Review: The Last Wish

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an interesting way to introduce a character to an audience. The writer took the technique of using some of what the audience already knows but adjust certain elements to create their story. This way the writer has something that he knows and the audience has a little of what they are familiar with. This leads to the book being familiar to the reader when they read a chapter about a Prince that was turned into a Beast hoping that a Beauty can break his curse. Or a Pale Princess with skin a white as Snow has dwarves help her survive the threat of an evil Queen. By now you get that the writer took some Disney movies that you're familiar with and adjusted some parts to tell his story. You are correct in that assumption. This also applies to his protagonist Geralt. 

If you've read the Elric novels the Witcher may as well be another aspect of the Eternal Champion. This is not a bad thing since the writer does a good job of telling the story. The trick that holds all of this together is two-fold. One the writer starts the novel with his story, then remixes familiar elements in the middle. The finale is the part with the title story but that part is really the finale of what's come in the previous chapters. That's a neat trick that pulls everything together. If there was one thing that did not work it's the ending. While it should be a cliffhanger that makes you want to jump into the next book immediately I found it to be too forced for my liking.

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