20 books to read while you wait for The Winds of Winter

11. The Witcher Saga

This one has been generating an awful lot of buzz lately, so there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already heard about it. The Witcher books by author Andrezej Sapkowski are basically Poland’s equivalent to A Song of Ice and Fire. They’ve been around there since the late ’80s, but in the US they’ve only just recently been released, owing in no small part to the success of the hit video game adaptation from CD Projekt Red. Netflix has just released its own adaptation of the books, starring Henry Cavill as the titular Witcher.

Geralt of Rivia, seasoned veteran of the witchering trade, makes his living hunting down monsters. Having undergone dangerous mutations as a child that give him superhuman speed and strength, the ability to see at night, a resistance to poison, and a number of other benefits, Geralt is well-suited to his work. But the world Geralt lives in is inhabited by characters all different shades of gray, and the right thing to do is never quite clear.

The first two of these books are short story collections, with the following six comprising the bulk of the Witcher saga. Sapkowski does some really interesting things with his prose, including some chapters comprised entirely of dialogue (and his dialogue is excellent). That being said, there is definitely something that gets lost a little bit in translation with the English version of these novels, and the occasional awkward line does surface.

But at the end of the day, the characters still take the cake. Geralt, his sorceress love interest Yennefer, and their surrogate daughter Ciri are a dysfunctional, irresistible family, and you can’t help but get in their corner as the various forces of their world conspire to tear them apart.