The Last Wish

A truly enchanting book full of wit and charisma

As with the games (where I learnt of the Witches) these stories have an incredible amount of detail and intrigue. You can see why the games are so highly regarded when coming from material such as this.

You'll love all the characters, good and bad. You'll love the witty humour and how quickly it can get dark. You'll love the clever monsters and myths. Its truly a book that any fan of fantasy should read. And being so short but filled with so many stories, it truly feels like I've lived Geralt's stories with him. A truly rare phenomenon is this series and I am thoroughly looking forward to reading a the sequels.

“People”—Geralt turned his head—“like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves.”
~
Meet Geralt of Rivia, the Witcher. We follow Geralt along in his adventures against vicious monsters and interactions with friends and foes. Fun short tales to pique the story lover's interest.

The Last Wish is a uniquely compiled book that consists of short stories with over-arching interludes that connect them together. If you've watched the Netflix series, you will be familiar with several of these stories. It's well worth coming along for the ride with Geralt, Dandelion (Jaskier), and Yennefer.

A collection of short stories, none of which is exceptional, but they're interesting enough to scratch that fantasy itch. I'm reminded of Conan in the style, if not exactly in the quality.

The world is a low magic setting. Sorcerers are few and magic is feared and revered by the common folk. Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher, a human magically enhanced as a child and brutally trained to hunt down monsters. He is a wielder of some basic spells, and his mutated body posses increased strength, agility and eyesight.

His profession was once crucial to humanity, for when they first arrived in this world, monsters and other races dominated the land. The Witchers were created to exterminate the more powerful and evil monsters, while the rest of the humans took care of exterminating the other races, being they good or bad.

The Witchers are taught to be neutral regarding human affairs. Men and women may kill and rape each other in bar brawls or wars that may bring kingdoms down, they ought to not interfer. A Witcher's neutrality is essential for their profession, otherwise a king might not allow him to enter his lands to hunt down a monster otherwise.

But time has passed, and there are no much more monsters left. A Witcher is left with some hard choices to make, because in order to make a living they need to exercise their trade, the only thing they know how to do, ingrained in their minds from childhood. This knowledge emboldens their potential employers to make some moraly dubious propositions, such as to hire him as a mercenary or an assassin.

Geralt struggles with questions of morality, whether he should use his powers to help the defenseless against all evil or just the monsters he was told to slay. He is a relic of the past struggling to find his place in this new world. He is despised and distrusted by most humans because he is a mutant, as are all other races despised as well.

This book has long been a favorite of mine. I've read it twice in print, listened to it once as an audiobook, and just finished it again, this time on my Kindle. This is a book that I've continued to come back to because the world is super interesting and the characters are wonderful. Has some of the content become a bit dated? Definitely. But the storytelling brilliance contained between the front and back covers of this book is mesmerizing.

Depois de ver a série e toda a gente falar bem do livro, acabei por compra-lo e ler. Para ser sincera, a minha espetativa não era propriamente alta porque já sabia o que vinha por causa da série. MAS... como estava eu enganada! O livro conta algumas histórias do Gerald e como ele conheceu o Jaskiel e a Yenifer. Em teoria, isto ainda não é a “história principal” e tal como disse, são ainda histórias para perceber melhor as personagens e o seu caminho. As personagens são muito vivas e dinâmicas! A narrativa é simples e envolvolvente. Adoro o Gerald e imagino-o totalmente como o Henri Cavill.

Para quem viu a série e gostou, sem dúvida deveria espreitar o livro! Eu vou continuar esta saga, sem dúvida!

Alright, I bloody loved this book!

I got hooked on the TV show and was desperate to get my hands on the book. But I thought I might has the same reaction I have had to a few other books that are based on TV shows, when I had started the show first. Game of Thrones being one of them. Loved the show. Hated the book. So I read a few reviews, read comments about the comparisons and thought I'd give it a go. I am no disappointed.

I am so glad I gave it a chance, and I loved every second of it.

The book is comprised of several short stories, based on the backstory of Geralt, the witcher. It also had one single over arching story “the voice of reason”. Given that it has been translated from Polish to English, I had my doubts about how well it would be written. Surprisingly well to be honest.

Geralt is a great character, and I think Henry Cavill did an amazing job of portraying him.

I can't wait to into the next one, and hopefully find out a bit more about Yennefer's backstory and history.

Peter Kenny does a great job narrating. This is an enjoyable fantasy read in most part because of each character showing their personality. Kind of neat to have hints of fairytale stories and influence in the situations and characters that Geralt meets. Also, a nice revelation was how to pronounce Dandelion.

I think I can say this was more of a 4.5.

In the months before the release of The Witcher tv show, I saw a lot of promotion going around and I heard a lot of good things about the books, but I never felt any interest in picking them up. But I couldn't resist watching the show itself and having enjoyed it quite a lot, decided I actually do want to try out the books now. Just so happens that it's very popular now and there's a long waitlist at the library, so it's gonna be a while before I'm able to read it all.

This is supposed to be a prequel to the original series of books with short stories of Geralt's adventures but a major part of it was in the show, so it almost felt like a refresher. But it was fun to go into detail and get to know the story and characters better. Reading through the famous fight scene from episode 1 was a delight because I could totally picture it in my head. I didn't know Jaskier was called Dandelion in the books and I kept waiting to see if “Toss a coin to the Witcher” was an actual song from the text, but alas it wasn't. I was also very impressed by some of the philosophical conversations and Geralt's moral code and convictions.

Overall, I had a lot of fun reading this book. I don't know if I can tell you to read it before watching the show (if you haven't already), but doing it in the reverse order didn't hinder my enjoyment at all; I actually loved being able to see the scenes in my head while reading. I'm hoping the remainder of season one will be covered in Sword of Destiny which is supposed to be another prequel collection of short stories.

As many people I started reading this after watching the TV Show (but haven't played the game, yet).

I was scared that it would be too similar to I was already seen but to my surprise, even though some of the events tell the “same story” (on a sense), the events within them are pretty different from what I saw on TV. Different enough I would say.

I did enjoy it though it was short in length, but in exchange you don't necessarily need to continue reading the rest of the books if you don't want to (right away) because it contains a tale per chapter that even if they are a full story when read in full it doesn't put the reader in a position where it needs to read the rest right away.

I recommend it if you like the fantasy genre, is a light read, short and self-contained.

actual vote: 4.5 stars.


Geralt di Rivia sembra essere un personaggio molto interessante, perspicace e pieno di segreti. Il racconto più bello è stato “L'ultimo desiderio” in cui si narra l'incontro tra lo strigo e Yennefer, una potente maga.
L'autore rivisita le fiabe in modo piuttosto originale: lo fa dal punto di vista di Geralt, ne prende alcuni elementi e li applica ai suoi personaggi modificandone gli eventi. a me le rivisitazioni delle favole non mi piacciono per niente, però queste non mi sono dispiaciute.

This was an entertaining read and I enjoyed that it was taking some classic fairy tales and putting a new spin on it with a monster hunter going around hunting the monsters in these stories.

What i didn't enjoy, though, was the treatment of women and sexual assault and sex in general. I didn't like how almost all female characters had to be SOMEHOW connected with sex with a man, whether it was sexual attraction or rape or just sex or something else. Yennefer was by far the best female character in the whole book, but even then I was far from 100% happy with her characterisation. There's a LOT here to be improved on in terms of writing women tbh. When I found out that this book was published in 1993, it suddenly made a lot more sense but still - not really a reason for me to close two eyes and continue if it's getting on my nerves.

Whether i will pick up the second book remains to be seen. I definitely haven't ruled it out, but the general treatment of women in the first book is really not making me very motivated to check it out. I also haven't really seen enough of the lore and politics of the world to be sucked in to that in this one.

If you've got a monster, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire...the Witcher!

This was a very enjoyable series of short fantasy stories, held together by a bridging story. Each story follows Geralt as he arrives in a new locality and invariably is presented with a problem which he solves with great cunning. In this it strongly reminds me of a good many, enjoyable, 80s TV series.

I enjoyed this book on several levels. Firstly, Geralt slowly reveals himself to be a very likable character. He clearly views himself as a bit of a jaded mercenary, but it becomes clear that he has a very warm heart. Secondly, each story has an interesting twist on a traditional tale, spotting the story and watching the very interesting twists was great fun. Lastly I've got to say the final story was just an excellent bit of world building and a darn good adventure story. It felt a bit like a fantasy version of the A-Team mixed with Ghostbusters.

Fun stuff!

PS. Oh yes, there may be a computer game or three based on this book too.

Geralt is a Witcher, taken as a child and raised to kill all sorts of monsters and sometimes he even gets paid for it.

Not all of his missions are clear cut good vs evil. Sometimes what seems to be evil is not and what is good is actually evil.

This book spawned a series of successful console games. That I now want to play after reading this.

I actually listened to it on audio and it was performed very well.