Review: Lady of the Lake, Andrzej Sapkowski

Rating: 5 out of 5

I’m now finished with the Witcher’s story. Well, not quite—there still are some novellas out there, but I’ve gonethrough the main part of the story. I was surprised by how well the author managed to draw everything to a close here: I really didn’t expect it, as most of the time when too many plotlines are left open, the ending is brought about too quickly with some overhurried conclusions. This was absolutely not the case here.

What else can I say but I really enjoyed this?.. The heroes are all here: Ciri and Geralt, Yennefer, Regis, Angouleme, Milva, and Cahir. They challenge the real evil, who has so far taken the place of many others causing them great harm, and making our finest think their real friends are their enemies. The resolutions, while not perfect, work within the story and the world, until everything that had to be achieved is achieved. The philosophising, in which the group spent their time for such a long while, is also brought to a close when the characters need to act—or not act—on their beliefs.

I’ll admit I was confused by how the book’s final pages played out. It wasn’t overly clear, but I think that’s the author’s attempt to give the reader an option to decide—within certain limits—about ‘destiny’ and ‘fate’ (within the Witcher’s world). I went through it a few times, and while the words didn’t resolve every potential option, the peace that those characters had found was sufficient.

I’ve become more supportive of the author’s time jumps. Especially in this book, some of these jumps work in a very complex way, but I’ve taken this to be a part of Mr Sapkowski’s style. His other patterns, including leaving the description of events to rapidly change between various characters (and times), gives the same event a lot of clarity without necessarily too much foreboding of how things play out. Especially regarding the major battle in this book, this worked very well.

While not everything here was to my liking, my feelings about this book were overwhelmingly positive.

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