Blood of Elves
For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But that peace has now come to an end.
Geralt of Rivia, the hunter known as the Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. The one who has the power to change the world for good—or for evil.
As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is pursued for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt’s responsibility to protect them all. And the Witcher never accepts defeat.
Join Geralt of Rivia; his beloved ward and the child of prophecy, Ciri; and his ally and love, the powerful sorceress Yennefer as they battle monsters, demons, and prejudices alike in Blood of Elves, the first novel of The Witcher Saga.
The Time of Contempt
The Witcher returns in this sequel to Blood of Elves, in the series that inspired The Witcher video games.
Geralt is a guardian of the innocent; protector of those in need; a defender, in dark times, against some of the most frightening creatures of myth and legend. His task, now, is to protect Ciri. A child of prophecy, she will have the power to change the world for good or for ill — but only if she lives to use it.
A coup threatens the Wizard’s Guild.
War breaks out across the lands.
A serious injury leaves Geralt fighting for his life…
… and Ciri, in whose hands the world’s fate rests, has vanished…
Baptism of Fire
The Wizards Guild has been shattered by a coup and, in the uproar, Geralt was seriously injured. The Witcher is supposed to be a guardian of the innocent, a protector of those in need, a defender against powerful and dangerous monsters that prey on men in dark times.
But now that dark times have fallen upon the world, Geralt is helpless until he has recovered from his injuries.
While war rages across all of the lands, the future of magic is under threat and those sorcerers who survive are determined to protect it. It’s an impossible situation in which to find one girl – Ciri, the heiress to the throne of Cintra, has vanished – until a rumor places her in the Niflgaard court, preparing to marry the Emperor.
Injured or not, Geralt has a rescue mission on his hands.
This is the third of the Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski.
The Tower of Swallows
The Witcher returns in this action-packed sequel to Baptism of Fire, in the New York Times bestselling series that inspired The Witcher video games.
The world has fallen into war. Ciri, the child of prophecy, has vanished. Hunted by friends and foes alike, she has taken on the guise of a petty bandit and lives free for the first time in her life. But the net around her is closing. Geralt, the Witcher, has assembled a group of allies determined to rescue her. Both sides of the war have sent brutal mercenaries to hunt her down. Her crimes have made her famous. There is only one place left to run. The tower of the swallow is waiting…
The Lady of the Lake
The Witcher returns in this action-packed sequel to The Tower of Swallows, in the New York Times bestselling series that inspired The Witcher video games.
After walking through the portal in the Tower of Swallows while narrowly escaping death, Ciri finds herself in a completely different world… an Elven world. She is trapped with no way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world.
But this is Ciri, the child of prophecy, and she will not be defeated. She knows she must escape to finally rejoin the Witcher, Geralt, and his companions – and also to try to conquer her worst nightmare. Leo Bonhart, the man who chased, wounded and tortured Ciri, is still on her trail. And the world is still at war.
My Take
It took me a long time — and a cheap Kindle Unlimited offer, since they were all on there — to read these books. I understand all the hype, though I don’t agree with it. I mean, they were fine, just not great. That probably had something to do with all the rapes and rape fantasies, the treatment of women in general both by the author and the characters in the novels, and the highly detailed yet uninformative descriptions of sword fights. I chose to read only the novels because I don’t really read short fiction, and yet the novels often felt like a series of short stories rather than a novel. It felt like there were many long passages of why am I reading about this person now, and is this never going to end? But I think sometime around the third or fourth book I finally relaxed into it and just went with the flow. In the end I’m glad I finally read them, though I didn’t love them. The humor was nicely deadpan and the language occasionally lyrical.