Ratings727
Average rating4
One of those shitty books where every male chara is a sexual assaulter or rapist because of course. Hot dogwater garbage I wouldn't read more if you put a gun to my head. Also the romance with yennefer made shitty ya romances look like the best romance in the world. Seriously, they know each other for max 2 hours and somehow love each other? Fucking hell
First of all, I bought this book because of the video game series, one of the most famous E-RPGs ever made. Despite the physical resemblance (and even in some other aspects of his personality) with Elric, Geralt is a very interesting character.
This book is actually a collection of short stories of our witcher friend, culminating in the fateful encounter with the famous (and infamous) sorceress Yennefer. This short story Edge of the World and The Last Wish are, without a doubt, the best. The pace of the narrative is quite amazing and the unfolding of the plot has lots of fun.
hard to follow sometimes as the text is intentionally withholding at points, but still really enjoyable, especially after having played the witcher games
I was saying to my husband that I really enjoy this, because I know all the fairytales he references, from the Princess in the Coffin to Snow-white and Rapunzel. But unlike most fairytale adaptations, where the author has adjusted the fairytale to their world, Andrzej Sapkowski takes the fairytales and thinks what would the world look where they were totally normal and realistic events. He doesn't force the tale to fit him, he nestles his story and world into the fairytales as if it was a vine. Or fungus. Not the kind of parasitic fungus that kills the host, but the kind of fungus that lives in a symbiosis with the host and both become better of it. I love that.
I think he succeeds even better than Terry Pratchett, and THAT is a high praise coming from me.
I don't think these books are misogynic. The world is your ordinary medievalist fantasy world, where women are considered lesser than, but Sapkowski's women are capable leaders, making their own decisions, sexually active - there is even a clear matriarchal mood in these stories, especially in A Question of Price. Not only was the princess the most powerful mage ever known, she inherited the power from her mother's mother, and she wasn't the king's daughter, but no-one ever questioned either the Queen's nor the Princess' right to the throne. Also, the Queen was a celebrated war hero.
Snow-white grew from a pampered and sheltered princess to a tough as nails war leader, making tough brutes and gangsters shut up by simply looking at them.
And none of these ladies was presented as masculine or manly, in any way less feminine than any other woman.
Then I need to address some things I read in other reviews.
“this is basically a no brain, action based, monster squashing anthology”
No, it's not.
There's very much brain and even more heart.
There isn't much action, actually. When there is, like in A Question of Price... it's very much action, but still he manages to put in details that tell something about the people...
Monster squashing? Not many monsters were squashed. Most of the “monsters” turned out to be something else. And the love stories? Oh, my! Better than anything Stephenie Meyer, E.L. James and Diana Gabaldon has ever written.
But I suppose some people don't do subtle. They need to get it spelled out and shown with big letters and neon light arrows, and packaged so that they recognize it.
“the very first short story started with Geralt leering at a sexualized 14 year old girl!”
huh? that bit is missing from the book i read.
“On top of that we had the attempted magical rape by Dandilion”
- yes, that is there, but “magical rape”?
Dandilion was never intended to be in any way flawless or moral character.
“an actual magical rape perpetrated by Geralt at the end of the book via his “last wish”“
We don't know what he wished.
“Yennifer's mind rape of a bunch of the characters”
Was never portrayed as anything positive or not a problem. On the contrary.
Yennefer saw him, jumped up and raised her hand.
“No!” he shouted, “don't do this! I want to help you!”
“Help?” She snorted. “You?”
“Me.”
“In spite of what I did to you?”
“In spite of it.”
A book which opens without any formal introductions to any of the references in the book. Just the way I like it. A book which behave as both a collection of short stories and a novel, it is a refreshing read and unputdownable. I generally do not get into fiction due to it's immensity, but this is something I will not regret diving into.
Definitely worth reading if you're a fan of the games. Felt a bit biased towards liking it since I already know the characters, might not have enjoyed it as much otherwise.
Pretty awesome book full of well written short stories but the ending is super confusing and I had to google what the heck was going on. This illustrated edition was pretty mediocre but the cover art looks really nice to me.
Here comes a fantasy written very differently from most of the others. Its more like a collection of stories tied into one long story and surprisingly it works. Each story stands on its own and helps in world building nicely. The background to the Witcher is also interesting and we will likely know more as the story unfolds. If only the main protagonist had been a bit better defined this might have rated higher in my evaluation.
Originally played the Witcher 3 and found myself quickly obsessed with the story. I just knew I had to pick this series up and discover the world of Geralt. Despite knowing the end to a lot of threads in this books, I think it improved the reading experience as I was able to pick up on little details and appreciate what they meant, or would later mean. Something that be amiss on a blind reading. Despite spoilers the book remains very solid.
Il guardiano degli innocenti, in originale “Ostatnie życzenie”, è una raccolta di racconti fantasy scritta dallo scrittore polacco Andrzej Sapkowski. La prima edizione polacca è stata pubblicata nel 1993, quella inglese nel 2007 e quella italiana nel 2010. Il libro è stato tradotto in diverse altre lingue con una particolarità: l'autore ha sempre preteso che la traduzione venisse fatta direttamente dal polacco alla lingua di destinazione, senza l'intermediazione dell'inglese, per non perdere le particolarità e le sfumature della sua scrittura.
Il libro fa parte della saga “Geralt di Rivia”, di cui il protagonista è uno strigo (“wiedźmin” in polacco, “witcher” in inglese e nei videogiochi in italiano) chiamato anche Gwynbleidd (Lupo Bianco) nella lingua antica delle Driadi e soprannominato “Il Macellaio di Blaviken”; dalla celebre serie di libri di cui è protagonista sono stati tratti inoltre diversi media, tra i quali un film, una serie televisiva e una trilogia videoludica sviluppata da CD Projekt RED, quest'ultima di successo internazionale.
Uno strigo è un umano mutato tramite il cosiddetto “Rito delle Erbe” che gli ha conferito, oltre a poteri magici basilari, una rapidità superiore a quella umana e dei sensi molto sviluppati. Gli strighi sono specializzati nell'uccisione di mostri e nello spezzare incantesimi. Girano il mondo mettendo in vendita la loro abilità al miglior offerente, ma devono rimanere neutrali in qualunque questione che non riguardi i mostri. Nella sua professione si avvale spesso delle sue svariate abilità. Geralt è inoltre un probo spadaccino, anche senza tener conto dei suoi mutamenti.
Geralt è un uomo dalla personalità complessa: agli strighi vengono estirpate la maggior parte delle emozioni, quindi il suo carattere è essenzialmente cinico e stoico. Molto raramente fa trapelare emozioni ed è spesso restio ad integrarsi in una società. Ciononostante, Geralt riesce a stringere poche ma solide amicizie e talvolta persino relazioni amorose, benché travagliate.
Geralt appare come un uomo alto e snello, di età indecifrabile. Gli occhi sono gialli e simili a quelli di un felino. Come risultato dell'essere stato sottoposto ad esperimenti più intensi e complicati dei suoi colleghi strighi, i suoi lunghi capelli sono bianchi, così come la sua barba, fattore che conferisce a Geralt l'epiteto di “Lupo Bianco”.
Il libro è un'antologia di sette racconti di cui uno, “La voce della ragione”, funge da cornice narrativa. È inoltre il primo libro in termini di cronologia (ma il secondo in termini di pubblicazione) della Saga di Geralt di Rivia. I racconti qui contenuti sono i seguenti:
La voce della ragione
Lo strigo
Un briciolo di verità
Il male minore
Una questione di prezzo
Il confine del mondo
L'ultimo desiderio
Sicuramente uno dei libri fantasy che più mi ha appassionato negli ultimi anni, un ottimo prologo che invoglia a proseguire la lettura all'interno della saga, la scrittura dell'autore è semplice, diretta, veloce ma descrittiva che non annoia mai: quello che ci vuole all'interno di un buon racconto dove si hanno poche pagine per sviluppare una storia.
Tutti i racconti sono l'occasione per descriverci ed introdurci nel mondo, nei personaggi, ed il contesto dove questi si muovono e per parlarci del protagonista principale e dei comprimari (anche questi molto ben costruiti); eppure si percepisce che niente è abbozzato, tutto lascia presagire di un mondo solido, reale anche se immaginario, con problemi razziali, conflitti politici, storie su avvenimenti passati di maghi, uomini e strighi che disegnano un contesto oscuro e brutale ma vivido, interessante e assolutamente coinvolgente.
Mi è piaciuta molto la costruzione di Geralt, un paria con una missione (quella di uccidere mostri dietro un giusto compenso), che non prova sentimenti, incapace di amare (ma solo in apparenza), vagabondo nel mondo, ripudiato dai più e amato da pochissimi, fedele ad un suo codice personale che non infrange mai. Potrebbe sembrare, scritto così, un cavaliere senza macchia di un qualsiasi stereotipo di fantasy, ma l'autore gli ha donato molte sfaccettature che sono sicuro usciranno in maniera prepotente nei prossimi volumi.
Consiglio la lettura a tutti gli amanti del fantasy alla ricerca di nuove idee e nuovi personaggi, che escono e di discostano dai soliti canoni del genere.
The first time I heard of The Witcher books, it was through the video games. I had heard that the games had gotten rave reviews, and when I found out that they were based on books (and not the other way around, interestingly enough), I though it would be a good idea to go out and read the originals before I got down to finding myself copies of the game to play. However, I was stopped cold when I found out that the books were, in fact, in Polish, and at the time there was no available translation. If I had known there were fan translations I might have settled for those out of sheer desperate curiosity, but since I didn't know about those either, I was able to wait until copies of the official translation finally surfaced on my side of the world.
As of the moment, there are only two officially translated books available: The Last Wish, which is a collection of short stories, and Blood of Elves, which is the first novel in the series proper. Since the stories in The Last Wish precede the events of Blood of Elves, it was obvious that I ought to begin with the short story collection. And, as far as introductions go, I find The Last Wish to be, in its way, more than adequate.
The Last Wish is, as mentioned earlier, a collection of short stories about the life and times of Geralt of Rivia, the (in)famous witcher after whom the entire series is named. There is one overarching “frame story” titled “The Voice of Reason,” which shows Geralt in the temple of the goddess Melitele, having escaped to it after some very unsavory events, the details for which are scattered throughout the other stories in the book.
The stories alternate between “The Voice of Reason” and the other tales, and in some ways there is an interesting point to this. In the other stories, Geralt is presented as his job describes him: a witcher, and one with a rather unsavory reputation, going about his job as best as he can even if, most of the time, he gets the short end of the stick when it comes to promised rewards, or finds himself manipulated for other purposes than taking out the monsters a witcher is trained to fight. Take, for instance, in the short story “The Witcher,” wherein Geralt combats a striga and breaks a curse along the way, but who gets half his neck chewed off in the process (and is therefore the main reason why he's at the temple in the first place) and no real (monetary) reward for his services. Or “A Question of Price,” where Geralt is forced to choose between a greater or lesser evil, but winds up losing either way.
One of the first things that struck me while reading these stories is that Geralt feels a lot like Hellboy from Mike Mignola's fantastic Hellboy graphic novels - well, mostly in that both Geralt and Hellboy share a dry sense of humor and are outsiders who have much more in common with the things they fight than humanity at large. The difference, though, is that everybody loves Hellboy, whereas, in The Last Wish, almost everybody hates Geralt. Nowhere is this made clearer than in A Question of Price, where Geralt loses a friend at the very end of the story - not to death, but to the fact that this friend has seen the darker side of what Geralt does, and because he cannot take it decides to end whatever friendship they have.
Another thing that struck me about these stories is how often they reference familiar fairytales. The story titled “A Grain of Truth,” for instance, is essentially a re-imagining of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale to fit into The Witcher universe. And it's not the only one: "The Witcher" references Snow White. "A Question of Price" is a nod to the story of Gawain and his wife from Arthurian legend. "The Last Wish" has a genie at the center of the story. And "The Lesser Evil" references almost every other fairytale the other stories missed, from Rapunzel to The Princess and the Frog to Rumpelstiltskin. There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with all these references and re-imaginings - in fact, they are ridiculously fun. It only makes me raise my eyebrow slightly in that there seemed to be so much borrowing done that it made me wonder if The Witcher universe had any “original” lore of its own.
As for Geralt himself, I find him quite interesting. He rather reminds me of a vigilante gunman from an old Western, who goes from town to town delivering justice and doing the jobs only he can do (and a few he gets roped into against his will), but in the end, being chased out of town because nobody wants him to stay around for very long because of his reputation. He has very, very few friend, and loses a few more every once in a while, but those who have stuck around are, for the most part, wonderful people - like Nenneke, the head priestess of the temple of Melitele, who shelters and heals Geralt throughout the story arc of “The Voice of Reason,” or Dandilion (and yes, that is how his name is spelled), the bard who got into a whole lot of trouble with Geralt during the events of “The Edge of the World” and “The Last Wish” and who still considers Geralt a friend despite those events. And then there is the mysterious Yennefer, introduced in “The Last Wish” and whose hold on Geralt is greater than anyone truly comprehends. All of them are fascinating, to a one, and will hopefully put in appearances of their own in Blood of Elves - because truly, if Geralt doesn't miss them, I think I will.
Overall, The Last Wish is an excellent lead-in to The Witcher universe. By settling into the world via short stories, not a novel, the reader is not pressured to quickly absorb everything about this world, as would normally be the case with a full-length novel. It also appears to have put less pressure on Sapkowski's shoulders, as well, since each story develops in its own way while showcasing various facets of Geralt, his friends, his enemies, and his world. As for the individual stories themselves, they are largely enjoyable to read, though the sheer amount of fairytale references may have some readers raising their eyebrows on occasion. Otherwise, though, this is an enjoyable read, and will allow the reader to decide whether or not he or she actually likes The Witcher universe enough before committing to the novel. For my part, I like it enough to commit, and I will be getting to it as soon as I acquire a copy of Blood of Elves.
I am love love LOVING this series. It's like a funnier, wittier, inclusive version of GoT. I am actually really happy I watched the show first and would recommend. The author jumps around a lot and intermingles timelines and stories so getting used to that type of set up was nice for my literary digestion. There were so many parts of this story that made me laugh out loud. And Dandelion is my absolute fave. So funny! I'm SO stoked there are so many in the series! Would totally recommend to anyone who is partial to the Thrones/LotR/Medieval/Fantasy books!
Loved it. Gritty, interesting and left me wanting more of the Witcher's world.
I now want to play and watch!