Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - Pani Jeziora

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…

Content Warnings

aangi16's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I wanted to like this series so much and I kept reserving judgement and thinking "maybe it'll get better after this book" but no it really is just that boring and flat.

I can appreciate that some things just weren't to my taste. For example, I'm sure other people enjoyed the overly complicated politics but personally I didn't care for it. But some things were just objectively bad, or at least questionable, decisions.

Like introducing a group of interesting characters (Regis, Milva, Angoulême) only to unceremoniously kill them all off in one of the laziest ways possible because they've served their purpose of getting Geralt to Ciri. Not to mention the reasons they each agree to help Geralt find Ciri in the first place are tenuous (don't even get me started on Cahir's reason/obsession with Ciri).

Character motivations were something I consistently struggled to understand throughout the series, but especially near the ending.

You're telling me Duny waged wars with nations and is responsible for the deaths of millions of humans, dwarves, elves etc because he wanted his offspring to rule the world but changed his mind at the last second because Ciri cried a little? And Geralt and Yennefer after finally getting her back were prepared to just let her go without a fight and kill themselves (after having sex first because of course) instead?

Other issues I had with the series as a whole:
- Why does every woman geralt comes across either fall in love with him or want to have sex with him? He's canonically unattractive and he doesn't have a very charming or likeable personality. 2 or 3 women sure, but not every single woman he has a conversation with
- Sapkowski's obsession with Ciri repeatedly either getting SA'd, almost SA'd, or being used as a breeding machine is weird and creepy
- The sex scenes were hilariously bad (I even read a couple passages to friends)
- The writing was terrible in some places (though this may be an issue with the translation, rather than Sapkowski himself)

Now for the good stuff:
- The books are actually quite funny in some places
- Geralt's crew in this book (Regis, Milva, Angoulême and Cahir) were interesting and fun and I wish we'd gotten to see more of them
- Ciri's character and story arch is really interesting, even more than Geralt's imo
- The world and lore are genuinely interesting and have a lot of potential (which is why I love the games and I'm looking forward to seeing what the show does)
- The characters have flaws and personalilty traits that make them feel more like real people (most of the time)
- I loved Ciri's relationships with Geralt, Yennefer, Triss and the other witchers

In summary, it wasn't worth reading the whole series just for the little nuggets of enjoyment I got every now and then, especially considering how disappointing I found the ending to be.

Content Warnings

fallhistorywitch's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

I’m too disgusted right now to give an in-depth review. All you have to know is sexualization of a minor, sexual assault of a minor, incest, an over all aura of misogyny combined with the slowest pace I’ve ever seen in a book. The stupidest book I’ve ever read!

Content Warnings

capitola's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

2.5

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