Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - La dama del lago

Like all the other books in the Witcher series, this one jumps back and forth between perspectives, and gives a lot of information that isn’t completely necessary or interesting. The writing style is descriptive but not necessarily excessively so. The story itself has a lot of twists and turns and mysteries. I’d say the ending was rather bittersweet. Also, there were a lot of things that didn’t really make too much sense for the characters that have developed over the past handful of books. There were also just a handful of times whenever an action was starting to peak, and then it just dropped down because there was some kind of intervention that just happened to happen at that moment.

I didn’t necessarily expect a happy ending for everyone… But at least an ending that actually had conclusions that really mattered or that made sense would’ve been nice.

Overall, I rather enjoyed the series, despite its many flaws. With the switching perspectives, it did get confusing as to what was going on and what character was doing what. It often went to characters that I wasn’t really sure why they were even included… Unless they were just trying to close up plot lines? I don’t know; they didn’t really matter. It didn’t really seem very important that So-and-So died in such a way or succeeded in XYZ. Sure, sometimes it was nice to see what older characters that we hadn’t seen in a while were doing… But overall it wasn’t really important to the plot what was going on in their lives.

The reader for this audiobook is very talented! He really knows how to manipulate his voice to the different characters and stick with it consistently. The voice acting was also very good with emphasized emotions relevant to the scenes.

I’m really interested in seeing how the series on Netflix adapts all of the storylines. Hopefully it’s a little bit less convoluted…

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

5.0

This was a fitting end to the main series and the linear part of Geralt and Ciri’s story. It’s by far the longest, but it felt well-organized and thematically clear. I felt less confused or out on a limb than I have throughout some of the other books.

The changing storyteller aspect (telling parts of the story from later points in time, looking back, and/or from a distant storyteller) was occasionally irritating, as it felt like a way to slow down the most compelling parts of the narrative. But overall, it finally felt more appropriate to have so many narratives to jump between, as the many characters were better established by this point. By the final half, this reminded me strongly of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the way several disparate groups or characters are working in different parts of the world during an enormous war. A nice fellowship developed here, too.

I’ve still got Season of Storms left, and then I’ll be all through with Witcher books! For awhile, at least. But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them and will be sad to turn that final page.

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