Reviews

Poging 1 tot het proberen voorspellen van de serie. Bundel kortverhalen, de ene al wat meer te volgen in alle fantasy lingo dan de andere. Helemaal verliefd op het verhaal van Geralt en de zeemeermin

thegoldenageofgabylon's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

Well, it's definitely a 1993 fantasy novel written by a man.

[Image ID: Screenshot of a text post from Tumblr user @scottbaiowulf. "Male writers writing female characters: 'Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.'" /End ID]

olivera420's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

Overall this is a solid beginning to the series. I don't usually like short story collections but here it was very well done with one overarching story and the rest set in the past as Geralt's memories. And the stories themselves were mostly very good with interesting twists to the classic fairy tales. Unfortunately I didn't like most of the characters and most of the stories had boring exposition as a way to get the Witcher up to date with whats happening. Also there was a lot of unnecessary female nudity. But I'm really looking forward to reading the next book since the premise is interesting and I hope there'll be less questionable things in the sequels.

Spoiler

What I didn't like
There was a lot of gratuitous female nudity in every single story. For example when Geralt and Yennefer are fighting close to the end of the last story there was this:

The sudden move split her dress at the armpit, revealing a shapely breast.

Geralt grabbed her by the hands and, to avoid being hit by her forehead, thrust his face into the sorceress's cleavage which smelled of lilac, gooseberries and oysters.

And there was one very questionable scene in the first story where Geralt managed to turn the striga back into a 14 year old girl and we get this description of her:

She was rather ugly. Slim with small pointed breasts, and dirty.

Since we're in Geralt's mind as the stories are basically told as his memories of past missions, this is how he saw her, her breasts get more detailed description than her face. And he is much older, I'm guessing over 50 since training witchers takes a lot of time and he's been a witcher for a while by this point. To me at least Geralt comes across as a creep here.

Dandilion was a terrible character. When he tried to make his wishes from the djinn in the last story, his wishes were to kill his rival and rape a girl. The second wish was to magically get a girl that didn't like him to have sex with him against her will - in summary, he wanted to rape her.

"My wishes," continued the poet, "are as follows. Firstly, may Valdo Marx, the troubadour of Cidaris, die of apoplexy as soon as possible. Secondly, there's a count's daughter in Caelf called Virginia who refuses all advances. May she succumb to mine. Thirdly-"

And Geralt himself wasn't a very compelling character. We don't really get to know him in this book even though it's written from his perspective. I can't tell what his personality is like based on this first book.

krichardson's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

I added this book because I watched the first season of the Netflix show and enjoyed it, but it just wasn't as good as the show. The characters are more likable in the show, and they took out some of the weird messages in this book. Lots of reviews mention the consent issues, but it is also strangely pro-colonization at one point. The world building seems interesting, but we don't ever really get into it and Geralt's backstory comes as one boring, mansplain-y info dump. The short story format was a little easier to follow than the show, but I'm still a little unclear on why some of them mattered. I'm vaguely curious if the later books go deeper into the world building, but I probably won't borrow them because I am not really interested in this version of the characters or having a good time with all the sexism.

capslock's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

kirstie4's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

Re-read via audio-book so I can continue the series.

peppermint_kiss's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional funny inspiring reflective tense

4.0

More...