WiC Reads: The Witcher Saga—Time of Contempt by Andrzej Sapkowski

Chapter Six

Ciri’s in purgatory in Chapter Six, wherein our chosen heroine wanders the desert for 40 pages in a fight for survival. We’re pretty detached from the main plot here, but I liked spending an extended amount of time with Ciri, even if she’s on the edge of death pretty much the whole way through. Sapkowski does a good job of selling the high stakes; Ciri is in pain, alone, lost, in dire need of food and water. Every time she goes to sleep she may not wake up, and every hour she goes without a drop to drink is another hour closer to the grave. I was nervous for her.

Not that I really expected the book to kill Ciri off at this point. If the writing is good I’m willing to suspend my disbelief, and the writing was good. Ciri comes off as not only tenacious and resourceful, but also powerful; she uses her witcher skills to kill a nasty sand creature and her enchantress skills to light the way on dark desert nights.

And she meets a unicorn! Who doesn’t love an animal companion? We’re not told how the unicorn got separated from its herd, although we know how Ciri ended up here: she walked into a portal in the Tower of Gulls on Thanedd and got zapped to who-knows-where. Even by chapter’s end, we don’t know exactly where she is (or who picks her up), which makes me doubt that Sapkowski can tie up all the threads in this book with one more chapter, but let’s see how he manages.