Author Andrzej Sapkowski began his Witcher saga back in 1986, when he wrote a short story about a professional monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia. Sapkowski wrote a slew more Witcher short stories which were eventually collected into two books — The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny — before moving onto “The Witcher saga,” a series of novels that take Geralt, Yennefer, Ciri and other characters on a grand adventure.
Time of Contempt is the second book in The Witcher saga. It’s also the book we’re about to see adapted on TV as season 3 of The Witcher on Netflix. New episodes drop on June 29. Before they drop, read through the book with us, chapter by chapter!
Is this a worthy addition to Sapkowski’s saga, and to your library? Find out, but beware SPOILERS below.
Chapter One
We begin Time of Contempt with Aplegatt, a royal mounted messenger whose job has largely been rendered useless since kings and queens can now send messages to each other with the aid of their sorcerers. However, Aplegatt is back in business now that there’s a war brewing and the rulers no longer trust thost sorcerers.
It’s a charming way to start what I’ve heard is the best of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher novels. I always like when an author fills out the margins of their invented worlds, and I like how Sapkowski is digging into the details of how things would actually work in semi-medieval times if sorcerers were around. What would be the use of mounted messengers if magicians can just wave their hands, say a spell and transmit words with no fuss? And how might that change if the sorcerers fell out of political favor with their bosses? Sapkowski has a good eye for detail.
Although that eye can sometimes linger too long on certain stuff. After we spend a little time with Aplegatt, we catch up with Geralt as he tries to hunt the men who are hunting Ciri, who is currently wanted by a large number of people for a large number of reasons, most of which aren’t yet clear. We learn a lot of the particulars at the offices of Codringher and Fenn, who offer their services as lawyers, detectives and researchers to anyone with gold to pay. Sapkowski has fun describing the results they get for their clients; it’s very medieval noir, very Philip Marlowe-goes-to-the-renaissance-faire.
It is also, in this particular scene, a massive exposition dump. Geralt, Codringher and Fenn spend a lot of time talking about who’s after Ciri, and why, and how, and how bad, and what they know, and what they don’t know, and so on. The info is important, but it highlights an issue I had with the last book: everyone in The Witcher universe sort of…talks the same? They’re all very analytical, they’re all very verbose, and they all use a lot of modern language that never sits quite right in this setting. Part of that might be the translation — I know these books were originally written in Polish — but it always throws me a bit, especially in these lengthy dialogue sections.
From there, we get an understated action scene where Geralt tracks down the thugs tracking Ciri (he kills them) and end with the hard-working Aplegatt returning from a successful delivery only to get shot down by a band of elven guerrilla fighters, called Squirrels, foreshadowing conflicts to come. The chapter is pretty long — almost 50 pages — and has a nice symmetry to it; even in his novels, it feels like Sapkowski is still writing short stories.
So one chapter into The Time of Contempt, I’m still enjoying it like I enjoyed the last couple books, but I have some of the same problems as well. Let’s see where Geralt and company go from here…
Chapter Two
Geralt mostly sits out Chapter Two as the focus shifts to Ciri and Yennefer, who arrive in the city of Gors Velen. Yennefer is on her way to the isle of Thanedd, where she’ll take part in a grand meeting of sorcerers and sorceressess. On the way, she intends to drop Ciri off at the sorceress academy of Aretuza, where she’ll learn to hone her magical gifts; it’s also a great place to keep her on lockdown away from the prying eyes of all the people looking for her. The strong-willed Ciri does not like the idea of being under house arrest, even if it’s for her own good.
The chapter revolves around Ciri as she works through what to do. Does she obey Yennefer and go to Aretuza, or does she make a break for it and try to reunite with Geralt? She contemplates this as she gets a tour of the city from Fabio, a young page. Ciri’s adventurous spirit is on display as she wolfs down local delicacies, gets lost in the crowd, and challenges a charlatan trying to pass off a wyvern as a basilisk. We also see her witcher training in action after the wyvern inevitably breaks free of its cage and she has to kill it, afterwards giving the credit to some rando lest she draw too much unwanted attention.
It’s a good showcase for Ciri’s character, although I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the clever, clinical prose; there’s something impersonal about the way Sapkowski writes (or the way the books are translated) that keeps the characters at a distance. And the anachronistic language…when Yennefer meets her old associate Giancarlo to discuss some business, he calls her “drop-dead gorgeous.” I can’t help it, it pulls me right out of the flow.
I also have to mention Sapkowski’s preoccupation with female beauty, which borders on the fetishistic. Whenever I read — in any fantasy novel, not just this one — about a female character described as impossibly curvaceous and sexy beyond the power of words to convey, my eyes start to roll. And this chapter gets especially bad in an extended bathhouse sequence where Yennefer and the sorceress Margarita — two women who are decades older than their appearances would suggest, mind you — tittle like schoolgirls and “assume exotic and extremely provocative poses” to shock someone who’s about to enter the room…but of course they fail, because that someone happens to be a women, and women are all part of the same secret sexy club and can’t be shocked by nudity, right Sapkowski?
The energy is very 13-year-old-boy-imagines-a-girls-sleepover. It’s at odds with the serious tone Sapkowski is trying to strike; is this an epic fantasy series or a PG-13 Penthouse letter?
Anyway, the chapter ends with a vivid stretch where Ciri flees the city and tries to reunite with Geralt, only to be met with a string of disturbing visions and an otherworldly encounter that suggests grim times to come. At least things end with the family back together.
Chapter Three
Geralt and Yennefer go to a party! A meeting of sorcerers and enchantresses on the island of Thanedd, to be exact, where Sapkowski has fun trotting out a parade of colorful characters. Tissaia de Vries, the oldest enchantress living! Vilgefortz, ambitious wunderkind! Enid an Gleanna, the most beautiful woman in the world! These will all be important players, and it’s a blast to have them hobnobbing in one room. It feels like wheels are turning.
We get more Porky’s-meets-Lord of the Rings energy here as wise, ancient sorceresses openly drool over Geralt and then call each other cows and skanks; it’s all very embarrassing, but I’m just gonna look past that to the conversation between Geralt and Vilgefortz, who is clearly being set up as a major mover and shaker.
Vilgefortz thinks a war is coming and wants everyone he can get on his side. That includes Geralt, whom he tries to convince to become a sorcerer himself. Once again, their conversation is too flowery for my taste, but I like Vilgefortz coming to the foreground as a character to watch out for. I also like interesting details like how the tower where they’re talking is in such disrepair that they have to use sorcery to make it look presentable.
I also enjoyed Yennefer and Geralt reconnecting in her room after the party; it’s more emotionally honest than I expected given the earlier sections, give or take randos catcalling the couple from a few windows down. I liked the recurring bit where Geralt is preoccupied with a ragdoll left behind by the room’s former occupant, a young trainee who’s been relocated while this magic conclave is going on. Yennefer is in the room with him, but Ciri is on his mind.
We’re a ways into the book at this point — these chapters are pretty long — and I feel like the pieces are firmly in place. I’m ready for the story to take off.
Chapter Four
Action! Betrayal! Magic most foul! Last time I asked for some movement and this chapter I got it. The slow buildup paid off in an orgy of violence, in multiple locations at once!
The main action takes place on the island of Thanedd, where sorcerers and sorceresses have gathered to plot the course of the world. But by the end of the chapter, it’s easy to forget that it opens with the deaths of Codringher and Fenn, lawyers and information brokers who decided to join the great game just when the stakes were raised…and they couldn’t ante up.
That’s a fancy way of saying they’re both killed off at the top of the chapter, which is how Sapkowski signals that this is gonna be a big one. The action then moves to Thanedd, where Geralt wakes up after spending the night with Yennefer and goes to take a piss. Sapkowski has fun speculating on how things might have gone differently had Geralt not done this, or had he done that…but he does what he does, and that makes all the difference.
Geralt ends up stumbling into a coup being orchestrated by the sorceress Philippa Eilhart, who we met in a previous book. She and like-minded sorcerers and sorceresses are rebelling against what they see as an attempt to sell out the Northern Kingdoms to the Nilfgaardian Empire; Vilgefortz, who tried to sell Geralt on this very position the night prior, is at the head of this conspiracy.
Geralt doesn’t have all the information on what’s going down, so we piece it together with him. Philippa Eilhart has enlisted Redanian spymaster Dijkstra to help carry out her coup, while head sorceress Tissaia de Vries isn’t having any of this infighting. It’s a clever way to sell this sequence and it leads to some entertaining moments, like when Geralt fights his way past Dijkstra’s goons so he can get to Ciri and Yennefer, who are the only people he really cares about on the island. But it can also be confusing, especially when we leave Geralt’s perspective. There’s a part where Yennefer has Ciri give magical testimony in front of an assembled crowd of sorcerers and sorceresses, but Sapkowski doesn’t use Ciri’s name, so it took me a minute to understand what was even happening.
But those minor quibbles are overshadowed by some of the big dramatic set pieces, like Tissaia de Vries letting loose with a huge ball of fire and especially Vilgefortz handing Geralt his ass on a platter in the chapter’s climax. This chapter starts with a murder in the dark and ends with our hero on the edge of death. Turn the page! Turn the page!
Chapter Five
Time of Contempt plays some catch-up in Chapter Five, which mashes together lots of the little vignettes that Sapkowski loves so much. We’ve got Jaskier trying to march bravely into Brokilon Forest even as every nerve in his body screams at him to run away, some face time with Emperor Emhyr var Emreis of Nilfgaard, and a series of story snippets that fill us (and Geralt) in on how the war for the Continent is going: badly.
I liked the first vignette the best. I liked how many layers it worked on: we catch up with Jaskier as a group of soldiers escort him to the border of Brokilon…only they aren’t willing to approach the place on account of how warlike the native dryads have become. Jaskier uses his actorly training to put on a brave face for them, and it works; we even hear some of them praising Jaskier’s valor as he makes his way towards Brokilon, scared out of his wits. But he is brave, because he fights through the fear to deliver his message to Geralt, who has been healing in Brokilin since his brutal run-in with Vilgefortz last chapter.
It’s funny, touching, and deep; it’s the best character stuff for Jaskier in a while. I liked his interactions with Geralt as well, to the point where I was a little put off that they kept getting interrupted by the latest news from the front. I understand we have to learn about who’s beaten who and which kingdoms have fallen and which have stuck deals with Nilfgaard, but also…I dunno, do we? Or at least, do we have to hear about the details at such length? Most of these vignettes star characters who are introduced and die in the space of a few pages. It’s a barrage of names and places I’m not likely to remember much about later. I would have liked less of that and more of Geralt and Jaskier reconnecting.
That said, I do want to pour one out for Tissaia de Vries, who we learn takes her own life in the wake of the disaster at Thanedd. She’s obsessive-compulsively adjusting place settings with angels now.
And then there’s the final stretch where Emperor Emhyr meets Ciri…or at least, a girl who a couple of charlatans tried to pass off as Ciri, I assume in exchange for a reward. Although he doesn’t say it in front of her, Emhyr knows this isn’t Ciri; the real one is still out there somewhere, and he’s still determined to find her.
We only find out what Emhyr knows at the end of the chapter, which makes for a nice little twist. How could he know what the real Ciri looks like? Well, the Netflix show let that cat out of the bag early, so I’ve been spoiled, but were I not spoiled, this would be an intriguing mystery.
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.
Chapter Seven
And so we come to an ending that is really a beginning, which is at once poetic, predictable and a little annoying, because it’s clear this book never really had any intention of standing alone. I know, I know; it’s the middle book in a series — I didn’t expect it to wrap up the whole story, but maybe to bring to a close some arc or another? One leg of the adventure ends and another begins? Instead, the fates of all of our characters are up in the air.
It could have helped had Sapkowski checked in with more characters, but he’s committed to the chapters-as-short-stories format; we’re again with Ciri here as she’s escorted to a prefect of the Nilfgaardian Empire by a group of Trappers who want the bounty on her head. So far as I can tell, she’s on the border between Nilfgaard and the northern kingdoms.
There’s some interesting exchanges among the Trappers and their Nilfgaardian boss, but the real fireworks start when the group reaches a small town occupied by Nilfgaardian settlers. Another group of soldiers has captured Kayleigh, a member of a notorious bandit group called the Rats, who happen to be the subject of a new Witcher spinoff show. Although after meeting them here, I’m not sure how badly I want to watch it.
From the start, Ciri is intimidated by Kayleigh, who is described as having a malevolent stare. The soldiers have cruelly strapped him to a post in an inn, but he and Ciri manage to work together to free him just as his fellow Rats burst into the place and take out everyone.
This is an interesting stretch. On the one hand, it feels like a swashbuckling adventure. Young rebels fight against the footsoldiers of an evil empire. There’s an exciting getaway on horseback! But on the other, we get brutal stories about how the Rats found each other and teenagers slashing the throats out of their enemies. It fits with how Sapkowski likes to juxtapose traditional adventure and fairy tale narratives alongside gritty realism.
And then, of course, there’s the bit where Kayleigh comes over to Ciri while she’s trying to sleep and attempts to sexually assault her, only to be stopped by Mistle, another one of the Rats. And then Mistle sexually assaults Ciri, who feels so dirty and ashamed she scrubs her skin raw in the river the next morning.
This bit was very disturbing, and I don’t know if Sapkowski earned it. Again — and this is the last time I’ll get to bring this up in this article — the language was a problem. Sapkowski is writing about serious stuff here, so it’s a bit cringey when people in this medieval fantasy say things like “we’re in the same boat” or talk about their “girlfriends.” It just sounds weird and anachronistic. And again — also for the last time — the translation could be part of the problem, but it is a problem; if you want to write about underage sexual assault, you need to be serious about your prose, and the prose here can be quite goofy.
So we end Time of Contempt with Ciri traveling with the Rats, Geralt in Broklin and Yennefer who knows where. Not the most satisfying ending, but a novel series is a marathon, not a sprint. I enjoyed reading the book — it especially picked up after the coup on Thanedd — but something about the style and subject matter consistently keeps me at a distance. I don’t think that’s going away, so I’ve decided to accept The Witcher as it is: grim, goofy, ambitious and compromised. On to the TV show!
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