4. Crossroads of Ravens (The Witcher Standalones #2)
Crossroads of Ravens is the latest book in The Witcher series, and the second full-length standalone novel Sapkowski has written about Geralt of Rivia's earlier adventures. Unlike Season of Storms, which is set in the middle of the short story timeline, Crossroads of Ravens takes us back even further, to Geralt's very first adventures as a fledgeling witcher.
Fresh out of Kaer Morhen as an 18-year-old, Geralt is taken under the wing of a grizzled veteran witcher named Preston Holt. This witcher is well-versed in the brutal ways of the world, and tries to disabuse Geralt of any aspirations at nobility and honor. He also has a mysterious connection to the pogrom against Kaer Morhen, which left the castle in ruins and the majority of its adult witchers slain. This is a crucial piece of witcher lore that Sapkowski has alluded to in previous books, but now for the first time he digs into the details. And the pogrom is far from the only deep series lore that Sapkowski tackles here. It makes Crossroads of Ravens an absolutely essential read for any fan of the series.
But the lore isn't the only thing that makes Crossroads of Ravens so good. The style of the book is also fascinating, combining an overarching narrative about Geralt learning what it means to be a witcher with individual monster hunts, each of which brings him closer to becoming the man we know from the previous books. This makes Crossroads of Ravens feel like a perfect marriage between the weightier material of the full-length Witcher novels, and the focused storytelling of the short fiction.
The result is a blend of the old and the new, with some of the sharpest writing Sapkowski has done on the series in years. Crossroads of Ravens is probably the closest thing to a flawless Witcher novel to date, but for as good as it is, there are other entries in the series that are simply too iconic for it to top.