Read the translation by Danusia Stok, who might have to learn a couple of English technical terms for describing of armour (such as “greaves” or “fluting”), but did a great job otherwise!

I try to maintain a ‘read the book first’-policy. For The Witcher, I thought I was keeping to my policy, because I thought I had read The Last Wish. It turns out I might have read the first couple of stories, but I definitely did not read them all. As a result, I can only conclude that I already broke the rule way back when the first video game was released, and I’ve continued to break it with the other games and even a couple of episodes of the TV-series.

Still, it was really good going back to the source material again to see what the original looked like.

The Last Wish is a short story collection with a frame narrative, which scores it a lot of points before we even consider the stories themselves: I love that kind of story structure.

The setting of The Last Wish sits in an interesting intersection: Sapkowski’s world is a high fantasy world, but it conforms more to fairy tale and folklore logic than it does to the modern expectations of the genre. It is far from rainbows and unicorns, though, because Sapkowski clearly draws from the grim original versions of fairy tales before they got Disney-fied.

The Last Wish is very traditional in other ways, however. Geralt is a rather stereotypical stoic alpha male who tries to save everyone through limitless violence and is misunderstood and maligned because he is different.

The stories are rather male gaze-ey – the book opens with a sex scene an Geralt is sure to get some in most of the tales. It was written over thirty years ago, however, so I guess the genre (and the expected audience) were just different back then.

Underneath that layer, however, The Last Wish is a nicely light, high paced introduction to the world of The Witcher, with tightly written prose that leaves the stoic main character always just a little mysterious. The individual tales might not have the emotional impact or depth of plot of a full-length novel, but for this short story collection, I really don’t mind.

The Last Wish has scratched an itch, and I am really looking forward to continuing the series. Since Lotte already scored Blood of Elves at goodwill and dumped it on my shelf of shame some time ago, I am set to continue Geralt’s adventures in the near future!

After enjoying almost every other piece of media in The Witcher universe, fate finally enabled me to check out the source material, a collection of short stories about Geralt of Rivia and his adventures as a witcher.

To directly cut to the chase, I thought Sapkowski’s prose was pleasant to read. With a lot of “show” and little “tell” and altogether short scenes, it’s easy to race through the different stories in this collection. The episodic format perfectly suits the setting, which is primarily defined by grim representation of well-known fairy tales and Polish folklore, grey moralities and dry humour. The way Sapkowski builds his narrative is something I haven’t encountered earlier, simple but effective, with multiple occasions in which the reader is invited to fill up the blanks themselves. It is a storytelling technique I’d like to try myself one time.

I enjoyed The Last Wish, but I can’t help but wonder if it still holds up if you’re not already taken in by the universe and its characters. Though the stories occasionally offer some good food for thought with their themes, there is little else. There are some elements of mystery, but the other building blocks of the stories can often be reduced to violence and an ambiguous role for the female characters, who might often come across as strong, but are certainly also catered to the male gaze. In that regard, some might see The Last Wish as just another sword and sorcery fantasy novel.