Reviews with content warning for Injury/injury detail - The Last Wish

My adult kid gave me this book as a birthday present because we enjoyed watching the Netflix series together. This is one of the cases when the moving image production is better than the book. I'd like to say it's because the stories were written in the previous century by a boomer male and obviously men's opinions of women/people have changed so much since then but regrettably I can't - women's lives are still a full of inequity and fear. I will say that the people who produced the series addressed a lot of the absolutely disgusting misogyny in the book, as well as restringing the story in a cohesive manner and giving Geralt a personality. Reading one account after another of what a woman (always referred to as a "girl" by the author) looks like, whether she passes the male-imposed standard for attractiveness, the incredible, cliche'ed detail of their breast-enhancing, thigh-revealing, hip thrusting outifts (compared to the male characters of whom very little is said about what they wear), the sexualization of the fight scenes between the Witcher and his female foes (always thighs and breasts exposed during a viscous fight to the death), the opening scene of an actual girl sexually attacking the Witcher in his sleep as part of her priestess training - it was all so gross that I had a hard time processing the stories behind these disturbing revelations of what men think when they see women. The stories were interesting, although I was hoping for more of Geralt's back story, and you have to keep in mind that these stories preceded the Game of Thrones celebrity not to find them kind of hackneyed. Sadly, no matter what male writers imagine, women are always relegated to one of three roles - virgin or girl I'd like to have sex with, whore or in this case demon, and female bringing beverages to men. If we are imagining a different world, couldn't we fantasize something different for the women for change?

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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3.0

This was a weird reading experience because I'm already fairly familiar with the Witcher settings, concepts, and characters from the video games (I've never played them myself, but I've watched my husband play through The Witcher III twice). I think if I didn't have that context, it would have been a lot harder to follow this book. (Although to be fair, a large part of that is audio is not a good format to read this and the audiobook narrator was not the greatest.) The internet recommended I read this short story collection before jumping into the first novel because chronologically they're set before the novels, but they seem to be written for people who already at least a little bit understand what's going on. I'm still going to give the first book a shot, but I'm not sure The Last Wish is really the best place to jump into the Witcher books.

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anapthine's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

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aristata9000's review

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Good fight scenes, but a little degrading to women. I love the show, but was disappointed in the lack of character development in the book.

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