Season of Storms

The Classic Witcher

Starts off strong with a monster hunt and continues with nice, classic, witcher events — getting paid in a small town, interactions with royalty, Dandelion, talking with sorcerers, fighting unusual monsters and naive bandits, using a lot of signs and elixirs. And the overall setup feels pretty interesting and unique.

The ending—meaning the last two chapters—is really good and features a very unusual character and a reference to another book so a reader can understand the timeline of this story. And the epilogue tries to make the ending of The Lady of the Lake a bit more clear which works depending on your view of that ending.

So it could’ve been a good addition to The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny but there are too many unnecessary, boring and strange features. Like too much time is spent on a romance with another sorceress who is very clearly jealous about Yennefer and uses Geralt. And there are too many scene breaks, sometimes done for scenes consisting of just two or three lines and this just feels confusing to me.

And following The Lady of the Lake Sapkowski does it again but this time even bigger—a villain tells all his plans, history and problems for 8! straight pages. And then during an auction he wastes two pages to describe 7 lots with many details and how they're sold. This might be a personal nitpick but why do we need all this information?

I’ve rated this one a bit higher because of a few very nice moments—which I especially appreciate after The Lady of the Lake—but I’m probably not going to read the next one.