translated by David French
"After walking through a portal in the Tower of the Swallow, thus narrowly escaping death, the Witcher girl, Ciri, finds herself in a completely different world... a world of the Elves. She is trapped with no way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world.
"After walking through a portal in the Tower of the Swallow, thus narrowly escaping death, the Witcher girl, Ciri, finds herself in a completely different world... a world of the Elves. She is trapped with no way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world.
But this is Ciri, the child of prophecy, and she will not be defeated. She knows she must escape to finally rejoin the Witcher, Geralt, and his companions - and also to try to conquer her worst nightmare. Leo Bonhart, the man who chased, wounded and tortured Ciri, is still on her trail. And the world is still at war."
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A long while ago (2015) I read my first introduction to the world of The Witcher - Sword of Destiny - and really enjoyed it, and promised myself that I'd read more of the series, so a couple of years later when I saw The Lady of the Lake come up on Netgalley review site I grabbed it. Unfortunately the gap between reading the first book and the second was too long, and I couldn't remember characters clearly, their story-lines or how they related to each other, and so I abandoned the book.
Roll on a few more years, and Netflix have turned The Witcher into a tv series which I watched avidly over Christmas. Eight episodes wasn't enough for me, so I've returned to this neglected book. Now having a better grasp of The Witcher's world, I could comparatively easily slip back into it - I knew more about Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri, and how their stories fitted together, I'd realised that Jaskier of the Netflix series was called Dandelion in the books (it's a translation issue; Jaskier means 'buttercup' which wasn't considered quite right for the character). The Lady of the Lake doesn't however follow on from the tv series, in fact is the final book, so don't go reading it if you like a story to develop sequentially. I don't mind too much with an epic multi-book series; I like to know who lives happily ever after, that the bad guys get their comeuppance, and then go back and slowly read how it all came about.
Another thing I'd become used to on the Netfix show was the story jumping about in time and in viewpoint. The publisher's blurb above puts the emphasis on Ciri's story, but while she's trying to escape from the Elves, Yennefer is being held captive elsewhere, and Geralt and his companions are passing the winter in the kingdom of Toussaint, and in some uncertain future time two sorceresses, Nimue and Condwiramurs, are trying to unravel Ciri's story through dreams. Somehow Sapkowski manages to juggle all these elements (and a few shorter-lived threads) and keep the story moving as a cohesive whole, heading towards a grand finale for the series.
There's a compelling mix of fantasy and folk tales, with complex characters who feel emotionally fleshed-out and 'real', and scenes like the doctors struggling to save lives on a battlefield that, bar their obvious use of sorcery, could fit neatly into any historical drama.
The world created by Sapkowski intrigued me when I first read Sword of Destiny, now I'd definitely like to explore it further.
Another thing I'd become used to on the Netfix show was the story jumping about in time and in viewpoint. The publisher's blurb above puts the emphasis on Ciri's story, but while she's trying to escape from the Elves, Yennefer is being held captive elsewhere, and Geralt and his companions are passing the winter in the kingdom of Toussaint, and in some uncertain future time two sorceresses, Nimue and Condwiramurs, are trying to unravel Ciri's story through dreams. Somehow Sapkowski manages to juggle all these elements (and a few shorter-lived threads) and keep the story moving as a cohesive whole, heading towards a grand finale for the series.There's a compelling mix of fantasy and folk tales, with complex characters who feel emotionally fleshed-out and 'real', and scenes like the doctors struggling to save lives on a battlefield that, bar their obvious use of sorcery, could fit neatly into any historical drama.
The world created by Sapkowski intrigued me when I first read Sword of Destiny, now I'd definitely like to explore it further.
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