Review: The Last Wish

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since context matters, I'll state that this is my third time reading this book. I read the first couple of books years ago (before it was cool) but the later books in the series had not been translated to English just yet. To, at least in part, stay ahead of the new TV series I decided to catch up and read all of the books. Since it had been a few years since the last go around, I also decided to start over. To refresh and see how well my memory serves me.

Pretty well, it turns out. I had little trouble remembering the various characters and plots of the various stories this book contains. I suppose it's a good sign that you can remember a book so well. A tribute to the writing I suppose. The characters are sharp, the stories are inventive, and the prose contains a strong dry wit to them. Some stories are better than others, but I won't call this collection a mixed bag. The variation of likeability is marginal and likely due to personal tastes.

"The Lesser Evil" I would have to list as my personal favorite.

The intersecting story "The Voice of Reason", serves the book well. While weak as an actual story, it operates as needed downtime between adventures. It maintains the process of creating a series of short stories but also threads them together to form something larger. Making it something better than a collection while not masking itself as a full-grown novel.

If I had to name one thing that annoyed me, because I have to, I didn't like how characters would name drop other characters we haven't met yet. Especially when there's no reason to call them out by name. As an example: Triss Merigold gets a mention in this book and she never even shows up. I know we're world building here, but the whole process feels inorganic.

As a general rule, a book that can stand up to multiple reads is a good book. Like if you can date someone more than once and not leave before paying the check, is probably someone you can form a relationship with. My pretentious side tells me that book series are evil. That a writer should be able to come up with more than one idea. But, as series go, this is starting off to be a good one.

View all my reviews