With a new book set in The Witcher universe on the way, author Andrzej Sapkowski has been doing more public appearances than usual to talk about his fantasy series. Speaking at Vienna Comic Con, Sapkowski confirmed that his next Witcher book is slated to release in Poland in late 2024, and globally in early 2025.
Today, we got more snippets from an interview with Sapkowski at the event. The original interview was conducted in German, but fortunately for us, Witcher fansite Redanian Intelligence translated some choice segments regarding Sapkowski’s next book, as well as Netflix’s Witcher TV show.
New Witcher book will be a standalone story about Geralt
Parsing The Witcher novels can be a somewhat complicated affair: there’s The Witcher Saga proper, which consists of five novels; there are two short story collections; and lastly, there’s a standalone prequel novel called Season of Storms, which follows Geralt on an adventure that takes place around the same time as the short stories. From the sounds of things, this new book will be the most like Season of Storms; it’s still focused on Geralt, but will not be a sequel to The Witcher Saga.
“No, that’s not my plan now,” Sapkowski replied when asked if his latest novel could lead to further sequels. “This new book is going to be a standalone but…maybe, who can say.“
"The book is directly about Geralt, but I won’t say more. […] It is outside the pentalogy."
“The pentalogy” here is referring to the mainline Witcher Saga, which began with Blood of Elves and wrapped up with The Lady of the Lake. This is a big confirmation: the new book will be another standalone book about Geralt, and it takes place “outside” the main series. Given that those books have a relatively definite ending for Geralt, we’re expecting another prequel about the witcher’s early days.
Andrzej Sapkowski “really like” Netflix’s Witcher show
Sapkowski also fielded a question about adaptations; The Witcher has had quite a few over the years, including a Polish television show, comic books, a massively popular video game series, and the TV series on Netflix. Out of all of these, is there any Sapkowski would particularly recommend to fans of his work?
“I don’t know. Personally, I really like the Netflix series, but yes, I’m not a specialist. This is only my opinion,” Sapkowski said.
The author also had glowing words for Henry Cavill’s portrayal of Geralt of Rivia, and particularly how Cavill captured Geralt’s voice onscreen:
"I repeat, there are only letters [in my books]. But then I also saw the series from Netflix and I would say the voice of Cavill, that’s right for me. So my own idea of Geralt’s voice, that would be Cavill."
Alas, Henry Cavill is no longer the witcher — he’ll be replaced by Liam Hemsworth in the upcoming fourth season — but at least we have three solid seasons to appreciate the performance which so captivated Sapkowski. There’s plenty more of The Witcher on the way to Netflix though. The Rats spinoff is currently in post-production, and The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep anime film is due to release late next year. Beyond all that, season 4 is on the way. Here’s hoping he has his own take on Geralt of Rivia that becomes just as iconic.
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