The Last Wish: Introducing The Witcher

Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish is a must read for sword-and-sorcery aficionados.
• The Last Wish and most of the series were published in the 1990’s
• They spawned from Poland, not the United States or United Kingdom
• Inspired the Witcher game series a decade later (2007-ongoing)
• More to come, the author and series continue

Andrzej Sapkowski’s Geralt of Rivia is a “Witcher,” a superhuman trained to defeat monsters. After hundreds of years killing creatures, there are fewer threats and witchers. Actually there is less hunting monsters than Geralt sleuthing mysterious altercations. Sapkowski’s stories have conflicts that are not lone-Witcher-in-the-wild vs. monster conflict; they are more humans/vs strange forces in which Geralt referees (and usually kills). His investigative methods are a bit rougher than Sherlock Holmes. Each story was as if Conan was dumped into the Grimm's Fairy tales. But all is not grim. Lots of humor present is reminiscent of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. Humans tend to persecute or shun the weird witchers; sustaining future witchers is addressed as the seeds of an apprenticeship are sown.

Geralt has dialogue with antagonists often. Lengthy interrogations are common. This approach allows for funny banter, philosophizing, and entertaining information-dumps. This makes for a fast, entertaining read. Sapkowski stands out as a leading non-English writer. No map, table of contents (TOC), or glossary were featured in the paperback translation. I provide the TOC below. The structure reveals the over-arching narrative of “the Voice of Reason” which attempts to connect all the others. This works pretty well, but is not always smooth. This was designed as an introduction to the series. I was impressed enough to order the Sword of Destiny when I was only half way through. It is not until the third book does a dedicated novel emerge. The series and the games continue to this day with books 7 and 8 awaiting English translation (as of 2016).

The Last Wish Table of Contents
1- Voice of Reason #1
2- The Witcher
3 - Voice of Reason #2
4- A Grain of Truth
5- Voice of Reason #3
6-The Lesser Evil
7-Voice of Reason #4
8-A Question of Price
9-Voice of Reason #5
10-The Edge of The World
11- Voice of Reason #6
12- The Last Wish
11- Voice of Reason #7

Andrzej Sapkowski Blood of Elves saga:
1. The Last Wish; Short Stories 1992 , translated from Polish to English 2007 when the first Witcher Video Game was released
2. Sword of Destiny Short Storeis 1992 translated 2015
3. Blood of Elves 1994 [novels begin] translated 2014
4. The Time of Contempt 1995 translated 2015
5. Baptism of Fire 1996 translated 2016
6. The Tower of Swallows 1997 translated 2016
7. Lady of the Lake (1999…being translated for a 2017 release in US)
8. Season of Storms (Sezon burz) written 2013, set between the short stories in the first book in the series, The Last Wish. English edition TBD

Games
2007 Witcher PC
2011 Witcher 2 (Assassins of Kings) PC, Xbox, Mac OS
2015 Witcher 3 (Wild Hunt), PC, PS4, Xbox

First off, the Product Description does this book a great disservice when it says:
"Geralt de Rivia is a witcher. A cunning sorcerer. A merciless assassin.
And a cold-blooded killer."

Well...he's not a sorcerer...at least not in the sense they mean in the book. He's not an assassin - they actually go through great lengths in the book describing how witchers are not hired killers. And he is by no means a cold-blooded killer. I don't think it's too much a spoiler if I say I can count the number of things Geralt kills in the book on one hand. A witcher, as described in the book, is supposed to save lives rather than take them.

I don't know why the publishers chose this description, but I guess the description "A philosophically-minded warrior confronted with moral ambiguities" would not sell many copies.

Now the review:
This book chronicles the adventures of Geralt of Rivia in a series of loosely tied adventures. A convoluted way to describe his job would be to say he slay monsters, but a better way would be to say he helps people with monster troubles, resorting to violence as a last resort.

The book is written in short story form with a overarching mini-story which acts as a segway between each story.

The book itself, honestly, falls flat for about the first half of the book. I felt quite a bit was either lost in translation or the author was trying too hard to define his character.

The book becomes much, much better once Geralt's foil, named Dandilion, is introduced. I would also say that the very last of the six short stories, named "The Last Wish," is superb and more than enough to warrant a purchase of this book.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to fans of the computer game, [[ASIN:B000R2XJJK The Witcher]],

As for those look for a grittier take on fantasy, I would say this is a good read, but there are better books out there.

*No spoilers below

I bought this book after playing the wither 3 on ps4. I love the entire story and lore that accompanied the witches universe.

As immersed as I felt while playing the game, the book took me to the next level and I now want to buy the entire series of books.

I am a fan of Andrzej Sapowski's books and you will be too. It also looks really cool on my coffee table when I have guests over.

Wow. I got this book for my hubby for Father's Day, since he enjoys the PC game based on this book. I was literally in the middle of quite a large fictional novel when I picked up his book, this book, and read a few pages. I was hooked on the main character, Geralt, immediately. I took a wonderful liason from my current book, and the streets of NYC, and went directly into a medieval, magickal world full of monsters and sorcerers. The author is great with his adjectives and after a few sentences you really can imagine for yourself what the author is describing. Also, Sapkowski gives us humor and that humor doesn't encroach into the seriousness of the tone in the entire story. I absolutely LOVE that the author mixed in some of the older faerie tales, old wives tales and even some general well-known stories into the story. This is a quick and amusing read with some ancient 'history' intertwined. I loved this book! I want more! You will too!

The Last Wish is a slender, 280 page collection of six loosely-connected stories and intervals starring Geralt. Originally released in 1993 in Poland as Ostatnie Zyczenie, The Last Wish contains some of the oldest of the Geralt tales, although it was not the first Geralt book released in Poland. It is, however, an excellent introduction to the character and to the type of story that Sapkowski apparently wants to tell.
Geralt is a Witcher, an altered human being who has enhanced eyesight, a quicker healing/recovery mechanism for his body, and supposedly immune to most of the normal human emotions (although some of his interactions with various characters belies this to some extent). As a Witcher, Geralt's task is to roam the countyside and towns, looking for and destroying true monsters. While this might sound like a perfect D&D-style adventure series, Sapkowski quickly shows a combination of a sly wit and a tendency to not just subvert these adventure tropes, but to twist them and spin them upon their head until they collapse, too dizzy to assert themselves in the story themes.
I started playing the witcher 3 on playstation 4, I had to read the books and get the story behind Geralt. Great book for introducing Geralt and some of the others in the game. Great Reading!

The iron-willed, iron-formed, iron-headed witcher wanders around the land killing monster--most of which are women.
When Mr. Iron Head finally finds a woman he can pour out his pretend heart to, guess what? She has taken a vow of silence and can't say a word. OK.

In short, the Madonna-prostitute point of view is, unfortunately, alive and well, brought to full-blown ridiculousness by an author who apparently thinks women are monsters.

No, I didn't read any more. And have not intention of watching Henry Cavill dressed up with a white wig.

This book has more emotional depth, and maturity than most in this genre. It ties in a lot of children's stories, Snow White, etc, and provides an adult perspective on them. Stimulating and engrossing. Like Lord of the Rings, it has a dark edge, set in a time where the old world is fast disappearing. One of the best books I have read in a long time.

You probably know by now that Geralt is a Witcher, a monster slayer, and is a typical fantasy fiction hero. If you like fantasy fiction or the PC game The Witcher, the odds are good that you will enjoy this book.

What surprised me upon reading "The Last Wish" were the references to classic fairy tales and their somewhat twisted incorporation into Geralt's world. Stories about Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Rumplestiltiskin, and others are woven into the tales in a dark and untraditional way. I found this added to the fun and elevated this book above your typical hack and slash fanatasy novel.

In short, a great read and a welcome break from cookie-cutter fantasy.

I feared that the stories may fall flat in translation, but this is not the case. These short stories compiled into novel form leave no doubt about why this world was adapted into one of the most popular role playing games in recent memory. The world portrayed in the book is deep and layered with blood and shades of gray. There are rarely any real heroes or villains. Everyone has secondary motives. Even the "monsters" have sympathetic qualities, and a recurring theme is that people are far more dangerous than anything mystical.

So I'm one of the many cretins who only heard about this series through the video games. I picked up the Witcher 2 on a hunch and starving desire for a solid medieval based RPG and got more than I expected. The game was good, though it's lore was both impressive and overwhelming at points, it was still a very good game I thought. So as I mark the days down for the third installment I thought why not dive into the book series till then. So I got the Last Wish which is apparently where the series pretty much starts off and curled up with it. I know I'm in for a good book when it's text is easy to read and pages just starts flowing right off the bat which is what happened as soon I sunk my teeth into this.

This isn't a novel though, and I was able to recognize that immediately. It didn't flow as one instead its a collection of short stories written by Sapkowski in the earliest days of the Witcher from what I understand. That didn't really bother me though since they are very good well written stories. They're like fairy tales except darker with more believable and sometimes very tragic endings and that only helped make them more likeable for me. It also gave a me better background on Geralt and who he is as a character. He's a witcher, a monster hunter by profession and that's all he is. No knight in shinning armor or some young idealist. He kills monsters because that's what he's good at and it pays him well enough. His callousness isn't for nothing, peasants hate him, nobility tries to use him to suit their needs whether as a trump card or scapegoat, and the wilderness is full of monsters and other bad characters. For this Sapkowski does a very good job at describing.

Some may think he puts too much detail but it helps with depth and he doesn't linger on it too long. It brings up the various kingdoms that control the land, the different noble families, some bits of history, and the origins of some of the monsters that plague the country side. Its pretty apparent that Sapowski took a lot of influence from European folk lore and some of these stories seem as though they were taken right out of the Brother's Grimm and do them justice at the same time. Dialogue is pretty good, which says a lot because in fantasy books it can be pretty atrocious. Since some writers use words like "forsooth" and the like way too liberally in a failed attempt to make dialogue seem "authentic". Though at points I had to trudge through it. Bits with drawling peasants and some other people who like to cuss a lot but they didn't really spoil it for me. Even on parts where it starts going on about heraldry and magic didn't intimidate me as they usually do because by then the stories already have my attention.

So my impressions with the Last Wish were very good I will definitely expand into it. Part of me really wishes I had at least this one before I started the games because it helps put a lot of things I didn't get in the games into perspective. Its one of my most favorite reads in a while which says a lot for fantasy book because none other had left an impression like this on me since I first the read the Hobbit back in middle school as a kid. It's good book, if you like fantasy or the games then its worth reading.