal writer. Secondly, I think David French did an absolutely wonderful job translating these to English. And thirdly, I think the Gollancz paperbacks were amazing–great cover art, nice quality–I actually managed to read them all without breaking the spines.

Sapkowski has such a way about his writing that the dialogue in the novels can be truly captivating. He wields it so well that he has honestly created such a wonderful lush lore within his world that really carried the hundreds of pages he wrote. I think that overall, this attention to detail within every word uttered may actually have been in some ways at a detriment to his overarching story.

So to speak, his great characters, the companions of the Witcher, and even the enemies, all have this way of leaving you wanting more. However, if you were to pull away all of that and the world's lore, the series itself is kind of about... nothing. I did find myself more than once getting to the end of one of the novels and being like wait... nothing happened? Destiny has brought the Witcher and Ciri together, and yet they are also destined to never be together... it's just the kind of realization that stings. If you read the first book you can skip to the final book for the ending because the others are just more of the same. Luckily for me, as I've already stated, I enjoyed the dialogue and the world building, I drank that sh*t up. It's just kind of weird/funny to realize negative things like that about something you've rated pretty well. Despite all of that, I really enjoyed them.

Speaking of Blood of Elves specifically, I enjoyed that this was the start of the war with Cintra. I had ordered the books after really enjoying the Netflix adaptation so to finally get into the war stuff was nice. The way they chopped the show kind of has you reading through the two short story collections and book one to really connect everything strewn throughout those eight episodes.
I also liked the opening training with Ciri in Kaer Morhen, much like the opening to the Witcher 3 game, however it did go on for just a little too long (it ended up dry).

One negative for me about entering the actual overarching part of the series was losing out on those nice cut and dry short stories from the two previous collections. Not to mention the overall loss of monster hunting over the following 4 books. As a fan of the games this hurt for me.