The Lady of the Lake (The Witcher, 7) Paperback – July 5, 2022

The Lady of the Lake is chronologically last in The Witcher books (Season of Storms was published later, but set earlier). Andrzej Sapkowski is at his best in this book. The short stories (collected in the first two books) are often regarded as the best in the series, and the first four novels, while good, never quite captured the magic Sapkowski wove while writing in Poland during the final years of Soviet military occupation. Everything comes together in this last novel, however. Geralt's seemingly impossible quest to find Ciri, who is fleeing from one horror to another, and Nilfgard's invasion of the Northern Kingdoms all come to an epic finish. As Ciri jumps from one world to another, Sapkowski does an excellent job of entangling The Witcher's world with Earth's history and fairy tales. Sapkowski also proves he is a master of showing different points of view and how one person's righteous justice is pure evil to another.2022 is an especially good year to read this book. After reaching the end of Jarre's story as an idealistic army volunteer, try looking up stories told by former mercenaries who operated in Ukraine. Look up firsthand accounts of Donbass civilians and what they think of Zelensky and NATO. Maybe you'll even find articles from 2014 about a group of American investors headed by Joe Biden buying up Crimean oil rights which had just been nationalized and offered for sale by the newly installed Ukrainian government, triggering Crimea's secession from Ukraine. Then ask yourself how well Sapkowski understood what war is really about to the rich and powerful, what soldiers actually experience, and how little anyone cares about the people who become collateral damage.

I love the Witcher book series, the games are great as well just prefer the books better though. This one doesn't have Geralt in it as much as it more about Ciri an her experiences though out events in the book. Worth the read!

Some fantasy series are designed to be read one at a time. If you're taking on Le Guin's Earthsea series for example, or Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books, you can finish one, read something else, then come back to the series later, and you don't feel as though you need a refresher.Other fantasy series need to be read from start to finish in one go. It's hard to think of the books in those series as individual works, since they all hang together as one--they succeed or fail based on how the series reads as a whole. Sapkowski's Witcher series fits this category pretty well, which is why I've waited until now to review any of them.The good news is, Sapkowski's writing starts strong and ends even stronger. From the first page of The Last Wish to the last page of Lady of the Lake, he weaves together well-developed characters and smart storylines. He's not as poetic as some writers, but when he pauses his driving plot to make a point, it's disarming and beautiful. (Good example: the heartbreaking scene of starving elves crossing in front of Jarre's wagon after the war. Magnificent.)Also, the story is satisfying. Plotwise, there are plenty of clever twists and turns, nearly all of which get resolved in clever ways--sometimes in favor of the protagonists, sometimes not. And Sapkowski isn't afraid to kill his darlings either, which is something I admire. It can't be easy to bump off characters you've spent hundreds and hundreds of pages shaping.And as you probably know by now, he's a master at world-building. The setting of the Witcher series is foreign but familiar. That not only makes the story memorable, but also presents some interesting hypotheses about our own planet.The bad news is, the ending of the series falls flat. Even though Sapkowski had over 2,700 pages to wrap up the story, the conclusion feels rushed--like he realized that the deadline he'd given his publisher was three days away, and he said to himself, "I've got to shut this thing down." Not that I could've done any better in his place, but I spent several weeks reading these books, and Sapkowski himself spent decades writing them. I'd have liked something that left me dazzled, and I'm sure he would've, too.What I'm trying to say is, if you sat through every episode of The Sopranos and wanted more from the series ending, you may have a problem here.Also, some of the metaphors and themes Sapkowski brought up throughout the series never really paid off. I suppose we got a satisfying explanation of his notions around destiny, but all that chatter about mistaking the stars reflected on the surface of the lake for the night sky? There's one reference to it near the climax of the last novel, but it's subtle enough that it makes me wonder, "Wait, was that it?" Maybe it reads better in Polish. (I wouldn't mind some clarification about the physics of Sapkowski's world either, like the mechanics of the Conjunction of the Spheres, but I can live without it.)All that said, I found 95% of the Witcher series satisfying, compelling, and thoroughly pleasurable to read. I'm not going to ding Sapkowski too much for failing to nail a landing that was a long time coming.