Thursday, August 31, 2023

Book Review: Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

Sword of Destiny (The Witcher, #0.7)Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Geralt of Rivia is a witcher, a human given up as a child to be supernaturally mutated so as to fight monsters that endangered humanity, but he is a “dying” breed. Sword of Destiny is the second story collection by Andrzej Sapkowski that follows the adventures of Geralt in a chronological fashion that will lead to the main Witcher Saga.

The six stories in the collection are loosely linked in chronology and two are directly linked to one story in the previous collection that will bear directly on the upcoming Saga. Throughout the stories, Geralt becomes more complex, and his world gets bigger through a lot more human, as we see that the witchers overall had been doing their job very well. Yet it’s the last two stories that are directly linked with one another as the reader is introduced to Ciri, whose existence was hinted at in the previous volume. Half of the stories are very good with the beginning and final stories among them, though the best of the lot was “Eternal Flame”. Only one story was just fine and that was “A Shard of Ice” which features Geralt and his relationship with Yennifer and a major downgrade to their story in the previous volume. Overall Sapkowski gave Geralt more character and weaved together various story threads that the reader will be looking forward to seeing how they develop in the bigger Witcher Saga.

Sword of Destiny is a good collection of short stories with half of the stories very good and only that was “just fine”.

The Bounds of Reason (4/5)
A Shard of Ice (2.5/5)
Eternal Flame (4.5/5)
A Little Sacrifice (3/5)
The Sword of Destiny (3.5/5)
Something More (4/5)

View all my reviews

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