The Lady of the Lake

Part five of “Geralt is again the Witcher”

The intro has a lot of time jumps and involves a few new, secondary characters and the latter feels a bit unnecessary. Toussaint is an interesting change of environment with all the knights and vineyards but Fringilla is so cliche that I find it unbelievable that Geralt with all his experience has fallen for her trap. Fortunately there’s some monster hunting happening, so it’s fine.

There are a couple of pretty important places presented here like it’s not the last book in the series. And overall the amount of descriptions for the same kind of events is a bit weird—in one place it’s just one line and then a scene break, in another it’s a page or two. Most of the descriptions of Ciri's travels just waste time and it feels like even the author knows it because at some point he gives a few short descriptions of different places in a row and then says "there were even more places". And then there’s another one which wastes two pages on some random astronomer who can't say anything to Ciri—because of his shock?—and misses a very rare comet because of her, this is supposed to be funny, I guess. And then Sapkowski spends time to scientifically describe and prove The White Frost. Do we really need that in a fantasy world?

Some side characters from previous books, who haven’t appeared for a long time, return here, sometimes we're even shown their point of view. Like Jarre who has changed a lot and goes through some hard times, his story line is very interesting. And sometimes you have a hard time remembering who that character is because her previous appearance is in Blood of Elves.

Ciri and Vilgefortz interaction is just boring—he talks too much, she can't do anything. However that whole episode is one of the best parts of the book, it’s like the final point of the whole adventure, that’s what all characters have been going towards all this time. And we get a big battle where almost everybody is involved, it’s really nice.

The problem is that it’s only the middle of the book and it feels like the ending of the series, it's very confusing. But it just drags afterwards with a lot of politics and some random, unnecessary side quests. It feels like Sapkowski got tired of writing The Witcher and didn't know what to do with these characters.

The ending is ambiguous. Sex scene in the royal library is too much. The story moves forward just by pure coincidence more than once. The emperor suddenly tells us his life story for a few pages. The elves are just gone from the story after their big setup.

I just hope that Season of Storms is better.

So I think this top portion will be the basis for my review for all five of the Witcher series (excluding The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny–Kind of, you'll see...)

I feel like it took me a long time to read these, when in actuality, I started the first one in January so that isn't really all that long. Some of the way I'm feeling may be based off a lapse in memory though because I read around 95 books around the reading of these so I may be hazy.

For starters, I think Andrzej Sapkowski is a phenomenal writer. Secondly, I think David French did an absolutely wonderful job translating these to English. And thirdly, I think the Gollancz paperbacks were amazing–great cover art, nice quality–I actually managed to read them all without breaking the spines.

Sapkowski has such a way about his writing that the dialogue in the novels can be truly captivating. He wields it so well that he has honestly created such a wonderful lush lore within his world that really carried the hundreds of pages he wrote. I think that overall, this attention to detail within every word uttered may actually have been in some ways at a detriment to his overarching story.

So to speak, his great characters, the companions of the Witcher, and even the enemies, all have this way of leaving you wanting more. However, if you were to pull away all of that and the world's lore, the series itself is kind of about... nothing. I did find myself more than once getting to the end of one of the novels and being like wait... nothing happened? Destiny has brought the Witcher and Ciri together, and yet they are also destined to never be together... it's just the kind of realization that stings. If you read the first book you can skip to the final book for the ending because the others are just more of the same. Luckily for me, as I've already stated, I enjoyed the dialogue and the world building, I drank that sh*t up. It's just kind of weird/funny to realize negative things like that about something you've rated pretty well. Despite all of that, I really enjoyed them.

In terms of The Lady of the Lake especially, I find that in each novel he kind of played with different ways of storytelling and this one starting with the knight of Arthur finding her really threw me off. It also then didn't resolve itself for 500 pages. I think at one point I thought it was a ploy and that he was actually one of the elves in the other world? I don't know, but it was kind of weird. In general, that whole world hopping bit was a little dragged out for me.
Alternatively, in terms of this being the ultimate finale, I loved the level of gore and action. I thought the Battle of Brenna was outstanding writing. The jumping between the battle and the future with survivors of the battle writing about it really worked for me.
I will say though another negative for me was the deaths at Stygga Castle. I know the bad luck surrounding the Witcher and those that follow him, but this kind of heartless, unforgiving killing off of main characters didn't exactly work for me. It's not like reading A Song of Fire and Ice where it's expected, therefore the lack of emotion I felt around them dying was a little lackluster. Also, I mean come on, we get all the way to the end and everyone dies EXCEPT Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer? In that sense it seemed a little cheesy.
A giant positive for me was that I did not see the twist of Duny being the emperor at all. I don't know if I was supposed to (?) but WOW. Ciri's dad the whole time? WOW incest is so absolutely gross. Glad it didn't go there...

I did like the kind of hazy ending myself. Did Yenn and Geralt die? Did they live? No! They got married and several other people we know are dead were said to be in attendance!
I know what the game series wants us to believe.

This may be a long review, because I have a lot of feelings about this book, and this series as a whole. I won't go too far into the plot because this is the last book of the series, and I don't want to spoil anything.

This series as a whole has been a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed the short stories. Then, when we got into the full books, they were hit or miss. There were some books that I thought were really captivating, and some that were complete wastes of time to read. This one falls in the middle of that spectrum. First, there were so many potential triggers in this book. There were multiple sexual assault scenes that got graphic. Every time, I was completely pulled out of the story and disgusted. They didn't add to the plot at all. In my opinion, the detracted from it greatly. They were unnecessary.

However, there were certain parts of the book that I felt were so great. The plot was fast paced, and the characters were put in interesting situations. Then, all of a sudden, a chapter would be thrown in that completely killed the pace and was incredibly boring. Every chapter had a different “vibe” to it that could be quite jarring.

Overall, I love the story of the Geralt and Ciri and Yennefer and all of their friends. I think a lot of that stems from my love of the game, however. I don't know if these books are worth it to read. I don't think that the good parts are good enough to outweigh how much shit you have to get through to get to them. I am very excited to continue watching the show and seeing how they adapt it, and hopefully improve it.

TW (there's so many): ableism, alcohol, amputation, animal abuse, animal death, assault, attempted rape, blood, bones, child abuse, death, drugs, famine, fire, genocide, gore, hospitalization, incest, kidnapping, misogyny, murder, pedophilia, physical abuse, rape, sexually explicit scenes, skeletons, torture, violence, war, forced artificial insemination

spoilers!!

Is it just me, or was everything that ever happened and every bit of character development that occurred over the last 4 books totally and completely for nothing? I am thoroughly underwhelmed by how this series ended.

Geralt, our bad-ass, sarcastic, and determined Witcher? Yeah, makes sense that he will actually be one of the blandest characters and will proceed to ultimately “die” in the lamest, most un-heroic way possible and settle for domesticity. Yennefer, again, another bad-ass, determined character, contributes nothing interesting but being able to throw shields up during fights and then just kind of sucks at other attempts at magic. Ciri, the character in which the last 4 books have built up to be someone powerful and important? She escapes her many foes trying to use and abuse her, only to never regain any sort of power or do anything important for the world. She only manages some heroics at the end with Geralt and Yen because of her dumb unicorn, and then she just kind of blips out to also settle for domesticity? So out of character, so anticlimactic.

And why God, why, did I have to follow any part of Jarre or Iola's story? So boring and it was time that could have been spent on our main characters so their storyline didn't suck.

I'm not sure I can even express the disappointment of how Geralt's party all die in unbelievably lame ways. Or how I'm supposed to believe Emehr, after tearing the world apart in war to find Ciri, just gives her up because he saw that she was sad??

Otherwise, there was some decent writing and plenty of scenes that were fun to read. This was on it's way to being my favorite fantasy series. I absolutely love the world and characters. I look forward to the Netflix show hopefully salvaging the wreckage of this final book. In the mean time, I will continue to play the Witcher 3 and pretend that it is canon, hopefully erasing the unfortunate storyline of this final book.

2.5 stars.