The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski

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.

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.

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars 
Publisher - Gollancz
Genre - Fantasy

Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

review by Maryom

Geralt de Rivia is a witcher, a man mutated by drugs, and trained in the tracking and killing of monsters. He travels the land, saving town and countryside from the ravages of these creatures, but believes that not all non-humans are harmful and that Man should learn to live alongside them rather than wipe them out. This collection of six stories tells of his adventures with dragons, mermaids, dryads, and the disgusting multi-limbed monsters that lurk in middens or under bridges waiting to prey on passers-by, along the way meeting up, and parting from, his sometime lover, the sorceress Yennefer, the bard Dandelion and 'his destiny' the child Ciri.


I always say I'll read anything providing the story and the writing are good, so I've never had any hang-ups about 'genre' but what I've found recently with fantasy is that it comes in massive chunks - a book of six or seven hundred pages which ends on a cliffhanger and turns out to be part of a trilogy or even longer series (and I don't just mean George R R Martin!). Here though it's in a form I love - short stories, each standing alone but part of a wider story arc - in this case all involving the Witcher, Geralt.
The stories all rattle along at a good pace, with sword fights and fearsome creatures a-plenty, but aren't just tales of fantasy and magic for the sake of it. Geralt finds himself in situations that explore all-too-human emotions and failings, from the very personal to wider social issues; destruction of environment or discrimination against and fear of outsiders are things that apply as much in 'our' world as in the Witcher's.

This collection ties in to a wider series of stories, novels and console games, and I'm now sufficiently intrigued that I want to read more of the series ......if only some of the games would play on my old PS2....


Maryom's review - 4.5 stars 
Publisher - Gollancz
Genre - Fantasy
translated by David French