Obviously, we here at WiC are big fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, but there’s a whole world of wonderful fantasy fiction out there, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Ursula K. Le Guin to Patrick Rothfuss and beyond. And thanks in no small part to the success of HBO’s Game of Thrones, fantasy fiction is having a bit of a moment, with lots of TV networks scrambling to get their hands on whatever hot property they can and turn it into the next big pop culture sensation.
Among those contenders is Netflix, who’s turning Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s series of Witcher novels into a TV show to debut later this year. We thought this would be a good time to read through those books and see what we think. Join us, won’t you?
First, a note: there are eight Witcher books in all, but only five novels that comprise what is known as the “Witcher saga.” Blood of Elves is the first of those novels, so we’re going to start there, reading and reviewing chapters one at a time and updating this post as we go. I’ve already read The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, which are short story collections that set up the characters and the world but aren’t technically part of the serialized Witcher saga that starts here.
And with that, let’s open it up:
CHAPTER ONE
What’s surprising about the first chapter of the Witcher saga proper is how little the titular witcher appears. Geralt of Rivia, scarred and battle-hardened, shows up at the beginning and the end, escorting the surprise child Ciri to Kaer Morhen, the Witchers’ Keep, so that he can train her to become one of his order. These brief sections are lyrical and stylized. The first is dominated by Ciri’s unrestful dream, all of it written in the present tense. These sections are here to give us a taste of the strange relationship between these two, and are mostly told from Ciri’s perspective. Not a ton actually happens in them.
The rest of the chapter is another story. The bulk concerns the adventures of Dandelion, a bard and one of Geralt’s best friends. There’s a long section where he’s singing a ballad in a town square, a ballad based on some of his adventures with Geralt from the first two books. It’s an excuse for Sapkowski to dump one giant load of exposition on us. The townsfolk debate the merits of the ballad and whether the events it describes really happened until well after Dandelion has taken his tips and left.
We also get a hefty helping of world-building. Sapkowski’s Continent isn’t like George R.R. Martin’s Westeros; it’s more directly inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, with humans at odds with dwarves at odds with elves, although all of them are intermixing more than they usually did in Middle-earth. We also hear of conflicts between the countries of Cintra and Nilfgaard, so there are some geopolitics involved, too. The Witcher exists at a halfway point between Tolkien’s mythic imaginings and Martin’s grounded politicking.
From there, Sapkowski wastes no time getting into the thick of it, as Dandelion is accosted by a shadowy figure named Rience and rescued from torture by Yennefer, a powerful sorceress and Geralt’s on-again off-again love interest. Rience is looking for Ciri, the granddaughter of Calanthe, the queen of Cintra until she committed suicide rather than submit to the invading Nilfgaardian army. Why is Rience so intent on finding Ciri? I don’t know, but the way Sapkowski writes for and about her, she’s already taken on a sort of mysterious importance. The plot is afoot!
I’ll be honest: I enjoyed The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny well enough but there was something keeping me from getting fully invested. Maybe it was the English translation I’m reading, or maybe it was that Sapkowski has created a high fantasy world best explored in a serialized format rather than through loosely connected short stories. I’m looking forward to seeing the kind of tale he can tell now that he has more space.
CHAPTER TWO
Once again, I’m surprised by how little Geralt factors into this chapter. Don’t get me wrong — he’s there and he’s important — but this chapter is very much not told through his point of view. Chapter One put Dandelion in the driver’s seat. This time it’s Triss Merigold, a young (or young-looking, anyway; it can be hard to tell with magic types in this world) sorceress who comes to Kaer Morhen at the witchers’ request to help train Ciri, who we gather is very important to the future of the witching order. (Is that a correct way to describe it? Eh, we’ll figure it out.)
In The Sword of Destiny, Geralt and Ciri talked a lot about how important Ciri was to the witchers, how she was Gerart’s “destiny,” but I never really got a sense of what that meant practically. It’s starting to come into focus for me now. Although Sapkowski never says this outright, it seems like the order of witchers is dying, with their number at Kaer Morhen being relatively few, and none of them particularly young. I liked the opportunity to get to know the remaining witchers a little better, from wizened Vesemir to brash Lambert. I imagine I’ll be spending a lot of time with them.
Anyway, getting fresh blood into the order must be a big deal, that is, if Ciri can survive the trials. Sapkowski is doing a good job of laying down anticipation for those. She is also, apparently, a “Source,” which has something to do with magic. I’m not as intrigued by that on account of its vagueness, but I’m sure we’ll be filled in eventually.
As for Triss, she’s written likably, a smart young bluestocking who sweeps in to bust up this old boys’ club, none of whom know what to do with a young female charge. It’s fun, although her extreme competence clashes a bit with her almost schoolgirl-like infatuation with Geralt, with whom she once had an affair. The characters are more vibrant in this novel than they were in the short story collections, but they still feel a tad shallow. But again, it’s early days.
I don’t like the modern prose used in this fantasy world. When discussing Ciri’s health, Triss uses words like “metabolic rate,” “adipose tissue,” and “hormonal system.” They sound anachronistic and break my immersion. I think I’d like it better if the characters had some understanding of this stuff but didn’t use language so clearly plucked from our time. But that might be the fault of the English translation.
CHAPTER THREE
Ah, now I’m sinking into the book. Sapkowski is still taking his time, exploring the mythology while sticking close to a core group of characters. In a sprawling story like this, side characters count for a lot, so I’m happy that witchers like Lambert, Vesemir, and Coën are getting fleshed out. I’m still coming off Game of Thrones, so I’m expecting some of them to die at some point and would prefer to be gutted.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, the witchers are giving me serious Faceless Men vibes, particularly in the last chunk of this chapter when Geralt justifies the way he and his order work. They don’t get involved in politics, they don’t try to go for the “source” of misery, as Triss claims to; they fight monsters for money. Monsters often crop up in the wake of war, and the witchers go where they’re needed. Are they profiting off war? Are they providing a valuable service? As Geralt frames it, they’re simply doing what they do. They’re playing a role, doing a job. It doesn’t go deeper than that.
But Ciri, like Arya Stark, still has vengeance in her heart. She wants revenge against the Nilfgaardian army that decimated her home and killed her grandmother, Queen Calanthe of Cintra. She wants revenge agains the “black knight,” who did…something to her. Best not to dwell on what Sapkowski seems to be implying there.
In other words, Ciri has a list. And like Arya, her desires don’t jibe with the philosophy of the mysterious assassin cult where she’s training. By the end of this chapter, the witchers are planning to take Ciri away from Kaer Morhen and get her some experience in the wider world. I expect lots of juicy conflict as Ciri struggles with her path.
I will say that I wasn’t wild about the way some of these ideas were conveyed. Triss and Geralt, in particular, talk in long, mannered paragraphs at each other. I’m still getting used to Sapkowski’s writing style. I feel like it should be a little…I don’t know, choppier? Rougher?
Speaking of style, Sapkowski gets loose in the middle part of the chapter and stages a series of dialogues between Ciri and the various witchers (and Triss) as they train her in elvish, monster lore, sword-fighting, and the like. It’s fun enough, and gives us a better look at Ciri, who comes off as likable, hard-working, and maybe too innocent for her own good. Should a 12-year-old who’s been through what she’s been through be this chipper?
And in the first part of the chapter, Sapkowski feeds us more exposition, about the “chapter” of wizards, about what a “Source” is (apparently a person with inherent magical talent that can be difficult to control — it’s still a little squishy for me, but fine, let’s go with it), about a prophecy that could spell doom for a couple of the witchers, about a mysterious entity working through Ciri to unknown ends. The building blocks are being laid. It’s time to leave the confines of Kaer Morhen and build upward.
Jarosław Boberek as Yarpen Zigrin in
The Hexer
.
CHAPTER FOUR
It occurred to me after reading “Chapter Four” that Sapkowski hasn’t strayed as far from the model of The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny as I’d thought. Blood of Elves is a turning point for this series, because it’s now a serialized adventure rather than an interconnected collection of short stories…but is it? “Chapter Four” is a story onto itself with a beginning, middle and end: Geralt and company join a caravan led by the dwarf Yarpen Zigrin, they get attacked by elves, and Ciri learns a valuable lesson about neutrality. Now, obviously this is going to have consequences later — this seems to be where the blood of elves of the title is spilled, which will lead to calamity according to one of those ominous prophecies that turn up so reliably in fantasy fiction — but it also stands alone just fine.
I guess this is the method Sapkowski finds most comfortable, and I’m okay with that. We get some good action on the final pages when the Scoia-tael elves attack the caravan, action given weight and meaning after Geralt fills Ciri in on some elven history. I’ve said before that The Witcher seems to take place in a world that’s halfway between J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth and George R.R. Martin’s Westeros, and Sapkowski’s elves are a good example of that. As in Lord of the Rings, they’re fading out and dying away, but while there’s an ethereal quality to them, they’re more earth-bound than Tolkien’s creations. They’re swayed, according to Yarpen, by messaging from the Nilfgaardian army, and are trying to reclaim the land humans took from them long ago. In fact, all the members of non-human races are going through a period of existential dread. Some, like Yarpen, choose to try and live alongside the humans, but others fight against them. There are political and cultural overtones here that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Martins books. If Westeros had elves and dwarves and the like, they’d probably behave like this.
Is this story headed toward a race war? It’s starting to feel like that. There are contingents of humans who want to wipe out the members of all non-human races, even people like Yarpen who want to live with them in harmony. The caravan ends up being a ruse; Yarpen was transporting goods on behalf of the human king, but his barrels are loaded with stones. It’s not said outright, but I think the idea is that the king was hoping the dwarvish caravan would be attacked by elves, with the best case scenario being that everyone died? This whole incident is bad for human-dwarf-elf relations, is all I’m saying.
I was moved by Geralt’s history lesson in the ruins of Shaerrawedd, a once-vibrant elven palace destroyed by its creators when humans encroached on their land. The story of Eilirena, the elven hero who led young elves into a losing battle against humans hundreds of years ago, is lyrically tragic, and further differentiates these elves from Tolkien’s. In Middle-earth, the elves are leaving. It’s melancholic. Here, the elves don’t have anywhere to go, so they’re going extinct. It’s apocalyptic. Like Ciri, I got a better idea of what being “neutral” means to Geralt. It’s not that he doesn’t care about human life; he just sees both sides of the conflict and doesn’t want see the old world fade away.
I continue to want Sapkowski to be looser with his prose, but at this point it’s clear that’s a pill I’m just going to have to swallow. I hope that’s something the Netflix series improves upon. Still, this was a good chapter.
CHAPTER FIVE
Once again, the latest chapter of Blood of Elves feels distinct from the ones before it — we pick things up with Geralt some time after he’s dropped Ciri off at her proper, non-Witcher boarding school — but “Chapter Five” doesn’t feel as self-contained as “Chapter Four.” Although we don’t immediately realize it, most of the chapter is driven by Rience, the mysterious rogue sorcerer (according to new character Philippa Eilhart, anyway), who nearly tortured Dandelion in “Chapter One.” Who is he? Why is he after Ciri? What devilry is at work in the wider world of The Witcher?
We still don’t have answers to most of those questions, but it looks like Blood of Elves is going to start digging into them. And Rience is most likely from Nilfgaard. I’m prepared to make some predictions: the two main conflicts in the Witcher saga will be a war between intelligent species and a conflict between Nilfgaard and the rest of the “Four Kingdoms,” as they’re named here. Witcher fans: how am I doing?
As for the chapter itself, I liked how it contrasted Geralt’s old world-style approach to monsters and monster-hunting with that of Linus Pitt, Master Tutor and Lecturer in Natural History at the Oxenfurt Academy, The Witcher’s answer to the Citadel in A Song of Ice and Fire or the University in The Kingkiller Chronicle. Every fantasy saga has to have a seat of higher learning. (Although is there more than one seat of higher learning on the Continent? To be continued.) Pitt prefers to think of monsters as heretofore undiscovered animals, and has no shortage of names for the hostile creature Geralt has been hired to protect a trading barge from. Geralt has only one name for it: an aeschna, a many-clawed, razor-jawed monster with a hunger for human flesh.
The conflict between magic — the old ways, represented by Geralt — and technological progress — represented by Pitt — is a rich one. Here, all of Pitt’s high-minded theories about undiscovered miracles of biology collapse when confronted with the dangerous reality of the aeschna, which of course attacks the barge. It’s clear what side of the fence Sapkowski falls on; in “Chapter Four,” Geralt’s historical understanding of the aeschna soundly trumps Pitt’s academic approach.
But like I said, Rience drives this chapter. We don’t find out at the time, but Geralt took the job on the barge hoping to draw Rience out. It doesn’t work, but he is attacked by a couple of thugs sent by Rience, both of them disguised as Temerian guards. (I’m still getting used to all the placenames in The Witcher saga — Temeria, Redania and the rest.) We’re getting closer.
In the other half of the chapter, Dandelion pays a visit to the Academy in Oxenfurt, his alma mater, and finds it comfortingly similar to how he left it to seek his fortune as a poet and minstrel years ago. His reminiscences are fun, but the point of following him is so he can be escorted before Sigismund Dijkstra, a spymaster for the Redanian government. Like everyone on the Continent, he’s looking for Ciri, whom Geralt has safely squirreled away. Philippa Eilhart, a senior member of the premiere wizarding order in the land, is also after her, although she’s stingy on the details. I think it’s high time we get some of those.
Also, Philippa can transform into an owl, which is solid.
CHAPTER SIX
“Chapter Six” splits its time between long-awaited confrontations on the one hand and people whispering about conspiracies on the other. The conspiracies ARE more interesting.
Or maybe it’s that the confrontationS underwhelms. Although he’s been a shadowy, driving force for much of the book, I don’t feel like I really know Rience, the sorcerer hired by the Nilfgaardian army to find Ciri (and who therefore must go through Geralt). It’s cool that he can make claws sprout from his fingers and everything, but at the end of the day, he’s a pretty flat bad guy, and we didn’t even get the satisfaction of seeing Geralt cut him down. (Saved by a portal; there’s always a portal.)
Geralt tearing through the hired goons was pretty fun, though. I feel like he’s just on the cusp of feeling too powerful to be interesting, but Sapkowski puts enough safeguards in place — the Witcher elixirs sending him into beast mode, him almost fainting from loss of blood — to get away with it.
Elsewhere, the leaders of the major kingdoms of the north — King Hensalt of Kaedwen, Lord Foltest of Temeria, Queen Meve of Lyria, King Vizimir of Redania, and Demawend of Aedirn — meet in secret to decide what to do about the rising unrest sweeping across their territory, from the Scoia’tael attacks to the Nilfgaardian army sitting right over the border. Eventually, they decide that the way to reestablish their authority is to retake Cintra from Nilfgaard. Unfortunately, they join their voices to the chorus of characters trying to kill Ciri, reasoning that if she’s left alive, there’s too much risk of her falling into the hands of Nilfgaardian emperor Emhyr var Emreis, who could marry her and then rule Cintra legally. That poor girl cannot catch a break.
Speaking of Emhyr, we meet him in another closed door meeting. He’s presented as an implacable man who does not suffer fools. I didn’t like the way Sapkowski drew out the “reveal” of his identity until the end of the section; it felt pretty gimmicky and didn’t add anything to our understanding of the character.
The final conspirator is Vilgefortz, a young sorcerer with immense sway over the Council of Wizards. His plan is to let the movers of the shakers of the north hatch their schemes and wait for an opportunity, and to call a convention of his colleagues in the meantime. Tissaia de Vries, an obsessive-compulsive sorceress, suspects him of wrongdoing. So do I, because it’s hard to stay completely ignorant of anything on the internet and I’ve heard a few things about where Vilgefortz’s character is going. I blame the information age.
I seem a little down on this chapter. I think it’s mostly because even though I’m nearing the end of the book, it doesn’t feel like a ton has happened; there hasn’t been a complete arc, just setup for a bigger story. Maybe that’s change in “Chapter Seven,” or maybe this series is just better approached as one big story with an arc that only comes into focus when it’s all over, rather than one built out of smaller chunks that all have their own beginnings, middles and ends.
CHAPTER SEVEN
If Blood of Elves has one big weakness, it’s that there’s a lot of setup and fairly little follow-through. This final chapter doesn’t bring any of the few threads in the story to a climax, but rather builds the relationship between Yennefer and Ciri, a relationship I assume will be important in the books to follow. This isn’t a bad chapter, mind you, nor is Blood of Elves a bad book, but there’s less movement than I thought there would be for the first proper novel in the series. Mostly, we’re still waiting for the hammer to fall.
But while we wait, we get to spend time with two of the show’s most intriguing characters. Like most odd couples, Yennefer and Ciri start off not getting along. Yennefer is Yennefer, towering and domineering and demanding, and Ciri is resistant to be trained by her. You do have to wonder if Yennefer couldn’t ease up a bit on this young girl, and I don’t like the implication that part of their friction is due to Yennefer being jealous of Ciri over Geralt, but if she weren’t needlessly harsh, she wouldn’t be Yennefer.
And by the end of this chapter, these two have formed a bond as deep as any in the story so far, perhaps deeper. It’s built on a foundation of truth — Yennefer makes it clear at the outset that if she is to teach Ciri magic, there can be no lies between them, so they tell each other everything. Yennefer is frank about her past with Geralt, and Ciri — at long last — comes close to talking about what happened to her during the sack of Cintra, although the specifics of what happened with the black night still elude us. Again, there are more books to get to. But as close as they are, this pair should be formidable going forward.
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Yennefer also gives us our clearest understanding yet of the role magic plays in this world, and how it works: it is at once Chaos, an Art, and a Science. I’m still not entirely clear on what a “source” is, but it might be as simple as it sounds: a place where sorcerers can draw magic power. And how powerful is Ciri now, trained in the ways of the witcher as well as the sorceress, albeit not (yet?) put through the transformative processes that render both of them a little less human? Ciri is being set up as the focal point on which the story turns, so it only makes sense that she would become an exceptional figure.
I liked some of the stuff on the margins of this chapter. I liked kind Nenneke, doing what she can to shield Ciri from the worst of Yennefer’s brashness. I liked Jarre, the young scribe-in-training who clearly has a crush on Ciri. It’s hard to know if we’ll see either of them again, as the chapter ends with Ciri and Yennefer leaving the Temple of Melitele to test what Ciri has learned in the real world, much as Ciri left Kaer Morhen earlier in the book. Bring on the action! Bring on the revelations and the answers and the twists! Bring on Time of Contempt.
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