The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

The Last Wish
by Andrzej Sapkowski

Short Review

Read If: you enjoy retellings of fairy tales, you want to read fantasy without definite "good" and "evil" sides, you are tired of 5,000 page dry fantasy epics

Don't Read If: you are looking for a substantive discourse on morality, you can't take boob jokes, a collection of fun but not fantastic Polish fantasy stories sounds uninteresting


Long Review

Published in the U.S. shortly after the release of well-received PC RPG The Witcher, The Last Wish is a fantasy short story collection by famous Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. I am a big fan of The Witcher video game, so I will admit some bias in my enjoyment of this book. This book centers around Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher living in a typical European fantasy setting - with a twist. One of the big draws of the game and the book is the premise that nothing in this world is black and white; morality is a hazy gray, and Geralt is often forced to make decisions where there is no "right" answer. Geralt's job, as a Witcher, is to kill monsters; however, the monsters in his world are often no more monstrous than the people who hire Geralt in the first place.

The book is comprised of several short stories, alternating with chapters that make up an over-arching narrative. This format is sometimes confusing, as the time lines jump wildly and the reader is sometimes left wondering where and when the current event is taking place. The Last Wish was originally written in Polish, and the translation seems to do a decent enough job as far as I can tell. There's not much poetry or intricacy in the prose here; it's generally a very straight-forward and quick read. Most of the short stories in the book are retellings of classic fairy tales, such as Beauty and the Beast and Snow White, but presented in a morally-ambiguous and dark fashion. The twists are somewhat similar to Neil Gaiman's classic Snow, Glass, Apples, with the main focus being that both the "good" guys and "bad" guys are flawed and interchangeable. Geralt often becomes trapped between two or more options that end in pointless violence and the death of innocents. One of the main pleasures of the book is watching how Geralt resolves these issues while adhering to his own gruff personal code. Despite all the depressing and violent themes present in the book, The Last Wish actually offers a good deal of laughs, as the stories are peppered with crude jokes, clever wit, and silly antics, especially involving Geralt's foil, the irrepressible womanizing bard Dandelion.

Overall, I found the book to be an enjoyable and easy read, with interesting takes on familiar stories and original narratives set in a gray and dying world. The Last Wish serves as an adequate introduction to Geralt's story, and is an excellent companion for The Witcher PC game. Sapkowski creates for us a convincing amoral fantasy realm where you are never sure who exactly the monsters are, and makes it a pleasure for us to follow Geralt in walking the line between monsters and man.