Fantasy Book Reviews by Charles Moffat

The Witcher Book Series

What are these fantasy books about?

The Witcher series of fantasy novels and short stories are by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The books and short stories revolve around the titular character who is a "witcher", a type of magic using warrior who hunts beasts, monsters and undead critters. Witchers are mutants, the result of magical transformations that gives them supernatural abilities (but unfortunately kills roughly 70% of the young recruits). The main character is a particular witcher, Geralt of Rivia, and his adventures as he travels around killing monsters, rescuing princesses, trying to find a missing princess (if this feels like Super Mario Bros you are not alone in this assessment), his relationships with various women, and trying to avoid getting involved in politics - even though he does, often, get involved in politics.

Note #1. There is also currently a Netflix series about The Witcher, starring Henry Cavill in the title role, so this is also quite topical these days.

Note #2. My wife plays the Witcher 3 video game and got me interested in reading the books. Combined with The Witcher series on Netflix, suffice to say we are now big fans of the show, game and books.

What did I like about the books?

A lot actually. The book series felt very much like a Sword and Sorcery series like Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian" books. I really enjoy Sword and Sorcery books so this was definitely right up my alley.

I like that Geralt bleeds. He gets injured routinely. Sometimes seriously. I am not a big fan of books where the hero never gets injured and doesn't seem to face any serious threats. It thus has a gritty "Die Hard" feel to it.

I like that many of the monsters are from Polish folklore, and that some of the stories are twists on popular stories (sometimes even stories depicted by Disney). Eg. There is one story about a mermaid who falls in love with a land dweller, but there is a big twist with respect to how that relationship goes down.

I like the author's sense of humour too. He adds things in the short stories/chapters that many authors wouldn't consider putting in there because they might think it is too silly, but in the Witcher series it is considered normal, feels normal, and therefore is okay to put in there. It just adds to the humour of the situation.

What didn't I like?

It is hard to pick things I didn't like for this book series. Honestly, very difficult. The writing is excellent and although it is translated into English from Polish the translators did a very good job. There are very few translation errors, although I did admittedly find a few.

I do think the author's chapters are RIDICULOUSLY LONG. I think he could do a better job of cutting his chapters into smaller pieces to make them more bite sized. His chapters are so long they make George R. R. Martin's chapters feel short. I like being able to read a whole chapter in a single sitting, and that is very difficult to do when the chapters are ridiculously long.

In the beginning the books are two series of anthologies with a longer story arc occurring within the anthologies. Lots of flash backs. I don't mind this so much. In the later books however it becomes more like an epic fantasy soap opera because two of the side characters has some OP (Over Powered) abilities which makes Geralt look weak in comparison. Despite this I think this is a welcome change from having the main character being the OP character, which I consider to be boring and the result of bad storytelling. Whenever I see a protagonist who is OP I get bored very quickly.

Summary and Star Rating

I really enjoyed reading these books and I would certainly read them a second time in the future. Highly recommended despite the faults. I give it either 4.5 stars or 5 stars, and I consider it to be a MUST READ for anyone who loves fantasy books.

★★★★★