The Dord of Darien

Witchery

The second Witcher book is out. I liked the first one, as you may recall, so I picked this one up, too. Turns out I liked this one too, though it was pretty surprisingly different. Where The Last Wish was a collection of short stories, Blood of Elves is a novel, and it’s the first part of a series of novels. Why they elected to start releasing the novels instead of continuing with the story collections (of which there are two more) I do not know, but that’s what they did. The book is still full of interesting characters and settings, presented in Sapkowski’s typical bemused vision of fantasy worlds, but this time the pace is a bit slower. It’s focused on the character of Ciri, who is Geralt’s ward. She wants to be a witcher, but is apparently destined for greater things. For most of the book, we watch her mature from a frightened child into a spirited young woman, while the world around becomes more tense and war approaches.

There are a few things to be said against Blood of Elves. First off, it’s the first book of a series, and it knows that perfectly well, so it’s lacking in any type of resolution; the end of the book doesn’t bring anything to a conclusion, but only to questions about what will happen in the future. It’s also the case that Sapkowski gets remarkably technical about odd things occasionally; if you don’t know anything about sword fighting, you could have a hard time following the fights. Even I, as a long-time dues-paying fantasy nerd, can have difficulty at times; the casual, non-sword-knowing reader may get totally stumped. There are also sections of political scheming that are generally engaging except for the tremendous infodumps about the political landscape of the area; this is a book that would be helped greatly by the inclusion of a map, since the readership would gain some idea of what and where these places and people actually are, rather than having them be a bunch of weird names. At least the names are free of apostrophes and excessive use of the letter Y — a veritable revelation in a fantasy novel.

Despite its flaws, Blood of Elves is a good read, and has enough merits to overpower them. There are plenty of touching moments, tense moments, and funny moments, and the ending, while not satisfying taken on its own, is definitely foreboding enough to hook you into the next book. October, I think it is.

May 8th, 2009 Posted by Darien | Bullshit | no comments