The Last Wish: Introducing the Witcher (The Witcher Saga Book 1) by Andrzej Sapkowski (pl: 1993; en: 2007) (read in 2022)

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the first book featuring the Witcher, a magically gifted, preternaturally physically gifted, and potion-enhanced monster-hunter. He wields a silver sword, pulled quickly from a sheath on his back. His hair is long and silver, his eyes jet black. His eyes match his head-to-toe leather armor, studded with spikes along the shoulders. The ladies love him; his enemies fear him. He knows lore; he is good with animals. He is wise and bides his time. He is a bad-ass, an excellent fighter. He is a traveler of lands far and wide.

The framing story is that he is resting after having been injured in a monster battle. During his convalescence, he reminisces about seven recent events. These stories form the basis of what would be become the Witcher Saga. We meet Ciri’s grandmother Calanthe and her mother Pavetta. We meet Yennefer of Vengerberg. We meet Dandelion the troubadour. We meet Dennis Cranmer, the dwarf captain. They will all figure in the books that follow.

“The Witcher” (Wiedźmin)

In the first story, Geralt takes up the challenge laid down by Foltest, the king of Temeria. The king has offered a reward to anyone who can lift the curse on his daughter Adda. She is a striga, a creature that prowls at night with otherworldly power, preying on humans. She must spend the night in her crypt in order to survive. Geralt traps her outside of the vault and cures her, but she’s still feral and claws him. He survives and gets his reward.

“A Grain of Truth” (Ziarno prawdy)

Geralt happens upon a manor belonging to a bear-like, tusked creature who is not a monster, but a misbegotten man named Nivellen. He entertains Geralt with stories of his love conquests, which he’d purchased with the massive hoard of wealth in his basement. Nivellen lives with his latest love, the shy Vereena, who does not show up for Geralt. Nivellen suspects that she may not be … human. She is a bruxa who’s been preying on victims that Nivellen unwitting brought to her. She attacks Geralt, getting the better of him, but failing to watch her flank. Nivellen reluctantly impales her. Before she dies, she professes her love for him, curing his affliction.

“Slowly, as if a caress, the bruxa moved her tiny hands along the stake, stretched her arms out to their full length, grasped the pole hard and pulled on it again. Over a meter of bloodied wood already protruded from her back. Her eyes were wide open, her head flung back. Her sighs became more frequent and rhythmic, turning into a ruckling wheeze.”

Page 67

“The Lesser Evil” (Mniejsze zło)

Geralt heads to a new town with his horse Roach heavily laden with the corpse of a gruesome, dead monster. He seeks someone who’s willing to pay for him for having killed it. He is sent to the wizard’s tower, where he discovers that his old colleague Stregobor has taken up residence and is in hiding. Stregobor is being chased by a cursed female assassin named Renfri. Geralt meets with and sleeps with Renfri, even after failing to convince her to give up her mission.

She and her henchmen threaten to kill everyone in the town of Blaviken if they do not give up Stregobor. Geralt cannot allow it and, instead, kills them all, including, finally, Renfri. Geralt prevents Stregobor from performing an autopsy to “prove” that Renfri had been afflicted by some curse or other. The townspeople, having known nothing of the threat to their lives, run Geralt out of town for having murdered a whole group of people in cold blood.

“A Question of Price” (Kwestia ceny)

In this story, we meet Queen Calanthe, whose daughter Pavetta is to be married off at a giant party, to which many potential suitors have been invited. They eat, drink, and make merry for a while, telling tales of past conquests.

““Hochebuz,” said Calanthe, looking at Geralt, “my first battle. Although I fear rousing the indignation and contempt of such a proud witcher, I confess that we were fighting for money. Our enemy was burning villages which paid us levies and we, greedy for our tributes, challenged them on the field. A trivial reason, a trivial battle, a trivial three thousand corpses pecked to pieces by the crows. And look—instead of being ashamed I’m proud as a peacock that songs are sung about me. Even when sung to such awful music.””

Page 128

A mystery knight named Urcheon appears to claim Pavetta’s hand. It turns out that Pavetta’s father had once promised Urcheon her by the “Law of Surprise”. Urcheon had asked for that which Pavetta’s father did not know he had yet, and it was granted. Pavetta’s father returned home to learn that his wife was pregnant with Pavetta. Surprise!

Geralt defends Urcheon—now revealed to be Duny—when he is attacked by the other suitors. Pavetta nearly tears the castle down with her magical powers. Things are sorted out with Pavetta and Duny being paired off and Geralt claiming the Law of Surprise as his reward. It is Pavetta who is pregnant this time, with Duny unknowing. Pavetta’s child would be Ciri, which will be important much, much later.

“The Edge of the World” (Kraniec świata)

Geralt and troubadour Dandelion travel to a far-off village where they discover that it’s being terrorized by a deovel. The deovel is actually a sylvan. The village elder says that they must drive the deovel away without killing it. The young girl who accompanies her is silent, but seems to be in charge.

She turns out out be in cahoots not only with Torque (the sylvan), but also a local band of elves, to whom Torque is giving all of the food that he steals. The village has been feeding a starving band of elves, who’d been driven in the mountains, far from their forest homes. The elves take Geralt and Dandelion prisoner and treat them poorly, but eventually are shamed into letting them go.

““He’s simply taking revenge for all the wrong that man has done the elves.” The witcher smiled wryly. “It’s all the same to him who he takes his revenge on. Don’t be deluded by his noble bearing and elaborate speech, Dandelion. He’s no different than the black-eyes who knocked us down. He has to unload his powerless hatred on somebody.””

Page 196

The young girl from the village reveals herself to also be an elf, the leader of them all.

“The Last Wish” (Ostatnie życzenie)

Geralt and Dandelion are fishing when they find an urn in the mud by the shore. Dandelion inadvertently releases what he is certain is a genie, but seems more powerful. Geralt manages to banish it with a spoken curse, but is a bit mystified that it went so easily. They travel to a local city, where they learn of Yennefer of Vengerberg (who will also be important later), a sorceress of no insignificant power. She agrees to help them, but they learn that she has plans to use Dandelion as bait to capture the genie and use its power for herself. This proves not to be so easy. It is powerful.

“Blood. Blood. Blood. Bones like broken white sticks. Tendons like whitish cords exploding from beneath cracking skin cut by enormous paws bristling with thorns, and sharp teeth. The hideous sound of torn flesh, and shouting—shameless and horrifying in its shamelessness. The shamelessness of the end. Of death. Blood and shouting. Shouting. Blood. Shouting—[…]”

Page 279

In her mighty struggle with the genie, she learns that it is bound not to Dandelion but to Geralt, who’d banished it with his first wish, killed a guard in the local prison with his second—both unwittingly—and uses his last wish to banish it for good. No-one knows what he wished for—well, we all suspect it was something to do with Yenneger—but he managed to save both himself and Yennefer, against all odds.

“The Voice of Reason” (Głos rozsądku)

Geralt and Dandelion leave the temple—Geralt having been healed of his injuries—and meet a mixed company of soldiers traveling on the main road, guarding a wagon train of supplies. They are led by Dennis Cranmer, a dwarf. Geralt is forced to partake in a challenge from a human soldier, but manages to trick his way out of it—he gets the soldier to knock himself out with his own sword, making no blows himself. Just Geralt being cool and doing cool stuff. No big deal.

These stories correspond, more or less, to the first season of the Netflix series of the same name.

I very much like Sapkowski’s politics and philosophy. There are quite a few places where he, through his characters, paints a sympathetic and balanced picture of what a good world would look like. He seems to recognize and despise the things that are wrong in our world by painting them disparagingly in his own. His writing style is tremendous and poetic and my hat is off many times to the wizardry of the translator.

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