The Witcher Saga

[Erkki]

Holy crap, why did I wait this long with reading the Witcher books by Sapkowski? I've been a fan of the games since first release, but couldn't imagine that the books they are based on would be so good.

 

I guess it's genre could be described as dark fantasy or whatever genre also contains Song of Ice and Fire. But this is much better than Martin's tomes (and predates them), IMHO. Sapkowski's style is less pompous, and descriptions are usually short and to the point, without slowing down reading. There are lots of dialogs.

 

Perhaps the best are the collections of short stories The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny -- the fan translation of the latter is even quite decent. These mix elements of fantasy and fairy tales, and are less dark than the 5-book saga. But the 3rd and 4th books in the saga were also great. And then the beginning of the 5th surprised me with something completely different.

 

I burned through the books quite quickly, especially considering I've only finished a couple of books this year -- 6 books since August 24th and just started reading the 7th and last.

 

Also, maybe this was known, but I only now realized that the games' story happens completely after the books end. So the only thing spoiled between the books/games are the parts of the games where Geralt gets his memory back or hears about the past from other characters.

[Erkki]

BTW. It was actually quite interesting to be replaying The Witcher 2 and at the same time reading in the novels about events that some characters in the game were referring to. I also wonder if Sabrina Glevissig's curse is described in the last book, but probably not.

[osmosisch]

I just wish they'd get translated to English faster. My Polish is getting better but not to the point that I can read Sapkowki's excellent prose. He uses some very nice oldfashioned words. It took my wife half an hour to get me through two pages

 

One of the coolest things to me about the short stories that introduced Geralt is that they're mostly retellings of fairytales.

[Erkki]

Actually all of the books have been translated by fans. But I'm not sure if I'd recommend reading them. The Sword of Destiny is good, but the novel series translations are full of spelling and grammar errors and nonsensical sentences. It might make them annoying to read, but the story was interesting enough that I just learned to ignore those problems (or tried, at least).

 

I read something about no plans for officially translating some of the books, but not sure if that's true.

[osmosisch]

I have the patience to wait for a proper translation or for my Polish to get good enough, whichever comes first

[JonCole]

Yeah, there are no plans to translate any books beyond The Time of Contempt which came out this year. I actually mentioned my interest in this series in this other thread, burned through it in similar fashion. It's really quite good, and I actually thought the translations were better than Erkki suggests (though nowhere near perfect, obviously). I come to the series from a unique perspective - I've actually not played any of the games. So now I'm going into the series with all of this background, which is pretty much the exact opposite situation as most games.

 

What I mean is that amnesia is usually a mechanic to wipe away the past (or obscure it) and make the character more or less a cipher for the player. A game might play with amnesia, as it seems to in The Witcher, by having previous events play a part in the proceedings. I just find it interesting that playing through the game, I'll likely play it as Geralt rather than make Geralt be me. Or not necessarily be me, but have an element of originality that makes your Geralt feel unique. Haven't had an experience quite like that before in a game.

[Moosferatu]

Yeah, there are no plans to translate any books beyond The Time of Contempt which came out this year.

 

Seems like they changed their mind: http://www.amazon.com/Baptism-Fire-Andrzej-Sapkowski/dp/0575090960/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379555616&sr=8-1

 

Thanks for the recommendation.  I ordered The Last Wish.  It's going to be a witchy September.  Tomorrow, I'm finally getting a computer that's capable of playing The Witcher 2.

[JonCole]

Huh, I guess you're right. They're probably deciding book by book... it took them years (five, to be exact) to release Time of Contempt, I guess we should count ourselves lucky that this next one is coming sooner.

[Moosferatu]

I read The Last Wish a few weeks ago.  It was a fun, popcorn read.  I'm excited about the Dark Horse comic that was recently announced.  The similarities to Hellboy are obvious.  I think it'll be great.

 

http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/1494/nycc-2013-witcher-comes-dark-horse

[Jutranjo]

There's some news about english translations of the Witcher books by Gollancz http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2015/01/gollancz-acquire-three-more-witcher-novels/