The Last Wish

I absolutely love it! I enjoyed every adventure and I cannot wait to see more of Geralt and, of course, Dandelion too.
My only complaint here is the lack of maps. I need maps, people! I need to know where I'm going. And also it'd be really helpful to have the translations of the dwarf's language. I understood them in context, but I want to make sure I understood correctly. Overall it was an awesome book!!

While this book isn't destined to be one of my favorites, I read it at the exact right time to enjoy it. I just started playing D&D again, and the characters in this book put me exactly in that RPG campaign space. This book functions as an anthology introduction to the Witcher universe. It is a series of self-contained tales within a frame introducing many of the characters that later appear in the series (and the video games which you do not need to play to enjoy the books. The novels came first and the author has said he holds them far over the games in terms of canon). The stories draw a lot from fairy tales and Slavic mythology, making them both familiar and original. The characters are not terrifically interesting or unique, but are fun representations of RPG archetypes. I might enjoy a novel-length treatment of the characters more, but this was an enjoyable series of adventures to get me back in that D&D headspace.

Executive Summary: I haven't played any of the Witcher games, though I've been vaguely aware of them for awhile. I thought this book was decent, but it didn't make me want to rush out to play the games or pick up the next book.

Full Review
This book is really a collection of 6 short stories tied together with several interludes. I probably liked some of the interludes better than any one story. I was more interested in the Witcher and the politics of his world than I was about any of the random monsters he fought in stories themselves.

Geralt seems like an interesting character whose a bit of an anti-hero, or maybe simply someone who has their own code and sticks to it. He's essentially a mercenary for hire, but he'll only take jobs that he agrees with. I'd like to know more about Witchers and their place in the world, as they seem to be going out of fashion as magic dies out in the world.

My rating is simply an average of the 6 stories plus the interludes. It's a 3.5, rounded down because the format didn't work well for me. I'd have preferred a single story with more depth I guess. Maybe the next book (or the games) will give me that. I may check it out eventually.

The Witcher - 3.5 stars.
A Grain of Truth - 3 stars
The Lesser Evil - 3.5 stars.
A Question of Price - 3.5 stars
The Edge Of The World - 3.5 stars
The Last Wish - 3.5 stars
Interludes (Voice of Reason) - 4 stars

So here is the thing. I expected this to be much more my taste than it ended up being, which doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, just not my absolute favourite at this moment.

So why is that? Mostly because I don't love the short story format. Hell, I don't read short stories, not even when they are connected to series I love. I just much prefer stories playing out as a consistent thing in hundreds of pages. Something about them just feels like it's breaking up my personal momentum of reading through a book. So there is that.

The only character at this moment whom I love is Dandilion and his interactions with Geralt elevate even him when it comes to my enjoyment of the character.

I will definitely read more of this.

The last wish. This is the book I have heard and been told I should start the Witcher series with so thats is exactly what I did.

The Witcher is a magically altered human who hunts monsters for a living.

This book is essentially a collection of short stories of the Witcher, Geralt, and his monster slaying adventures.

Many of the stories are derived from fairy tales such as beauty and the beast, sleeping beauty, rapunzel but with a darker themed story telling.

Witches, vampires, beasts, devils, elves etc.. it for me at least was a fun read and I look forward to reading the rest of the witcher books.

4/10
The stories are pretty boring and pointless. The characters are bland and uninteresting.
The last wish story itself is probably the best one but the ending is questionable.
Most of all the writing is terrible. But that might be because of the translation. It's really hard to read.
Overall it was just ok. I hope the next books in the series will have more character development and better writing.

I liked this more than I expected. With every story my opinion grew more and more positive and I believe it is because you get to see many faces of Gerald in these short stories. Ofcourse it didn't go past me that these stories seemed inspired by other popular works, which for me made it more interesting. I will definitely read the next book.

This review is also featured on Behind the Pages: The Last Wish

Once a human, Geralt has undergone a series of rituals to become a witcher. A hunter of monsters. In this novel, readers will experience a collection of short stories that show snippets of Geralt's life. But while he hunts monsters for money, he also lives by a code. Geralt understands that not all monsters are killers.

The novel is structured around Geralt recovering from a monster attack. As he stays at a temple to heal, the short stories of his life are woven in between his interactions with the priestesses. Geralt is encouraged to seek a vision of his future as the past is strung out before the reader's eyes. Readers will learn that Geralt is not someone who can be swayed when he puts his foot down and outright refuses to see his future. And why might you ask? He seems to already know. But how he attained this information I have no idea.

A common theme throughout the novel is that Sapkowski prefers his readers to put the pieces together themselves. Readers are thrown into the world of witchers with next to no explanation. Those who have played the video games will be able to grasp the concepts quicker than readers who have not. I fall into the latter category and I was left grasping at straws. The first few short stories were confusing and not well translated. The number of adverbs used to describe just about everything wanted to make me scream. I did notice as the novel continued, the use of language improved and I was able to immerse myself in the story.

I did happen to notice that each short story is based around a fairy tale. It seems an odd mix of worlds, but Sapkowski does a good job of blending the two. I did, however, find that the short stories never connected. While they all featured the witcher, they seemed to be a random progression of his life. I was left confused and wondering what in the world the point of all the stories was. I can say I am interested in continuing the story of Geralt because he is a worthy character, but I hesitate because of the number of unanswered questions left behind.

In preparation for The Witcher Season Three premiere this week, I listened to the first book in The Witcher series. The Last Wish is a collection of short stories, featuring The Witcher character, Geralt of Riva.

I've seen The Witcher obviously, so these stories were familiar to me. I like how the show was faithful to the source material. I'm a firm believer in the book is always better and the Netflix show is one of the few exceptions.

I don't recall hearing the Jaskier character in The Last Wish. There were other troubadour characters, but with different names. Was Jaskier a combination of these or does he show up in another book? Aside from Geralt, he's my favorite character from the show.

The only thing that would have made the audiobook better is Henry Cavill narrating. Any plans for that? I could listen to him read a phone book.

Such a fantastic book! 4.5 stars!

I've been a big fan of the Witcher game series for a long long time, its taken me a lot longer than it should have to start reading the books but i'm really glad I've finally started.
Anyone who's played the games will be familiar with the set up of the books, we follow Geralt of Rivia as he hunts monsters and takes on quests, the book and games have a similar layout in the sense of there is one story (the main story) that we dip in and out of with multiple smaller stories (side quests) breaking up the main story, I really enjoyed this style as it kept the story fresh.

Some of the series key characters are introduced during The Last Wish and its great to see characters I love from the games being so well written, the story of how Geralt becomes good friends with Dandelion the poet and also how Geralt and Yen (Yennifer) meet are done especially well, the introduction to Yen really had me hooked and I cant wait to read more to see there relationship grow.

Now, I wont lie, in the games I always lean towards Triss over Yen so I would have liked to see Triss in book one, she was mentioned but didn't make an appearance, this inst a negative but she's a great character so I hope she makes an appearance in book #2.

For people who are not aware of the Witcher, a Witcher is someone who is trained and mutated as a child to hunt monsters and protect innocent people, as times change and the world evolves there are less Witchers and the remaining Witchers are treated as outcasts by most, however, when something goes wrong or there are monsters in your town Geralt is the man.

I would highly recommend this series to anyone interested in Fantasy, the world is well built the characters are memorable and very likeable and the focus on Polish folklore is really interesting bringing in monsters we dont see often. MUST READ!

Tip - If you dont know the Witcher, look at a trailer for the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt before reading the book, this will help give you an idea of the world and introduce you to some of the amazing characters!

DNF 30%

This started off well for me, but then I found that I lost interest in Geralt's various adventures the more the story progressed. This collection (?) of stories features a few retellings of famous fairy tales, like Beauty and the Beast, but it offers a new twist to them by changing the outcome of the story, or by portraying the villain as a hero and vice versa. Maybe this book didn't work for me because I was looking for a traditional fantasy story with a start, middle, and end (which I'm told is the format for the main books in the series). I should have started with vol 1 instead of this one, despite everyone on the internet saying to start with this prologue of sorts.

Meh, I guess this story just isn't for me.

The book the video game ‘the witcher' was based off of, the Last Wish is more of a frame story built around a series of short stores. Each story gives more insight into the life and psyche of the Witcher, a man changed by potions and magic so that he can hunt otherworldly creatures. The author skillfully weaves together various mythologies, in some cases refuting them, in others making them his own.

My only criticism is that each story seemed to end a little too soon, leaving me wanting more.

This book serves as the introduction to the Witcherverse. Has a very vivid and brutal description of the events where the story mostly revolves around a witcher, Geralt of Rivia, a mutant on the hunt to kill monsters. We also get our beloved characters Dandelion and Yennefer introduced who will play major roles in the upcoming parts of the series. The ending left me very anticipated and confused as to what I can expect from the coming story. Thoroughly enjoyed the story. Very much looking forward to the next book.