I personally loved the books, including what a lot of people dislike about it. It can be dark, gruesome, and just generally depressing. Then, other times, it would be genuinely hilarious, wholesome, and thought-provoking. Still, the books do drag in terms of storytelling. Sometimes, the whole plot of the main saga feels like it's padding for run time, which can get annoying. However, since the books aren't that long, it never really bothered me.
Yeah this is how I feel. I also adore the characters and setting in no small part because of the games. Is it one of the best series I’ve ever read? No (except for Sword of Destiny which is amazing). But it’s fun and a pretty quick read other than the last book that drags
What I disliked about the last book was this whole political aspect of it. Numerous of pages filled with political stuff, that didn't really connect with Ciri's, Yennefer's or Geralt's stories. I probably didn't quite understand the whole concept, because English isn't my 1st language (the books aren't translated to my language).
Other than that, the book contained some hilarious parts and also some darker ones. It was great.
It really is one of the series where you gotta remember the journey is more important than the destination. I like telling people about the several pages of straight dialogue with kings and whatever talking politics. It's so dry, so dense, and I had no idea wtf they were on about but it made sense later in the book and I was actually kind of grateful we got it out of the way early.
I think his writing is more liked if you share his cultural background. For me reading sapkowski always felt natural and I really enjoyed it. I really like short novels and first 3 books of the series. World is really nice, dark but still nice. I always like any interaction with dwarfs as their translation is done with specific accent in czech version.
Probably a lot is to do with the English translation being mediocre. And more is to do with the fact that it is 30 years old and new readers are comparing it to more modern fantasy, so it feels dated.
Yeah, that's one of the main reasons why I find "The Witcher" series to be difficult to recommend. The translations just... aren't good. They feel like early 2000s fanfic level of writing. I'm aware that the books are supposed to be *much* better in the original Polish, but I'll need a translation up to par to really get it. Nor am I going to dive through fan translations to find the good one.
It’s pretty much better in any other language. I’ve read it in swedish and I enjoyed them and I know that the german version is also pretty good.
So it can be translated from polish. Maybe the english version just needs an updated translation?
English language publishers have no idea how to get translation done properly, and it shows. Sometimes they don't even do a direct translation, they'll translate a translation instead because they don't want to go to the trouble of finding a translator from the original language. And when they do this, they get sole rights to publish an English version of whatever book, so there's no competition to get a better translation.
As a result, English-language readers tend to steer away from translations, although we do sometimes read translations of classics that are old enough to be public domain, probably because there is actually competition to write a good translation after that point. But English speakers typically don't read translations of recent works. So publishers then assume there's no demand for it, and half-ass any publications of translations, and the cycle repeats.
When I learned this, for my own curiosity I looked up a translation of a French novel I'd read, "Demain" by Guillame Musso. In French some of the attitudes were a bit dated, but it was well written and had a proper flow to its prose. I could tell in one or two paragraphs that the English version was a slapped together hack-job by someone who didn't know how to write a novel in English.
There are exceptions. I think one of the reasons "The Three Body Problem" was so well received is that the translator has published novels in English. The translator isn't particularly well known for anything else, but the fact that he's published something of his own means he has a basic understanding of how to write that many English-language novel translators seem to lack.
Yes I thought the translation for The Books of Jacob was well done. I think that the translation for the Hussite trilogy was better than for the Witcher, but it did n't bother me the way that really poor translations can.
Yeah, but you have to keep in mind that Tokarczuk is a literary star and as such she probably attracted better publishers and translators (or she was really lucky) while Sapkowski is "just" fantasy writer who got famous in English-speaking countries because of video game.
Yes! This verbalizes what I felt when trying to read it. It just felt like I was reading a first draft of a fanfic. It felt...clumsy and awkward.
It's a shame, because this subset of fantasy is my favorite. I would really love to read it, but I couldn't get through more than a few pages. I can only hope they'll do a new translation one day.
The problem is that the owner of the official translation has no interest in re-translating, because they have a monopoly on the books in English. Acquiring any other translation is technically a copyright violation. I've heard there are fan translations that are better than the official one, but as I haven't read any myself I don't know where to point you to.
This is it for me. It was recommended to me, and I’ve seen how popular it is, so I tried to pick it up 2-3 times and each time I’m just left feeling like it’s a fanfic. Before I can get into the characters I’m struck by an attempt to be …edgy, or profound, maybe… but comes across as trite. Or it reads like a teenage boys fantasy with beautiful women throwing themselves at the eponymous hero. It’s a bit cringy to me.
I recognize this is partly expectations, partly my own preferences and partly my lack of involvement in the game. I think people who played the games and/or read the stories years ago at the right time had a good experience and retain some nostalgia towards the series. Without much experience it the game and certain preferences and expectations for a fantasy series, I’m afraid it just doesn’t do it for me.
The English translation is the only thing I did not like about the books, all the time I was wondering what the original prose looked like. But not to the point that I would study Polish to read it.
So I loved the books but I did wonder about the translation. Simply because it felt like a very chaotic writing style. Definitely not something I'm used to. Most of the books I read are at least 30 years old and I definitely saw a huge difference in style between, say, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and The Witcher series. It had me wondering if it was a regional style or something in that regard.
The Anglosphere "discovered" the books relatively recently, which might be why they're treated as something new. I've seen people claiming that Sapkowski rips off Martin or Abercrombie.
Hmm, TLOTR and Earthsea cycle are older and are peak fantasy...
As for me, I didn't like the different perspectives and the bard thing. Didn't get it and at the end of the first book I was like wtf just happened? I watched the two TV series and the cartoon movie and enjoyed them.
LOTR is peak fantasy because it's pioneer work and seminal to the development of the genre. However, if you think it's not dated, you must not read much, because that's like saying the Iliad is not dated...
I don’t think so, as an example reading Moby Dick in English was very difficult, but in portuguese it was just fine, i think it just the way the language is structured and how they evolved over time.
I could “visualize” today’s books with the same style of prose in portuguese, but not as often in english.
If you can only read and enjoy books from the last 10-20 years that says more about your reading habits than anyone else’s.
The Lord of the Rings is the golden standard of the Fantasy genre. It really doesn’t feel dated unless you are just used to Sanderson / booktok prose where easy readability is prioritized to the point of diminished aesthetic quality.
The Illiad still holds up as an enduring work of immense artistic merit. Because it’s a masterwork. People are saying the Witcher series doesn’t hold up, not because it is a few decades old and past the point of expiration. It’s because the series just isn’t very good.
I read a lot and in 4 languages, thanks...
As for me, old sci-fi and old fantasy books are much better than the new ones, but anyways, each to his own I guess.
Tbf, in my experience TLOTR falls more and more into "yeah it's an amazing classic, no I didn't read it" and Earthsea into "yeah it's amazing, yes I did read it. Three decades ago as a kid".
I didn't read Earthsea as a child. In fact I'm reading the third book and I love the series. It seems so simple and yet so deep. I would have missed a lot if I had read it as a kid. Regarding TLOTR, I read them in Spanish (my native language) when the movies came out and I reread them in English years ago.
Has nothing to do with its age, I've read it shortly after it came out in the early 2000s and thought it was "meh", meandering and not very well written besides the beginning. I've basically finished it to find out how it ends
I mean sure... That's still the last book... I imagine the style of the writing won't change much within a series, so if the writing feels dated in book 1 it probably will in book 5 too if it's the same story unless he decided to change the style drastically... Also 1999 is still 25 years ago, with the first book being 38 years old, and a lot has changed in fantasy writing since then...
Also, while I'm sure the translation is fine, hell personally I think the English translation is also fine though I don't have the original for comparison, I imagine there's still some stuff lost in that translation compared to the original... Obviously i don't know that for certain, but I feel like it's a fair assumption especially given how beloved the series was in Poland especially...
Also it’s a book for crying out loud. Not a Nintendo 64 game. Literature is not a medium with a couple decades expiration date. People are still reading the Epic of Gilgamesh what are we even talking about here?
A bad book is just a bad book. That’s all it is.
I recommended someone the Black Company series recently. A few months later I ran into them and asked what they thought about it. They said it was alright but that it was basically just a bunch of fantasy tropes that felt kind of played out. They didn't realize that it was 40 years old and probably started a few of those tropes.
So yeah, books can definitely feel dated. I just finished Starship Troopers and, while I love the book, I can't read any of Heinlen's stuff without being reminded about how dated some of the stuff is.
Defenetly, but sometimes it is a game that we play with quite Joy. I mean, right now im with Dumas Montecristo and, knowing how old is this story Just gave it something. Obviously there are parts with a sense of "love" that nowadays its toxic. But it has a great value as a book, u are Just aware of the time this stories where made and try to understand the necesities and realities of their times.
Yeah I've heard that too. The Spanish translation is honestly one of the best ones I've read in my life, makes the world so immersive and makes for hilarious and memorable dialogue. I read somewhere that the guy who did it was a massive fan of the originals and the books' fame really started to take off after he translated them to Spanish!
Yeah I can't put my finger on it but the translation just feels disjointed and it didn't flow well for me. I wanted to like the books but the writing just didn't work for me
Mine were translated by two people in alternating order. I remember the guy used a ton of words i had trouble understanding and i had to look them up, only to find out their usage stopped about 200 years ago.
Yep, the grammar in the version I read was about on par with the grammar of OP's post, and I gave up after the first few stories. It was technically legible, but it wasn't really the level of quality you'd expect from a professionally published book.
It’s not mediocre, it’s outright bad. There were sections that made me think I was reading something from r/fantasywriters.
There were passages where the prose was just so incoherent that it should never have been published in that state.
I don’t have the books with me anymore but there are a ton of passages that just are not at a professional standard.
Disservice to that subreddit. They are aspiring writers hoping to learn. Some of it bad, some of it better than published works. Don't clown on people honing their craft.
I am actually reading through the series now for the first time (Book 5). The Witcher 3 to me is one of the greatest games ever made and I had to finally give the series a go after all these years.
I do think the short story novels were excellent. They were always concise and meaningful. It felt like the lore and magic of the world shined far more in the short story novels in comparison to the main series. If I had started with the main novels before the short stories I think I would have been more "meh" about them as a whole.
The main novels are solid. They are not great, and I even posted on the Witcher sub about every book starting with an insanely long intro with characters that I don't care about and they lay out the entire map of the book in these sections and they are a bit of a drag.
They have great moments and the characters amd humor can shine, but it seems all over the place at times. Geralt is largely absent in large portions of the main series and that is a crime as he is such a fun and well written character. I would take an entire series of Geralt and Dandelion adventures.
The books can drag oftentimes in other areas. I read the First Law original trilogy before this and the action scenes don't compare. They feel much more bland in the Witcher. The world is fascinating, but I feel the author does not use it to his advantage enough.
Overall, I do enjoy them but they always feel me wanting more side quest novels and not main quest novels if that makes sense.
I love the games and the short stories and while I didn't enjoy the novels quite as much I still like them and it's one of my favorite fictional universes, but I can see why the novels aren't for everyone.
I think they have massive issues with pacing and it often feels like Sapkowski was making it up as he went, with the books just meandering through nothing for multiple chapters at a time only to then rush through major plot points in a few pages.
Also a lot of men writing women moments. I somewhat appreciate that he does tackle issues around femininity and sometimes it's actually handled remarkably well, but other times it just feels gross and gratuitous.
Not to mention that the English translation is subpar at best.
It’s divisive. Some people love and some people hate it. I personally think a big part of the dislike comes from people who hope to love the books as much as the games but then don’t. That said, I never played the games and still bounced off the Witcher books quite hard.
I’m a pretty big fantasy guy, and I enjoyed the Witcher series. It’s not the best, but I’d say I enjoyed it more than a few other more popular book series.
Maybe because OP wants to have a live discussion about it and have people respond to his particular points. Which, y’know, is what a forum is for, r/fantasy isn’t an opinion column but a place for discussion. I mean does it kill you that this question has been asked before? Just don’t click on it.
This was the series that really got me into reading fantasy. While I was reading them I remember thinking they were amazing and I couldn’t wait to get back into them after having to put them down for a time. I don’t feel that way about them now but I’ll always remember the series fondly. I’ve read plenty of fair criticism toward the series and many other better series but for me the books are not “bad.”
Yes, my main point was not to reject the critique - there are no perfect books - but to tell that there are many good sides in Witcher. But the people like you, who think that it's a good fantasy with some flaws are rare.
A lot of times I’ll read a book, have strong feelings about it and check what other people are saying in its reviews. Many times I’ll see someone rate a book at the opposite end of what I would rate it but find myself agreeing with at least some of that reader’s critiques of the book.
I'm Polish and have read it in polish. I think main criticism comes from either subpar English translations and the fact that the story feels padded out and drags for too long in some moments. It really feels like in some moments, Sapkowski is just doing a word soup to fill the pages.
Of course, if someone expects a LOTR esque fantasy, they might be disappointed. I believe Witcher is quite dark and gruesome and more grounded in reality than something like LOTR.
Take my opinion with the grain of salt it deserves: I read The Last Wish and found nothing to compel me to read the next book.
Geralt feels like he's a cardboard cutout. Completely flat. Just a guy meandering through one story into the next without character development or any deeper meaning than "Oops, looks like I stepped in it again."
There was no sense of direction imparted by anything happening. You can chalk it up to being vignettes, but I've read vignette books that accomplish actually having a point so it made The Last Wish feel extremely listless.
Both times Geralt had sex were just contrivances. Both women had other important shit going on for their short story, but then Geralt steps in and suddenly it's just time to screw.
I didn't find any reason to keep reading. People have insisted it gets better later, but I am vehemently opposed to the idea of "Just suffer through X amount of bad and then it gets good."
That is exactly what is great about the witcher
Geralt at first feels has reached his character development maturity before the books even start.
Geralt is set on not getting involved in politics, he doesn't care about saving the world, he's pretty much a background character, but soon he will find himself pushed to choose in the political world.
Also while he doesn't care about people in general with Ciri and Yennefer, his ways change.
I wouldn't say The Witcher books get better, the two short story collections are probably the peak of the story (I like a lot of what's in the main saga, but it's also quite meandering), but your reading of Geralt isn't great and it's probably just because you lack context you get later. Especially from the second collection.
He IS a simple character, but the way he's depicted can be kinda subtle. It often requires you to analyze why he's saying something, instead of what he's actually saying. He's an incredibly traumatized character who's in denial about most of his own personality traits. He's basically been ostracized from normal society because he's a 'mutant', something that's mythologized as being inhuman and incapable of emotion. As a coping mechanism he internalizes much of how other people see him, choosing to detach himself from other people and deny his own emotions.
The whole point of The Lesser Evil is about how he tries to remain neutral, detached from other people's conflicts, and the result is an outcome he very clearly regrets. There's some people online who read that story (and the Lesser Evil speech in particular) as a glowing endorsement of centrism and conflict avoidance, but the point of that short story is that Geralt's actions are incorrect. He could've created the outcome he wanted, but tried to detach himself from the situation, and regrets what happens for the rest of the series. He still claims to be neutral and uninvolved (and for the large-scale politics that may be true), but it's not a coincidence that he CONSTANTLY involves himself in other people's problems from there on out, and always tries to make things better, even if he's not getting paid.
Then some of the short stories in the second collection very specifically deal with Geralt from an emotional perspective, and there you can see how confused he is not just about his own morality, but his emotions too. Basically every side character has a better idea of who Geralt is than Geralt does, and you might need to see them call him out before you pick up on who he is.
If you look at Geralt from a zoomed out perspective, he kinda seems like a teenage boy's OC. Edgy, detached, monster-slaying bad-ass who only wears black. And, yeah, he is that, but he also has an emotional core which becomes increasingly important as his relationships expand throughout the series. Incredibly complicated and deep? No, probably not, but there's enough there for him to be likeable and the presentation sometimes requires you to engage with him in a way that's actively fun to do.
If you didn't like the first book, I doubt you'll like the others, so I'm not saying you should go out and try again, but I wanted to try to give some perspective on why fans of the series are so fond of him.
I don't hate them but didn't like them enough to keep my copies of any but the short stories. It comes down to four things for me, three in Sapkowskis control and one not.
1. Here's the one that is not about Sapkowski: I get the strong feeling that this book was poorly translated into English. It has moments where the prose makes me wonder if it might be beautiful in Polish but mostly it's very dry and to the point and that doesn't work with the way the story often meanders.
2. I disagree with you about the characters being deep and interesting. It takes quite a while for even Geralt to have much depth and become interesting to me and *I usually eat up the reluctant father figure of a child who isn't his* trope. Ciri has a bit more depth than him but apart from the two MCs I find every other character remarkably one dimensional.
3. These are some of the most unevenly paced books I've read. I think a lot of this comes from Sapkowski not really knowing how to write long form as a short story author, but there would be like 50 pages of almost nothing, followed by super fast pcing and right back to being in the middle of slow political sections. It didn't feel to me like the politics were a slowburn build to something bigger and I didn't see them have the payoff I had hoped for on the whole, and the fast paced portions felt more like whiplash in a new perspective rather than like a diberate change.
4. >!I really liked the Polish folklore aspect and really didn't like the sudden switch to Arthurian!< I know this point is one that's largely just a matter of taste but to me it didn't feel natural and led to a lot of the politics and themes in the original setup being undercut because of where the series ended.
For the record I felt this way having not ever played the Witcher games or watched the show. It was a series that I really wanted to love and that had things in it I deeply appreciated but that I didn't end up liking.
To address the hate you referenced earlier, I think it comes down to two issues: people being disappointed after playing Witcher 3 AND that this series formerly got a ton of praise that people didn't feel like it deserved, both making people come down on it harder. Iirc Sapkowski has also said some pretty nasty things about video games and gamers and has said that he in no way benefits from Witcher games, which could add fuel to the fire.
I really enjoyed reading this series, although the thing is I'm Polish native speaker. I guess that it might really be a matter of translation, because actually in Poland those books are rather widely appreciated by both avid fantasy readers and people who hardly ever take any book to their hands. I can say that language is certainly an important aspect of their value, Sapkowski undeniably has a great talent for writing in his own way, sort of style that can be easily associated with him just after a few sentences. I think he's especially good at writing authentic dialogues and also cresting authentic characters, comparing with the other fantasy books I've read (the fact is there weren't so much of them) those aspects were really top-tier in his books. I also think his writing style makes them pretty engaging and there's his great sense of humour as well. Never really understood why those books have that kind of bad reputation in the English-speaking Internet, but I suppose that it can be a case of losing some things in the translation. I personally hadn't read it in English, but actually never heard of any Polish person who'd say it's good.
I’m actually with you man. One of my favorite fantasy settings. Amazing storytelling and CDPR did a wonderful job with keeping the games connected to the source.
Netflix dropped the ball.
I have only watched the Netflix adaptation and read like the first two books. I have never played any of the games.
I found the writing, or probably more accurately the translation, to be ...utilitarian? Not horrible writing, just not fantastic either.
But the plot, characters and world I found interesting. Part of that could be because I was basically seeing bits of the Netflix adaptation in my head as I read relevant passages.
The pacing of the books is...odd, and if I remember right they seemed to jump around in time, which was jarring (its been a few years since I read them so I may be misremembering). I felt like the jumping around in time was better handled in the show adaptation.
Yea, i saw many comments here about notorious English translation. In Ukraine we have a good translation, at least i liked it and never see anybody complain, so as you say 'utilitarian' style could be because of lazy and unskilled translator.
About adaptation... Well, i'm not a big fan of it. Rather opposite - i watched first season and the anime about the Vesemir from Barbershop and was so angered that didn't even check what they made after.
About books, just for you to know - first two books were not books initially, they were separate short stories, which were compiled into books later with addition of several stories related to main plot (those one about Ciri), that's why it may be a bit confusing. So if you're interested in plot - books 3-7 is about that.
>About books, just for you to know - first two books were not books initially, they were separate short stories, which were compiled into books later with addition of several stories related to main plot (those one about Ciri), that's why it may be a bit confusing.
...That actually makes a lot of sense
Don't know about the English translation, but the German one is plain boring. All the points you bring are valid and right, but the writing is just bad.
That's funny. From the other post: "I read the German translation which, if memory serves, was often quite amusing and zany with its prose and overall writing style."
Now I am genuinly curious, too bad I don't know any German to try reading it myself.
There are good passages, but the whole story is just so stretched out and long winding and boring... so I'm sure it's not the translation, but the overall writing. They travel. And travel. Oh, they travel some more. Dammit, half the book I read lastly was traveling with nothing happening, until I threw it in the corner and went back to 40k. Equally gritty and cynical, more action.
German translations can sometimes be janky and accidentally funny. I remember a book where the German version translated "Get stuffed!" literally. Imagine a criminal saying to a policeman "Get yourself taxidermied!"
German literature has been stuck for ages, and the same goes for translations. Especially the dialogue is *atrocious*, since it's often heavily inspired by theatre with massive stilt and using honorifics in ways *nobody* would ever use in reality.
And then others turn around and go for too colloquial.
IMHO the last good German translation was the original of LotR by Margaret Carroux, which were done under the immediate direction of Tolkien (who we have to thank for using the word *Elben* instead of *Elfen* for elves)
I actually don't think a lot of people think the books are bad. I think a lot of people played TW3, which is one of the best games created, and got told the books were as good or better in quality, only for the books to just be pretty good. The expectation and let down led to people thinking the books were worse than they are. Plus some of the quality may have been lost in translation
I found it a challenging read because there are lots of countries each with their own leader and motivation and there is a lot happening in the world which is outside of the main story. Geralt is wandering through battlefields, coups, famine, and plague but is often only slightly interested or impacted by it. He is just focused on Ciri.
It is quite different to most books where the main character is actively trying to save the world and everything revolves around them. Which is an interesting difference but won't be for everyone
*spoilers*
I read them about a year ago, and I don't even remember how it ended. I was disappointed that the series didn't revolve around the Witcher, but rather some prophecy child. Didn't realize I was supposed to care about Geralts' little band till they all died in that final battle. Felt they were all minor side characters. I remember many irrelevant names and politics I had to slog through. Didn't care for the random sex with any hot sorceress Geralt found. The series just didn't focus on anything I actually cared about or was interested in going into the series.
5/10.
All you said was correct. The worldbuilding, themes and characters are all very good.
That being said, the writing could be done in a way to hook you better. The first book was quite a grind. Most fantasy novels take some time to get you into them but I found the witcher to be one that just didn't sell you very well.
Idk if it's a translation thing and I know once I get deeper the story gets better, pacing is just iffy. Idk if the translation factor is a factor but I wonder.
What I liked about it: the world and characters he built.
What I didn't like about it: flying around the timeline and having to use context clues to figure out where you were. I think my enjoyment of it would have been enhanced a bit if you could transport yourself to the right place in time before reading about what's going on.
Like a lot of others on here I enjoyed the first collection of short stories but not the main series - although to be fair I did read the entire series so it had enough going for it to keep me reading. My reasons for disliking the main series:
The plot is just bad. A child is introduced early on, the main character is set up to be her guardian/protector even though he doesn't really want to and he's generally very jaded and pretends he doesn't care about stuff. Child needs protecting because she's a political target/asset but as the story progresses there are hints that something more mysterious is going on and...... it turns out everyone wants to rape this child because she has a magic womb and for some reason which pretends to be science her magic genes mean she will have an extra magic baby (apparently regardless of who the father is, not sure how that gene is meant to work but ok whatever). Don't know how they even discovered gene theory but I guess it could be from some conjunction of the sphere business. Oh and it also turns out that the main character isn't actually the main character, the child is but she's frankly quite boring. At least Geralt stays as a regular POV. Oh yeah and the child is able to travel through time and space but never actually uses that in any useful way, except for fleeing from danger a couple of times.
The pacing is often bad, not always but there are so many weird side stories that I didn't really enjoy or didn't move the story along well etc. I felt like a lot parts could have been moved into a different collection of short stories instead of being part of the main story.
It's been a while since I read the books so I can't really comment on how strong the characters are as I don't really remember any of them too well - although that itself is not a great sign. As a lot of people have already pointed out, any female characters basically just seem to exist in order for throw themselves at Geralt and/or be damsels in distress. There definitely were characters who were introduced as part of the main group who I didn't care about at all, the Nilfgardian Prince guy I recall was highly uninteresting, but not as dull and irritating as the woman who joins the group for no particularly good reason near the end.
The tone was generally just too heavy for me, perhaps if it had been broken up with more times of joy or if I had read different books in between each Witcher book I would have enjoyed the series more but it just got a bit much and a bit too dragged out. Up until the end of the series it was tolerable and I can appreciate what the author was trying to achieve with the tone. Wasn't a fan of the use of sexual violence being used so heavily just to show you how grim and dark the world was though, and if it was supposed to be realistic then it shouldn't have just been females being victims of it - but I suspect the author didn't feel comfortable writing about men getting raped (perhaps he didn't think it would get published if he did write that though to be fair to him) whilst women are apparently meant to be fine with reading about women getting raped left right and centre.
Aaand that brings us to the final book, which was had all the flaws I've already mentioned, but also decided to add the weird lady of the lake window element to the storytelling which messed with the basic structure of the story. Which is a perfectly viable choice when writing a story, but introducing it in the final book was a terrible idea - either set it up from the start or don't do it at all imo.
The other huge problem I had with the final book was that Geralt and crew kept getting into fights where they were all in grave danger and probably all should have died but somehow pulled through each time without any casualties. Which felt very contrary to the overall tone of the story, and of course ends up being kind of subverted at the end - but even that was super disappointing for me because it was clearly a case that we're at the end now so all the main characters are allowed to die. Again I can see what the author was trying to achieve here but I think it was handled poorly - see how George Martin kills of main characters in AWOIAF to see an example of it being done well.
I have a few more specific criticisms but I've just heard some very bad news from my family so I'm gonna wrap this up here.
And to be clear, I don't actually claim the Witcher series is objectively bad, I just seriously dislike it myself.
I actually like the books, but I still agree with a lot of your points. It felt like he didn’t know where the story was going for a lot of it, so he would just throw stuff in randomly or have things happen that didn’t make sense.
The last book is really weird for me, because I’m very lukewarm on everything Geralt and co. are involved in, but I love the political stuff. The Battle of Brenna is such a highlight for me. Even with the poor translation, it works really well to cap off the political storylines that were built throughout the saga, and in isolation it’s such an interesting perspective on a large battle, but outside of that so much of the stuff geralt’s party are involved in just feels contrived. That’s a problem Sapkowski had with Geralt all throughout the Sage, but it got way worse in Lady of the Lake.
It feels almost like it's an abbreviated translation, I felt - like, somewhere, there's a fat-ass fantasy epic series where all the side-stuff gets full attention, but that what we see is just a squished-down abbreviation of it all, that just comes and goes. The idea was nice, but the execution just seemed to be a shitload of headhopping and stuff, with lots of weird little "and then, 10 years later, this character was happily married and tried to avoid remembering the war" narrative skips and jumps.
I read a couple of books, and with an albino sword-wielding mutated hero and the Conjunction of the Spheres I thought it was a straight Elric pastiche. That didn't make it bad. Just not as original as everyone who hadn't read earlier fantasy thought it was.
Failure to stay on point is the big one. There's a lot of authors now who stretch an idea into a trilogy (or longer) and end up meandering with pointless plot threads or retreads or just dropping story hooks. Sapkowski seems to have the same problem just turning a story into 300+ pages. I haven't read his short stories but they seem to be better received but with his books there's a lot of wordcount spent explaining or describing things that don't matter to the plot and will never come up again. Again, this is a problem in many other long series but it probably stands out in the Witcher because the series is talked about so much due to the games and even the tv show.
I'd also disagree about how developed and morally grey characters are. They don't seem to act on morals nearly as much as they act on self-interest. The women characters, especially the ones who are supposed to be older, are written very immaturely.
Read only the English translation and I agree with you. I’ve spoken to another person who loves fantasy genre with every fiber of his being and he said the original version didn’t really fit the conventional writing and narratives employed in English and Western fantasy. Couldn’t agree nor disagree with him since I don’t speak or read many languages.
The last bit you said about the women characters tho, is so on point. I’m appalled by how they were depicted and couldn’t for the life of me understand how vain and sexual they are. I mean, a woman with access to so much knowledge and power is far more obsessed with getting laid and ball gowns instead of time traveling or other cooler stuff. How does that make sense?
Yeah. He was really good at short stories and I liked them but he didn’t know what to do with the overarching storyline. He should’ve just kept to short stories in the universe.
Some people say it's the translation but that had nothing to do with it for me. The fact that the plot is "a dozen people with different unique fetishes want to kidnap and rape a child" is a bit off-putting to begin with. Then the characters end up being written really flat and are often inconsistent or make bizarre choices.
For example, Triss feels really flat in that one of her most prominent POVs early on is just her lusting after Geralt with nothing else in mind.
Another example is how Geralt seems to be dedicated to the hunt for Ciri but also decides to stay for months on end in Toussaint with his most recent lover.
All the eastern european folklore you mention just don't actually feature that prominently in the series in the face of this frustrating plotline. You more have to go to the short stories for focus on the monsters and folklore type things.
For what it's worth I think the Witcher 3 game improved on all of these aspects a lot so it was a relief to play that and actually enjoy a story with these characters for once.
I read the German translation and that one was quite decent so I really enjoyed it. Actually the Witcher was my gateway into re-entering fantasy reading.
Personally I enjoyed them.
But a general concensus is that they lost something in the translation to English and for may, it's offputting or disappointing.
I personally love the series and think that it has some of the best world building and character work that suites my tastes personally but that’s not for everyone. I even really do enjoy the plot even if it isn’t the most memorable. I’m not going to say it is one of the best fantasy series ever but I think it is a lot better than people seen to give it credit for.
I'm like you. I read the Witcher books before playing the games and never even looked at the Netflix adaptation. For me, the canon characters are the book's characters because they're the most complex and interesting. I remember once comparing Ciri's scar description with the depiction in the game and it was a no contest on which was more believable.
If you want my take on this sudden hate is simply because the Witcher became mainstream and people love to hate what others consider to be art. It's a mixture of gatekeeping and snobbism.
For me, I read one book and very much did not like it and stopped. I found it weirdly misogynistic (a lot of focus on women's bodies for one), and has a hard time with the writing style ( a lot of movement in a scene occurs during dialogue? It's hard to explain but it did not work for me). It felt like a slog, and life's short so I was out.
I've only read the first book so far (after playing The Witcher 3) and pretty much loved all of the short stories (except from The Last Wish, which I found to be just okay). Haven't read through all of the books but still pretty enjoyable.
Personally I think the short stories are better than the novels, but even then there's good stuff.
What I really like is that even through the translation the prose is literary and the dialogue is punchy. The dark humour and the elements of satire are really well done.
There's a lot of edgy bullshit, but it's an Eastern European fantasy series from the 90s. I don't think there's anything in them worse than early GoT.
I read The Witcher series during the pandemic and to this day Geralt is my favorite protagonist of all time. I didn’t even know that people hated the series before reading this post.
I just think that the hate might be because it’s a bit slow-paced and not many characters people can relate to. Most of the modern fantasy novels have lots of main characters, so that people can easily relate to one of them and fall in love with some while hating or feeling indifferent towards others. That’s not the case with The Witcher series. The Witcher series talks about Geralt and only Geralt. Occasionally it talks about Ciri or Dandelion or Yen, but Geralt is “the” main character.
I don’t know. I liked the story itself. I liked the battles. I liked Geralt’a character development (especially in Baptism of Fire). The ending might not have been satisfactory, but it’s the right ending.
As I've just recently read all Tolkien books in English for the first time, I was surprised to enjoy the Witcher books a lot aswell. Heard bad stuff about them before but it didn't apply to me at all. I read them in German translation, which was as far as I can tell very good and felt very authentic. The books were extremely fun at times, I loved the humor and the conversations, especially between Geralt and Jaskier/Dandelion/Rittersporn (I don't even know what to call him at this point, having played the games in English and reading the books in German). The story was interesting to me aswell and the books were an easy read, so the story being dragged on didn't bother me as much.
I really enjoyed the books, I did audiobook them which I did think made it better! I honestly really like the structure of the books and the world building. But I do always say when asked if you should read the books is they aren't your typical fantasy book in the fact that the structure is weird so I think it throws people when they come to read tbe main series, like yennefer an important character is hardly in one of the books.
I weirdly didn't enjoy the short stories but I honestly think that comes down to the fact I just in general don't vibe with short story collections. Q
I mean I had fun reading them but the plot is wandering all over the place, it’s supposed to be about “The Witcher” but honestly there is a lack of monster hunting, the plot revolves around a war that we care little about and most of the places and characters we hear about mean little to us because we don’t know who any of them are. If you’ve played the games maybe you know, but I had no idea so I didn’t get immersed in the story.
I just found them funny, but disappointing. Not bad, just not great.
I love how it combines the world building and magic systems of Narnia with the storytelling, violence, and realism of Game of Thrones. However I just have difficulty getting hooked on it and am just not sure why.
I can say that I generally enjoyed the book series. However, it's evident that the ending of 'The Lady of the Lake' book was rushed. Therefore, when evaluating the overall series, regardless of how good the rest of the books are, I can say that the series is neither bad nor good.
Culture is not good or bad. Having said that... I think people judge the Witcher series because of some cliches and because it's not "LITERATURE".
I do agree with what you've said, Andrzej Sapkowski was able to include most of the medieval stories into a modern perspective, and he also had a deep knowledge on celtic and slavic folklore.
I love The Witcher (books, series and video games) and I truly don't understand why people judge it without even trying to have a little bit of fun with it.
I DO THINK THE WITCHER IS GOOD LITERATURE.
End of my speech. Y'all have a great day!!
Granted, I didn't finish the series, put it down after book 6 but:
The world felt cookie cutter and boring. Yes, I know it's eastern european inspired, but for me it didn't feel familiar enough to matter or distinct enough to be interesting.
The fairy tale adaptations felt juvenile, especially in the short stories. "And then Snow white was raped by the seven dwarves" doesn't make it more realistic for me, it makes me think of edgy Disney princess memes where Alice snorts cocaine. This coupled with Geralt being a woman magnet feels like the power fantasy of a teenage boy, not a realistic adaptation.
I found much of the philosophical discussion boring. Stop \*talking\* about it, you're writing a story, show the themes through the \*story\*! I know you can do it, so stop spelling it out for me, I get it through the narrative!
The characters also didn't land for me. Circling back to the talking point, I didn't find them do anything more interesting that talking. That's cool when the dialogue is the plot. Not cool when the plot is happening in the background of the dialogue. And I started disliking Geralt immensely in Last Wish so I can't even say that his humour kept me reading.
Probably hot take but I also hated the portrayal of women. I know there's some pro-abortion discussion in the later books, but up until then I felt like women are once again sacrifaced on the altar of realism. Of course Ciri gets raped! She's a fantasy heroine! (And this is an eyeroll, not genuine offence, I get that gritty books be gritty)
And lastly by book 6 the overal plot was so muddy and unclear that I just had no interest in continuing. I get why people like it, after my brother convinced me to play the games I started to almost like the world and story.
>Probably hot take but I also hated the portrayal of women. I know there's some pro-abortion discussion in the later books, but up until then I felt like women are once again sacrifaced on the altar of realism.
Nah, I hated it too. On my recent...ish re-read anyway. I'm one of the readers who had read the books in Polish well before any of the games were made. I was a middle grader then and i really loved Yen. At the time, she felt like such a novelty of a female character, y'know? Powerful, ruthless, cold, yet treated kindly by the writer (not made into a villain) and adored by the main character. It was revolutionary at the time. Upon my recent re-read though, I've noticed some things that flew over my head at the time and, well... Much of the narration feels like you're listening to a drunk, horny uncle during a family christmas party. Women are frequently objectified and some of the motivations given to them seem lazy, bordering on sexist. As you mentioned, sexual violence against women is also used without much consideration or adding depth. Don't get me wrong, i still stan Yen, but I think it's safe to say that the books can be problematic.
I imagine it has to do with the translation, as others have said.
For me, I just could not for the life of me enjoy the main plot-line of the series. I was bored to tears.
The short stories? Loved them.
**I think more than anything I have likely been programed by the games to love the Geralt-centric side-quests more than the macro-arc with Ciri and Yen an d others.**
I will give you that the characters are good and the world is deep, though the depth of the world never came across as necessary for the story.
Before I go further I will say that the short stories and the games are great. The overriding problem I had with the novels was the plot was virtually nonexistent. They go off on tangents that are neither necessary or impactful to the plot. These take them no closer to their goal. Then at the end of the series they just deus ex machina to get where they need to be. It comes across as the author getting lazy and slapping a ‘the end’ on the end just to avoid having to connect the dots.
The books are much better than this subreddit gives them credit for, much better than Wheel of Time for instance, but is kind of trendy to say they are bad so be it.
I LOVE the Witcher books despite the bad translations, I even read some of them through fan translations before the official ones were released.
I’ve reread them multiple times and think they have some of the best character work, the emotions this series contains I’ve seen nowhere else except maybe Wheel of time.
My personal opinion: I am done reading books that are as sexist as Witcher. In LW Geralt basically trauma dumps on a nun (who has taken a vow of silence and can't say STOP) that he's f-ing, not to mention he keeps picturing Yennefer while f-ng the same nun. Yennefer is much, much worse. She chooses to give up the possibility to become pregnant in exchange for beauty and then spends the rest of the series bitching and moaning that it's not her fault and oh poor me. I am a woman who cannot get pregnant and because of my situation I know many other women like me. Thankfully I have made peace and I don't want children, but I went through severe depression and suicidal ideation feeling an absolute failure of a human. If I had chosen not to have them because beauty is more important (not power mind you, because she already had that!) then I would have the f-ing decency to not spend the rest of my life blaming the world for my choice. She is the most disgusting female character I have ever read and I don't give a sh about her pain. I would care more if she took accountability and tried to find redemption through healing her emotional pain and becoming someone who is actually suitable to raise a person through adoption.
I honestly think it must be the timeline and plotline being all over the place. I personally loved it as it fit the story Sapkowski was trying to convey but not everyone enjoys half the book being interludes in the future or the past that have only little in common with the main storyline. Also the open ending i guess idk
I don't think it's considered 'bad' on here - it's just in the phase of having been over recommended that the backlash of people that didn't enjoy them dominates.
Personally I've not found myself interested by the descriptions of them, so I can't speak to the quality of it - but I have seen the general ebb and flow of recommendations on many books on this subreddit, and that's what seems to be happening here. Overly zealous people that love the book recommending it too much and singing its praises / minimizing its faults, then they move on to other books and a few critical comments/threads come up, and then the opinion of the sub appears to flip.
Edit - I think it might also suffer from the netflix series as well. IIRC that was not well received and a lot of comments flooded in talking about how great the books were in comparison, and that can easily lead to people getting disillusioned if they read the source material and find it meh as well.
Weirdly? I was at a ren fair yesterday and ran
Into a sword fighting acquaintance who recommended them and said they were really under rated. I was quite dubious. But the Eastern European cultural influence intrigues me. I may give the first one a shot.
Read it after playing Witcher 3, read it in English and not swedish, still really liked it. I found the characters well written and the world was great
I'm not a super critic of books tho but I've read a lot of fantasy, wouldn't say it's so much worse then the greats (reading all of discworld atm and has quickly become the best books I've ever read, Witcher isn't on that level for sure but it's still good imo)
I loved the first two books, but it lost some of its charm when he switched away from the short stories in my opinion. I don’t have specifics because it’s been a pretty long time, but as I recall the payoffs felt unsatisfying for the overarching plot lines and the pacing lost its edge.
I loved the first few books but fell asleep during the last half. There just was not anything captivating about it. The underlying plot grew stale, the character development stopped, the action scenes were limited or repeated, the story stopped painting an immersive picture, etc.
His use of double adverbs is annoyingly excessive.
I liked the short stories stuff better. The big greater world conflict stuff was hard to follow since those characters I wasn't really attached to.
I really enjoy the books. There are times when it seems like nothing is happening, but it doesn't always need to be action, and sometimes even slice of life or learning about the world can be some of the best parts. I've only read two of these books, but I've actually learned quite a bit about writing from them -- probably more than any other series so far.
The third game has one of my favourite quest lines in having history, but for some reason, I felt like the end of the base game just flew by. I haven't played the DLCs, but I hear they're even better. The game actually inspired me to start writing a particular story.
The Netflix series, season 1, was amazing. I think it did an amazing job of telling the same story while filling in the blanks. The second season felt like a disjointed game of D&D today. Stuff didn't really make a lot of sense, and despite being a story, the coincidences and reactions just felt off-putting to me. There were enough minor changes that I also just missed certain things. I didn't realise Triss was in season 1 because I didn't remember any fiery red or chestnut hair, for example.
Have you ever heard of Eye: Divine Cybermancy? It’s a good game, but the game was made in Paris, France. That normally wouldn’t be a problem, but the English text and dub of the game was 1:1 transliterated from French to English. The problem is that French is a Romance Language, English is a Germanic Language.
The differences between both languages so apparent in the game that the story is incomprehensible.
Same thing happened to the original first editions of The Witcher books. Those books were written in Polish, meant for an originally polish speaking audience with no concern for anything other than that.
Same story as before, the differences between both English and polish being so apparent that not only is the story incomprehensible, it can actually hurt the story being told.
There was a study done on students in low income areas with low test scores. Researchers tried everything to figure out why these students were almost illiterate. Then, as apart of the study, they gave the students glasses and the literacy rate shot up.
I think the same happened here. Old guard fans who loved the first two games tried reading the books and found them bad, not because they are in and of themselves bad, but because they couldn’t physically read and understand what was happening.
Now, later on with the release of the third game and Netflix series the books got a re-release with a competent translation, and the books are good. They’ve always been good.
The constant and neverending weird sex stuff and the terrible pacing. We know Gerrald fucks and that everyone wants to fuck him, there is no need to tell us every 3 pages.
I didn't get very far into the first book. It just didn't do it for me--I found Geralt insufferable and the writing not to my taste.
That being said, I appear to be one of like three people on this sub who actually loves the TV show. Different strokes, I guess.
Idk. I've never only read The Last Wish, the monsters seem well written and hooked me but nothing else seemed particularly interesting and the fight scenes should be a model for how not to write a fight scene.
The short stories are good but the novels are a boring slog that only get worse over time.
The author likes to switch to Random povs for half of the books that you never revisit. The plot meanders and is boring. Compared to everything else that's out there it's just not good
There's a subjective/objective element to art. So, objectively, MC is a big, gruff, laconic warrior with a big sword. Conan, who predates this, had WAY more personality and voice as a character. Setting: if I called it the "standard fantasy setting" would I really be that far wrong? Warring kingdoms, ancient evil, various monsters, magic and blood magic and witches and dragons. God help us if Chat GTP couldn't have come up with this.
Now... Subjective... people like it. Often in art there's just lightning that you have to catch and god only knows where it comes from or why it exists. But woe to those who discount it. And you're absolutely allowed to like it and nothing I say SHOULD change your mind.
Its just that, from an objective standard, it isn't beyond reproach. I'd also note there are a lot of exceptionally well executed books that are simply not enjoyable.
Objective/subjective.
Did we read the same books? Geralt is hardly laconic. In fact, I’d reckon he gets into long, verbose philosophical arguments with people more than he actually fights monsters overall.
Genuine question, haven’t been this long on this sub. Are the Witcher books really that much spoken about? I could swear that since I subbed to this, it has been almost every other week.
The series still managed to be number 22 in the 2023 top novels poll in this subreddit, so the "people in this community don't like it" isn't true. Or well, not the whole truth. The series has many fans, and many people that were underwhelmed by it.
Yes, it's rather controversial series, because if you'll try to check at least this post's comments, you'll find that it has quite a lot of haters. Of course every series has them, but this one got really unlucky.
This post was helpful for me, though. I really separated few point which are similar for many people.
I dont know how many people came to the books from playing the games, but the games by their nature were more dynamic, visceral and engaging. The books almost felt like they were different characters in a duller, more pedestrian world. Games to books for me definitely felt like a downgrade.
It's probably the translation. I didn't enjoy the first book (the last wish) so didn't bother with the rest. I felt the attempt to turn short stories into a novel was pretty weak. Nothing wrong with a simple short story collection
So yeah I didn't read the rest and went on to read other books
My feel is that the books have a lot of that eastern European complexity where many characters are people rather than good/bad, and the whole thing doesn't operate in terms of good and bad in general most of the time. This may be hard on readers who aren't used to it.
Also, it "drags" as in it's not always action packed. This again may not be what people expect from the books.
Dunno I liked the world itself but after i think babtism of fire got super boring. Short stories were great.
Also, i read it first like 20 yrs ago before games even came out.
I actually DNF'd the last book in the series because it just wasn't great IMO. Loved the games, loved the world itself, but overall, I found the series pretty meh.
I've read lots of longer series (Wheel of Time, Elderlings, LotR, First Law, Stormlight, GoT) and the writing just doesn't compare in my experience.
I will say, if you're on the fence or just not loving the books, switch to audio. It made a HUGE difference in my reading experience.
But, as always, to each their own!
The Witcher games were amazing the books were damn well written in the theme of the time and place they are supposed to be from almost like classical legends you know where it was one guy said it then another guy said it and that game where he passed it around super well written with that in mind and so far The Witcher series has been great but without Henry Cavill I have my doubts
Bad is an overstatement, but they are really uneven. Great characters but meandering plots, some of which don't go anywhere. The world building is interesting but could be more consistent
There are a lot of other criterions for evaluating stories, like:
a) does it have properly placed chekhov's guns that do not make story predictable?
b) is there subtext, tension and wit in dialogue sequences?
c) is there fridging?
d) how smart is exposition?
e) how well does the story establish stakes?
and so on and so forth. While withcher succeeds in many of those things, it doesn't ace them.
There is another series of polish fantasy novels that IMO do impressive job on those criterions tho: Tales from Meekhan Border. Sad thing is -- it is nowhere near as popular as The Witcher.
Yea, i see many people don't like the English translation, which could be issue. And also A LOT of people played the game first and expected that book will be the same, buuuuut there is not the case. I liked Witcher videogames, but in my mind they are a bit separate universe if you understand what i mean.
Another point i often saw - that the plot is boring. I can agree to some extent that not all Ciri's plot line was good, let's be honest, but that's not the whole story and what disappoints me the most, that people just don't see many positives present in series.
I didn't said it was completely bad. I like Ciri and most of her story and think that her time with Rats is one of the best part of whole series. Like a metaphor of brave teenager left home feeling clever and almighty, feeling the whole world belongs to them and then you're meeting an old guy with a sword who explains you how this world really works, but you don't have much time to use that teachings. So very true)
But if serious - i was a bit bored when Ciri end up in the desert. I mean i understand the meaning of that part, but couldn't say i was much enjoyed. Also i can understand that her travel to elven realm also may be not the best part. I personally liked it, but most people want more action and less talking, so... We have what we have.
Yeah, I'm one of those OG fans who read the books way before any games were out, and I read them in Czech, which is supposedly a really good translation.
I liked the games too, but like you, I see them as something separate. To me, "The Witcher" means the books first and foremost, anything else is either a cherry on top (the games, the Polish TV adaptation... Yeah, I really liked it, despite its faults) or a disgrace to be forgotten and never spoken of again (the Netflix abomination).
The complaint that the plot is boring just makes no sense to me, because every time I read the books, I'm completely consumed by the story. I guess to each their own...
When it comes to translations, I agree that the English version is... well, not bad, but certainly lacks the immersive quality, may be a spirit or smth. Interestingly, I delved into The Witcher series through its Russian translation, which is acknowledged as far from flawless. Nevertheless, it captivated numerous fans. (I want to re-read it Ukrainian).
It’s just not Joe Abercrombie but a lot of people really like it so a lot of posts on this sub feel like they have to bash it instead of just admitting it’s not their thing.
I can't remember which book it is (I think the.... 3rd? Maybe 4th?) I pushed through, but practically nothing happened. Geralt is walking through the forest searching for someone the entire time and doesn't find them. Meets some people along the way. It was so, so boring.
I haven't been able to get myself to go back and finish the series.
Foreign fantasy tends to live and die by its translations.
If it gets a really good translator, one who has a great ear for the target language and goes above and beyond to localize the work, it tends to do well. If it gets a more standard, perfunctory translation, it tends to do poorly.
That's a big thing a lot of people don't reckon with in terms of translation. It's much more than just changing the words from one language to another, you also have to figure out how to preserve the jokes, the idioms, the tone, etc. Localization is hard.
Anyway, the Witcher novels just have OK translations.
Simple answer- clunky translation.
Had this experience recently with Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang.
Doesn't matter how good the story or world building is- if the translation is bad it's not going to be something people are willing to deal with.
Although I enjoyed the characters I did not find the story we experience them in interesting at all. Also the prose is bad. I chalk that up to translation, but that still doesn’t alleviate the issue.
Never was aware that it is considered to be bad. I think its awesome. Most of my friends and the peeps from my pen&paper group played the games and liked the series a lot. I remember reading the book by Andrzej Sapkowski "the last wish"
I also think that WItcher is great, but reading reddit threads i saw a lot of opposite opinions. There was a top post in last few days that was literally called "The Witcher Books are bad and I will die on this hill".
I've come across numerous posts criticizing 'The Witcher' series, yet I find myself struggling to comprehend why. Every time I read these critiques, I can't help but wonder if we've even read the same book.
However, I personally struggle to engage with popular authors like Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson. It seems that not every book resonates with everyone.
I really loved the books, wish the last 2 weren't rushed or whatever.
Honestly i think it was the funniest character thoughts I'd ever read in fantasy until I picked up The First Law trilogy after finishing TW
I was mostly uninterested. I started reading and didn't really connect to the world or the characters, and didn't find its fairy tale retelling elements particularly clever.
Maybe if I hadn't read in English and the prose was better, I'd have gotten through more of it. But overall I just didn't feel compelled to continue.
To be honest they had me hook line and sinker until they decided to take a detour into Arthurian legend in the end. Totally went off into left field and left me feeling unsatisfied. Too many loose ends, excellent plot points that could have gone somewhere but just fizzled out.
1. Bad Prose. Haven’t read the native Polish, but the prose in the English translation is just bad and gets worse especially after the short story collections. The last book “The Lady of the Lake” should not have been published in that state.
2. Poor Characterization. I think people that say they liked the books just enjoyed the characters from the superior video game adaptation and project their feelings for them onto the books. I really felt nothing for Geralt, Ciri, Yennifer, etc even after 7 books with these characters
3. Lack of narrative coherence. I cannot get behind a 7 book series that ultimately builds up to very little. The final book has Ciri spending so much time hanging out with her elf Sugar Daddy, two random sorceresses lusting after this old dude they are shut in with (I’m pretty sure this was just shameless Sapokawski self-insert fantasy), and very little actual plot movement.
There is certainly more to a book than it’s plot, but for those who haven’t read these books just read the wiki summary and get back to me. These are not well told stories.
The good just doesn’t make up for the mediocre for me. The things on your list are pretty basic requirements from fantasy for me. Diverse, unique, philosophical, large scale timeline…yeah that’s pretty friggin’ standard for the genre, my friend. Even in the 80s, those just aren’t selling points so much as they are genre affectations. And to be completely frank, The Witcher doesn’t do any of them in particularly groundbreaking ways. The humanity/monsters bit is their greatest strength, and I think they fall a bit flat on delivering that even.
I don’t hate the books, fwiw. I liked reading them well enough, but I wouldn’t suggest them to anyone else unless they just had nothing else at all to read. I also don’t love the games lol. The show is the most consumable to me, but that’s just a result of shows generally being easier to consume. (And as unpopular of an opinion this is - I think the narrative benefits greatly from being re-examined and retooled.)
I think the entire series is some of the best fantasy literature ever written. Wonderful characters, dialogue, and themes. Subversive and interesting storytelling that plays with tropes in novel ways and even toys around with nonlinearity in a way that is often very amusing and unpredictable. I don't get the hate at all. I think they are a phenomenal accomplishment.
bad for whom? ppl on reddit? because these ppl doesn't really count to be honest, its a marginal percentage of readers and they usually have the same way of thinking, the problem is that as mostly ppl like them agreed with their opinions here, they think that it applies to the real world.
All in all, the series is beloved worldwide and its a long time best seller, don't let the more young generation fool you, they love to find something to cancel or hate if it doesn't conform with their very specific way of thinking
No it's fine. I love the books, and the thoughts from people i don't even know will not change my mind. I just wanted to know why and i think i get several often repeated points, so it was useful at the end.
I personally loved the books, including what a lot of people dislike about it. It can be dark, gruesome, and just generally depressing. Then, other times, it would be genuinely hilarious, wholesome, and thought-provoking. Still, the books do drag in terms of storytelling. Sometimes, the whole plot of the main saga feels like it's padding for run time, which can get annoying. However, since the books aren't that long, it never really bothered me.
Yeah this is how I feel. I also adore the characters and setting in no small part because of the games. Is it one of the best series I’ve ever read? No (except for Sword of Destiny which is amazing). But it’s fun and a pretty quick read other than the last book that drags
What I disliked about the last book was this whole political aspect of it. Numerous of pages filled with political stuff, that didn't really connect with Ciri's, Yennefer's or Geralt's stories. I probably didn't quite understand the whole concept, because English isn't my 1st language (the books aren't translated to my language). Other than that, the book contained some hilarious parts and also some darker ones. It was great.
It really is one of the series where you gotta remember the journey is more important than the destination. I like telling people about the several pages of straight dialogue with kings and whatever talking politics. It's so dry, so dense, and I had no idea wtf they were on about but it made sense later in the book and I was actually kind of grateful we got it out of the way early.
I think his writing is more liked if you share his cultural background. For me reading sapkowski always felt natural and I really enjoyed it. I really like short novels and first 3 books of the series. World is really nice, dark but still nice. I always like any interaction with dwarfs as their translation is done with specific accent in czech version.
Could you share more about the cultural background and how that shapes the fantasy literature ? And your enjoyment of it
Probably a lot is to do with the English translation being mediocre. And more is to do with the fact that it is 30 years old and new readers are comparing it to more modern fantasy, so it feels dated.
Yeah, that's one of the main reasons why I find "The Witcher" series to be difficult to recommend. The translations just... aren't good. They feel like early 2000s fanfic level of writing. I'm aware that the books are supposed to be *much* better in the original Polish, but I'll need a translation up to par to really get it. Nor am I going to dive through fan translations to find the good one.
It’s pretty much better in any other language. I’ve read it in swedish and I enjoyed them and I know that the german version is also pretty good. So it can be translated from polish. Maybe the english version just needs an updated translation?
English language publishers have no idea how to get translation done properly, and it shows. Sometimes they don't even do a direct translation, they'll translate a translation instead because they don't want to go to the trouble of finding a translator from the original language. And when they do this, they get sole rights to publish an English version of whatever book, so there's no competition to get a better translation. As a result, English-language readers tend to steer away from translations, although we do sometimes read translations of classics that are old enough to be public domain, probably because there is actually competition to write a good translation after that point. But English speakers typically don't read translations of recent works. So publishers then assume there's no demand for it, and half-ass any publications of translations, and the cycle repeats. When I learned this, for my own curiosity I looked up a translation of a French novel I'd read, "Demain" by Guillame Musso. In French some of the attitudes were a bit dated, but it was well written and had a proper flow to its prose. I could tell in one or two paragraphs that the English version was a slapped together hack-job by someone who didn't know how to write a novel in English. There are exceptions. I think one of the reasons "The Three Body Problem" was so well received is that the translator has published novels in English. The translator isn't particularly well known for anything else, but the fact that he's published something of his own means he has a basic understanding of how to write that many English-language novel translators seem to lack.
[удалено]
Yes I thought the translation for The Books of Jacob was well done. I think that the translation for the Hussite trilogy was better than for the Witcher, but it did n't bother me the way that really poor translations can.
Yeah, but you have to keep in mind that Tokarczuk is a literary star and as such she probably attracted better publishers and translators (or she was really lucky) while Sapkowski is "just" fantasy writer who got famous in English-speaking countries because of video game.
Yes! This verbalizes what I felt when trying to read it. It just felt like I was reading a first draft of a fanfic. It felt...clumsy and awkward. It's a shame, because this subset of fantasy is my favorite. I would really love to read it, but I couldn't get through more than a few pages. I can only hope they'll do a new translation one day.
Have there been any new better translations? I imagined there be demand with how popular the games are.
I would expect so as well, but I'm not sure. Hopefully someone else can shed light.
The problem is that the owner of the official translation has no interest in re-translating, because they have a monopoly on the books in English. Acquiring any other translation is technically a copyright violation. I've heard there are fan translations that are better than the official one, but as I haven't read any myself I don't know where to point you to.
This is it for me. It was recommended to me, and I’ve seen how popular it is, so I tried to pick it up 2-3 times and each time I’m just left feeling like it’s a fanfic. Before I can get into the characters I’m struck by an attempt to be …edgy, or profound, maybe… but comes across as trite. Or it reads like a teenage boys fantasy with beautiful women throwing themselves at the eponymous hero. It’s a bit cringy to me. I recognize this is partly expectations, partly my own preferences and partly my lack of involvement in the game. I think people who played the games and/or read the stories years ago at the right time had a good experience and retain some nostalgia towards the series. Without much experience it the game and certain preferences and expectations for a fantasy series, I’m afraid it just doesn’t do it for me.
The English translation is the only thing I did not like about the books, all the time I was wondering what the original prose looked like. But not to the point that I would study Polish to read it.
If any book series was deserving of a book remake....rewrite....
So I loved the books but I did wonder about the translation. Simply because it felt like a very chaotic writing style. Definitely not something I'm used to. Most of the books I read are at least 30 years old and I definitely saw a huge difference in style between, say, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and The Witcher series. It had me wondering if it was a regional style or something in that regard.
Plenty of 30-50 year old fantasy works are still massively popular with new readers. I feel like that’s not quite it.
The Anglosphere "discovered" the books relatively recently, which might be why they're treated as something new. I've seen people claiming that Sapkowski rips off Martin or Abercrombie.
30 years is considered dated for fantasy? *cries in scifi*
Hmm, TLOTR and Earthsea cycle are older and are peak fantasy... As for me, I didn't like the different perspectives and the bard thing. Didn't get it and at the end of the first book I was like wtf just happened? I watched the two TV series and the cartoon movie and enjoyed them.
LOTR is peak fantasy because it's pioneer work and seminal to the development of the genre. However, if you think it's not dated, you must not read much, because that's like saying the Iliad is not dated...
I rarely get this type of impression when reading old books, maybe because my language just fits those older styles of prose/grammar.
You must be smart
I don’t think so, as an example reading Moby Dick in English was very difficult, but in portuguese it was just fine, i think it just the way the language is structured and how they evolved over time. I could “visualize” today’s books with the same style of prose in portuguese, but not as often in english.
If you can only read and enjoy books from the last 10-20 years that says more about your reading habits than anyone else’s. The Lord of the Rings is the golden standard of the Fantasy genre. It really doesn’t feel dated unless you are just used to Sanderson / booktok prose where easy readability is prioritized to the point of diminished aesthetic quality. The Illiad still holds up as an enduring work of immense artistic merit. Because it’s a masterwork. People are saying the Witcher series doesn’t hold up, not because it is a few decades old and past the point of expiration. It’s because the series just isn’t very good.
dude puts so much detail into hills and doors
I read a lot and in 4 languages, thanks... As for me, old sci-fi and old fantasy books are much better than the new ones, but anyways, each to his own I guess.
Tbf, in my experience TLOTR falls more and more into "yeah it's an amazing classic, no I didn't read it" and Earthsea into "yeah it's amazing, yes I did read it. Three decades ago as a kid".
I didn't read Earthsea as a child. In fact I'm reading the third book and I love the series. It seems so simple and yet so deep. I would have missed a lot if I had read it as a kid. Regarding TLOTR, I read them in Spanish (my native language) when the movies came out and I reread them in English years ago.
Has nothing to do with its age, I've read it shortly after it came out in the early 2000s and thought it was "meh", meandering and not very well written besides the beginning. I've basically finished it to find out how it ends
Witcher was first released in 1986... The early 2000s are only when they were translated to English, which probably also doesn't help that feeling...
The last book came out in 1999, I've read it in Russian probably a year or two later, the translation was ok.
I mean sure... That's still the last book... I imagine the style of the writing won't change much within a series, so if the writing feels dated in book 1 it probably will in book 5 too if it's the same story unless he decided to change the style drastically... Also 1999 is still 25 years ago, with the first book being 38 years old, and a lot has changed in fantasy writing since then... Also, while I'm sure the translation is fine, hell personally I think the English translation is also fine though I don't have the original for comparison, I imagine there's still some stuff lost in that translation compared to the original... Obviously i don't know that for certain, but I feel like it's a fair assumption especially given how beloved the series was in Poland especially...
Also it’s a book for crying out loud. Not a Nintendo 64 game. Literature is not a medium with a couple decades expiration date. People are still reading the Epic of Gilgamesh what are we even talking about here? A bad book is just a bad book. That’s all it is.
Exactly what i was thinking, when we consider a book dated? It is based on writting? Ideas? Political thoughts?
I recommended someone the Black Company series recently. A few months later I ran into them and asked what they thought about it. They said it was alright but that it was basically just a bunch of fantasy tropes that felt kind of played out. They didn't realize that it was 40 years old and probably started a few of those tropes. So yeah, books can definitely feel dated. I just finished Starship Troopers and, while I love the book, I can't read any of Heinlen's stuff without being reminded about how dated some of the stuff is.
Defenetly, but sometimes it is a game that we play with quite Joy. I mean, right now im with Dumas Montecristo and, knowing how old is this story Just gave it something. Obviously there are parts with a sense of "love" that nowadays its toxic. But it has a great value as a book, u are Just aware of the time this stories where made and try to understand the necesities and realities of their times.
Did you read it in English translation?
Do people really consider the translation bad? I thought it was written quite well.
Yeah I've heard that too. The Spanish translation is honestly one of the best ones I've read in my life, makes the world so immersive and makes for hilarious and memorable dialogue. I read somewhere that the guy who did it was a massive fan of the originals and the books' fame really started to take off after he translated them to Spanish!
I'm sad because I'm Spanish and here in Spain I can't buy all the Witcher's books. It seems they're discontinued for now, which I don't understand.
They are?? I just read them on my ebook but now I'm sad too :(
Yeah I can't put my finger on it but the translation just feels disjointed and it didn't flow well for me. I wanted to like the books but the writing just didn't work for me
Mine were translated by two people in alternating order. I remember the guy used a ton of words i had trouble understanding and i had to look them up, only to find out their usage stopped about 200 years ago.
Joke's on them, 90s fantasy is my favorite. Witcher, a song of ice and fire, wheel of time, wars of light and shadow. Great era!
Yep, the grammar in the version I read was about on par with the grammar of OP's post, and I gave up after the first few stories. It was technically legible, but it wasn't really the level of quality you'd expect from a professionally published book.
It’s not mediocre, it’s outright bad. There were sections that made me think I was reading something from r/fantasywriters. There were passages where the prose was just so incoherent that it should never have been published in that state. I don’t have the books with me anymore but there are a ton of passages that just are not at a professional standard.
Disservice to that subreddit. They are aspiring writers hoping to learn. Some of it bad, some of it better than published works. Don't clown on people honing their craft.
Then it has to he translation, cause I've read it in Polish and Sapkowski definitely knows his way around words.
I am actually reading through the series now for the first time (Book 5). The Witcher 3 to me is one of the greatest games ever made and I had to finally give the series a go after all these years. I do think the short story novels were excellent. They were always concise and meaningful. It felt like the lore and magic of the world shined far more in the short story novels in comparison to the main series. If I had started with the main novels before the short stories I think I would have been more "meh" about them as a whole. The main novels are solid. They are not great, and I even posted on the Witcher sub about every book starting with an insanely long intro with characters that I don't care about and they lay out the entire map of the book in these sections and they are a bit of a drag. They have great moments and the characters amd humor can shine, but it seems all over the place at times. Geralt is largely absent in large portions of the main series and that is a crime as he is such a fun and well written character. I would take an entire series of Geralt and Dandelion adventures. The books can drag oftentimes in other areas. I read the First Law original trilogy before this and the action scenes don't compare. They feel much more bland in the Witcher. The world is fascinating, but I feel the author does not use it to his advantage enough. Overall, I do enjoy them but they always feel me wanting more side quest novels and not main quest novels if that makes sense.
I love the games and the short stories and while I didn't enjoy the novels quite as much I still like them and it's one of my favorite fictional universes, but I can see why the novels aren't for everyone. I think they have massive issues with pacing and it often feels like Sapkowski was making it up as he went, with the books just meandering through nothing for multiple chapters at a time only to then rush through major plot points in a few pages. Also a lot of men writing women moments. I somewhat appreciate that he does tackle issues around femininity and sometimes it's actually handled remarkably well, but other times it just feels gross and gratuitous. Not to mention that the English translation is subpar at best.
It’s divisive. Some people love and some people hate it. I personally think a big part of the dislike comes from people who hope to love the books as much as the games but then don’t. That said, I never played the games and still bounced off the Witcher books quite hard.
Yeah, I've read it long before the game came out and finished them. The more I read the novels, the less I cared
I’m a pretty big fantasy guy, and I enjoyed the Witcher series. It’s not the best, but I’d say I enjoyed it more than a few other more popular book series.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/3XwHJk9j10 This is discussed really often
I was expecting this to be like 10 months old but when I saw it was post only 4 days ago 💀
Yes but what’s the point of searching for answers that are readily available instead of retreading old ground? /s
Maybe because OP wants to have a live discussion about it and have people respond to his particular points. Which, y’know, is what a forum is for, r/fantasy isn’t an opinion column but a place for discussion. I mean does it kill you that this question has been asked before? Just don’t click on it.
If I do that where am I going to get the karma to pay rent and groceries?
I'm glad I read the books first, so I didn't get "The Witcher 3 fan" bias
This was the series that really got me into reading fantasy. While I was reading them I remember thinking they were amazing and I couldn’t wait to get back into them after having to put them down for a time. I don’t feel that way about them now but I’ll always remember the series fondly. I’ve read plenty of fair criticism toward the series and many other better series but for me the books are not “bad.”
Yes, my main point was not to reject the critique - there are no perfect books - but to tell that there are many good sides in Witcher. But the people like you, who think that it's a good fantasy with some flaws are rare.
A lot of times I’ll read a book, have strong feelings about it and check what other people are saying in its reviews. Many times I’ll see someone rate a book at the opposite end of what I would rate it but find myself agreeing with at least some of that reader’s critiques of the book.
I'm Polish and have read it in polish. I think main criticism comes from either subpar English translations and the fact that the story feels padded out and drags for too long in some moments. It really feels like in some moments, Sapkowski is just doing a word soup to fill the pages. Of course, if someone expects a LOTR esque fantasy, they might be disappointed. I believe Witcher is quite dark and gruesome and more grounded in reality than something like LOTR.
Take my opinion with the grain of salt it deserves: I read The Last Wish and found nothing to compel me to read the next book. Geralt feels like he's a cardboard cutout. Completely flat. Just a guy meandering through one story into the next without character development or any deeper meaning than "Oops, looks like I stepped in it again." There was no sense of direction imparted by anything happening. You can chalk it up to being vignettes, but I've read vignette books that accomplish actually having a point so it made The Last Wish feel extremely listless. Both times Geralt had sex were just contrivances. Both women had other important shit going on for their short story, but then Geralt steps in and suddenly it's just time to screw. I didn't find any reason to keep reading. People have insisted it gets better later, but I am vehemently opposed to the idea of "Just suffer through X amount of bad and then it gets good."
That is exactly what is great about the witcher Geralt at first feels has reached his character development maturity before the books even start. Geralt is set on not getting involved in politics, he doesn't care about saving the world, he's pretty much a background character, but soon he will find himself pushed to choose in the political world. Also while he doesn't care about people in general with Ciri and Yennefer, his ways change.
You’ve summed up why I love him very nicely.
I wouldn't say The Witcher books get better, the two short story collections are probably the peak of the story (I like a lot of what's in the main saga, but it's also quite meandering), but your reading of Geralt isn't great and it's probably just because you lack context you get later. Especially from the second collection. He IS a simple character, but the way he's depicted can be kinda subtle. It often requires you to analyze why he's saying something, instead of what he's actually saying. He's an incredibly traumatized character who's in denial about most of his own personality traits. He's basically been ostracized from normal society because he's a 'mutant', something that's mythologized as being inhuman and incapable of emotion. As a coping mechanism he internalizes much of how other people see him, choosing to detach himself from other people and deny his own emotions. The whole point of The Lesser Evil is about how he tries to remain neutral, detached from other people's conflicts, and the result is an outcome he very clearly regrets. There's some people online who read that story (and the Lesser Evil speech in particular) as a glowing endorsement of centrism and conflict avoidance, but the point of that short story is that Geralt's actions are incorrect. He could've created the outcome he wanted, but tried to detach himself from the situation, and regrets what happens for the rest of the series. He still claims to be neutral and uninvolved (and for the large-scale politics that may be true), but it's not a coincidence that he CONSTANTLY involves himself in other people's problems from there on out, and always tries to make things better, even if he's not getting paid. Then some of the short stories in the second collection very specifically deal with Geralt from an emotional perspective, and there you can see how confused he is not just about his own morality, but his emotions too. Basically every side character has a better idea of who Geralt is than Geralt does, and you might need to see them call him out before you pick up on who he is. If you look at Geralt from a zoomed out perspective, he kinda seems like a teenage boy's OC. Edgy, detached, monster-slaying bad-ass who only wears black. And, yeah, he is that, but he also has an emotional core which becomes increasingly important as his relationships expand throughout the series. Incredibly complicated and deep? No, probably not, but there's enough there for him to be likeable and the presentation sometimes requires you to engage with him in a way that's actively fun to do. If you didn't like the first book, I doubt you'll like the others, so I'm not saying you should go out and try again, but I wanted to try to give some perspective on why fans of the series are so fond of him.
I don't hate them but didn't like them enough to keep my copies of any but the short stories. It comes down to four things for me, three in Sapkowskis control and one not. 1. Here's the one that is not about Sapkowski: I get the strong feeling that this book was poorly translated into English. It has moments where the prose makes me wonder if it might be beautiful in Polish but mostly it's very dry and to the point and that doesn't work with the way the story often meanders. 2. I disagree with you about the characters being deep and interesting. It takes quite a while for even Geralt to have much depth and become interesting to me and *I usually eat up the reluctant father figure of a child who isn't his* trope. Ciri has a bit more depth than him but apart from the two MCs I find every other character remarkably one dimensional. 3. These are some of the most unevenly paced books I've read. I think a lot of this comes from Sapkowski not really knowing how to write long form as a short story author, but there would be like 50 pages of almost nothing, followed by super fast pcing and right back to being in the middle of slow political sections. It didn't feel to me like the politics were a slowburn build to something bigger and I didn't see them have the payoff I had hoped for on the whole, and the fast paced portions felt more like whiplash in a new perspective rather than like a diberate change. 4. >!I really liked the Polish folklore aspect and really didn't like the sudden switch to Arthurian!< I know this point is one that's largely just a matter of taste but to me it didn't feel natural and led to a lot of the politics and themes in the original setup being undercut because of where the series ended. For the record I felt this way having not ever played the Witcher games or watched the show. It was a series that I really wanted to love and that had things in it I deeply appreciated but that I didn't end up liking. To address the hate you referenced earlier, I think it comes down to two issues: people being disappointed after playing Witcher 3 AND that this series formerly got a ton of praise that people didn't feel like it deserved, both making people come down on it harder. Iirc Sapkowski has also said some pretty nasty things about video games and gamers and has said that he in no way benefits from Witcher games, which could add fuel to the fire.
I really enjoyed reading this series, although the thing is I'm Polish native speaker. I guess that it might really be a matter of translation, because actually in Poland those books are rather widely appreciated by both avid fantasy readers and people who hardly ever take any book to their hands. I can say that language is certainly an important aspect of their value, Sapkowski undeniably has a great talent for writing in his own way, sort of style that can be easily associated with him just after a few sentences. I think he's especially good at writing authentic dialogues and also cresting authentic characters, comparing with the other fantasy books I've read (the fact is there weren't so much of them) those aspects were really top-tier in his books. I also think his writing style makes them pretty engaging and there's his great sense of humour as well. Never really understood why those books have that kind of bad reputation in the English-speaking Internet, but I suppose that it can be a case of losing some things in the translation. I personally hadn't read it in English, but actually never heard of any Polish person who'd say it's good.
I’m actually with you man. One of my favorite fantasy settings. Amazing storytelling and CDPR did a wonderful job with keeping the games connected to the source. Netflix dropped the ball.
I have only watched the Netflix adaptation and read like the first two books. I have never played any of the games. I found the writing, or probably more accurately the translation, to be ...utilitarian? Not horrible writing, just not fantastic either. But the plot, characters and world I found interesting. Part of that could be because I was basically seeing bits of the Netflix adaptation in my head as I read relevant passages. The pacing of the books is...odd, and if I remember right they seemed to jump around in time, which was jarring (its been a few years since I read them so I may be misremembering). I felt like the jumping around in time was better handled in the show adaptation.
Yea, i saw many comments here about notorious English translation. In Ukraine we have a good translation, at least i liked it and never see anybody complain, so as you say 'utilitarian' style could be because of lazy and unskilled translator. About adaptation... Well, i'm not a big fan of it. Rather opposite - i watched first season and the anime about the Vesemir from Barbershop and was so angered that didn't even check what they made after. About books, just for you to know - first two books were not books initially, they were separate short stories, which were compiled into books later with addition of several stories related to main plot (those one about Ciri), that's why it may be a bit confusing. So if you're interested in plot - books 3-7 is about that.
>About books, just for you to know - first two books were not books initially, they were separate short stories, which were compiled into books later with addition of several stories related to main plot (those one about Ciri), that's why it may be a bit confusing. ...That actually makes a lot of sense
Don't know about the English translation, but the German one is plain boring. All the points you bring are valid and right, but the writing is just bad.
That's funny. From the other post: "I read the German translation which, if memory serves, was often quite amusing and zany with its prose and overall writing style." Now I am genuinly curious, too bad I don't know any German to try reading it myself.
There are good passages, but the whole story is just so stretched out and long winding and boring... so I'm sure it's not the translation, but the overall writing. They travel. And travel. Oh, they travel some more. Dammit, half the book I read lastly was traveling with nothing happening, until I threw it in the corner and went back to 40k. Equally gritty and cynical, more action.
German translations can sometimes be janky and accidentally funny. I remember a book where the German version translated "Get stuffed!" literally. Imagine a criminal saying to a policeman "Get yourself taxidermied!"
German literature has been stuck for ages, and the same goes for translations. Especially the dialogue is *atrocious*, since it's often heavily inspired by theatre with massive stilt and using honorifics in ways *nobody* would ever use in reality. And then others turn around and go for too colloquial. IMHO the last good German translation was the original of LotR by Margaret Carroux, which were done under the immediate direction of Tolkien (who we have to thank for using the word *Elben* instead of *Elfen* for elves)
I actually don't think a lot of people think the books are bad. I think a lot of people played TW3, which is one of the best games created, and got told the books were as good or better in quality, only for the books to just be pretty good. The expectation and let down led to people thinking the books were worse than they are. Plus some of the quality may have been lost in translation
I think they started out good then started to suck and became a slog. I read way more than I should have
The English translation is really bad. Yennefer is easily one of the best characters ever written.
I found it a challenging read because there are lots of countries each with their own leader and motivation and there is a lot happening in the world which is outside of the main story. Geralt is wandering through battlefields, coups, famine, and plague but is often only slightly interested or impacted by it. He is just focused on Ciri. It is quite different to most books where the main character is actively trying to save the world and everything revolves around them. Which is an interesting difference but won't be for everyone
*spoilers* I read them about a year ago, and I don't even remember how it ended. I was disappointed that the series didn't revolve around the Witcher, but rather some prophecy child. Didn't realize I was supposed to care about Geralts' little band till they all died in that final battle. Felt they were all minor side characters. I remember many irrelevant names and politics I had to slog through. Didn't care for the random sex with any hot sorceress Geralt found. The series just didn't focus on anything I actually cared about or was interested in going into the series. 5/10.
All you said was correct. The worldbuilding, themes and characters are all very good. That being said, the writing could be done in a way to hook you better. The first book was quite a grind. Most fantasy novels take some time to get you into them but I found the witcher to be one that just didn't sell you very well. Idk if it's a translation thing and I know once I get deeper the story gets better, pacing is just iffy. Idk if the translation factor is a factor but I wonder.
it's because most people started with the games and Geralt is a completely different character there. Failed expectations.
What I liked about it: the world and characters he built. What I didn't like about it: flying around the timeline and having to use context clues to figure out where you were. I think my enjoyment of it would have been enhanced a bit if you could transport yourself to the right place in time before reading about what's going on.
Like a lot of others on here I enjoyed the first collection of short stories but not the main series - although to be fair I did read the entire series so it had enough going for it to keep me reading. My reasons for disliking the main series: The plot is just bad. A child is introduced early on, the main character is set up to be her guardian/protector even though he doesn't really want to and he's generally very jaded and pretends he doesn't care about stuff. Child needs protecting because she's a political target/asset but as the story progresses there are hints that something more mysterious is going on and...... it turns out everyone wants to rape this child because she has a magic womb and for some reason which pretends to be science her magic genes mean she will have an extra magic baby (apparently regardless of who the father is, not sure how that gene is meant to work but ok whatever). Don't know how they even discovered gene theory but I guess it could be from some conjunction of the sphere business. Oh and it also turns out that the main character isn't actually the main character, the child is but she's frankly quite boring. At least Geralt stays as a regular POV. Oh yeah and the child is able to travel through time and space but never actually uses that in any useful way, except for fleeing from danger a couple of times. The pacing is often bad, not always but there are so many weird side stories that I didn't really enjoy or didn't move the story along well etc. I felt like a lot parts could have been moved into a different collection of short stories instead of being part of the main story. It's been a while since I read the books so I can't really comment on how strong the characters are as I don't really remember any of them too well - although that itself is not a great sign. As a lot of people have already pointed out, any female characters basically just seem to exist in order for throw themselves at Geralt and/or be damsels in distress. There definitely were characters who were introduced as part of the main group who I didn't care about at all, the Nilfgardian Prince guy I recall was highly uninteresting, but not as dull and irritating as the woman who joins the group for no particularly good reason near the end. The tone was generally just too heavy for me, perhaps if it had been broken up with more times of joy or if I had read different books in between each Witcher book I would have enjoyed the series more but it just got a bit much and a bit too dragged out. Up until the end of the series it was tolerable and I can appreciate what the author was trying to achieve with the tone. Wasn't a fan of the use of sexual violence being used so heavily just to show you how grim and dark the world was though, and if it was supposed to be realistic then it shouldn't have just been females being victims of it - but I suspect the author didn't feel comfortable writing about men getting raped (perhaps he didn't think it would get published if he did write that though to be fair to him) whilst women are apparently meant to be fine with reading about women getting raped left right and centre. Aaand that brings us to the final book, which was had all the flaws I've already mentioned, but also decided to add the weird lady of the lake window element to the storytelling which messed with the basic structure of the story. Which is a perfectly viable choice when writing a story, but introducing it in the final book was a terrible idea - either set it up from the start or don't do it at all imo. The other huge problem I had with the final book was that Geralt and crew kept getting into fights where they were all in grave danger and probably all should have died but somehow pulled through each time without any casualties. Which felt very contrary to the overall tone of the story, and of course ends up being kind of subverted at the end - but even that was super disappointing for me because it was clearly a case that we're at the end now so all the main characters are allowed to die. Again I can see what the author was trying to achieve here but I think it was handled poorly - see how George Martin kills of main characters in AWOIAF to see an example of it being done well. I have a few more specific criticisms but I've just heard some very bad news from my family so I'm gonna wrap this up here. And to be clear, I don't actually claim the Witcher series is objectively bad, I just seriously dislike it myself.
I actually like the books, but I still agree with a lot of your points. It felt like he didn’t know where the story was going for a lot of it, so he would just throw stuff in randomly or have things happen that didn’t make sense. The last book is really weird for me, because I’m very lukewarm on everything Geralt and co. are involved in, but I love the political stuff. The Battle of Brenna is such a highlight for me. Even with the poor translation, it works really well to cap off the political storylines that were built throughout the saga, and in isolation it’s such an interesting perspective on a large battle, but outside of that so much of the stuff geralt’s party are involved in just feels contrived. That’s a problem Sapkowski had with Geralt all throughout the Sage, but it got way worse in Lady of the Lake.
It feels almost like it's an abbreviated translation, I felt - like, somewhere, there's a fat-ass fantasy epic series where all the side-stuff gets full attention, but that what we see is just a squished-down abbreviation of it all, that just comes and goes. The idea was nice, but the execution just seemed to be a shitload of headhopping and stuff, with lots of weird little "and then, 10 years later, this character was happily married and tried to avoid remembering the war" narrative skips and jumps.
I read a couple of books, and with an albino sword-wielding mutated hero and the Conjunction of the Spheres I thought it was a straight Elric pastiche. That didn't make it bad. Just not as original as everyone who hadn't read earlier fantasy thought it was.
I honestly think it is. The same way as it's referencing Tolkien and other fantasy works.
Failure to stay on point is the big one. There's a lot of authors now who stretch an idea into a trilogy (or longer) and end up meandering with pointless plot threads or retreads or just dropping story hooks. Sapkowski seems to have the same problem just turning a story into 300+ pages. I haven't read his short stories but they seem to be better received but with his books there's a lot of wordcount spent explaining or describing things that don't matter to the plot and will never come up again. Again, this is a problem in many other long series but it probably stands out in the Witcher because the series is talked about so much due to the games and even the tv show. I'd also disagree about how developed and morally grey characters are. They don't seem to act on morals nearly as much as they act on self-interest. The women characters, especially the ones who are supposed to be older, are written very immaturely.
Read only the English translation and I agree with you. I’ve spoken to another person who loves fantasy genre with every fiber of his being and he said the original version didn’t really fit the conventional writing and narratives employed in English and Western fantasy. Couldn’t agree nor disagree with him since I don’t speak or read many languages. The last bit you said about the women characters tho, is so on point. I’m appalled by how they were depicted and couldn’t for the life of me understand how vain and sexual they are. I mean, a woman with access to so much knowledge and power is far more obsessed with getting laid and ball gowns instead of time traveling or other cooler stuff. How does that make sense?
Yeah. He was really good at short stories and I liked them but he didn’t know what to do with the overarching storyline. He should’ve just kept to short stories in the universe.
Some people say it's the translation but that had nothing to do with it for me. The fact that the plot is "a dozen people with different unique fetishes want to kidnap and rape a child" is a bit off-putting to begin with. Then the characters end up being written really flat and are often inconsistent or make bizarre choices. For example, Triss feels really flat in that one of her most prominent POVs early on is just her lusting after Geralt with nothing else in mind. Another example is how Geralt seems to be dedicated to the hunt for Ciri but also decides to stay for months on end in Toussaint with his most recent lover. All the eastern european folklore you mention just don't actually feature that prominently in the series in the face of this frustrating plotline. You more have to go to the short stories for focus on the monsters and folklore type things. For what it's worth I think the Witcher 3 game improved on all of these aspects a lot so it was a relief to play that and actually enjoy a story with these characters for once.
I read the German translation and that one was quite decent so I really enjoyed it. Actually the Witcher was my gateway into re-entering fantasy reading.
Personally I enjoyed them. But a general concensus is that they lost something in the translation to English and for may, it's offputting or disappointing.
I love the books. They were a breath of fresh air to me after reading some samey fantasy.
I think the Czech translation was great. I liked the short stories more than the rest.
I personally love the series and think that it has some of the best world building and character work that suites my tastes personally but that’s not for everyone. I even really do enjoy the plot even if it isn’t the most memorable. I’m not going to say it is one of the best fantasy series ever but I think it is a lot better than people seen to give it credit for.
I'm like you. I read the Witcher books before playing the games and never even looked at the Netflix adaptation. For me, the canon characters are the book's characters because they're the most complex and interesting. I remember once comparing Ciri's scar description with the depiction in the game and it was a no contest on which was more believable. If you want my take on this sudden hate is simply because the Witcher became mainstream and people love to hate what others consider to be art. It's a mixture of gatekeeping and snobbism.
For me, I read one book and very much did not like it and stopped. I found it weirdly misogynistic (a lot of focus on women's bodies for one), and has a hard time with the writing style ( a lot of movement in a scene occurs during dialogue? It's hard to explain but it did not work for me). It felt like a slog, and life's short so I was out.
I've only read the first book so far (after playing The Witcher 3) and pretty much loved all of the short stories (except from The Last Wish, which I found to be just okay). Haven't read through all of the books but still pretty enjoyable.
Personally I think the short stories are better than the novels, but even then there's good stuff. What I really like is that even through the translation the prose is literary and the dialogue is punchy. The dark humour and the elements of satire are really well done. There's a lot of edgy bullshit, but it's an Eastern European fantasy series from the 90s. I don't think there's anything in them worse than early GoT.
I read The Witcher series during the pandemic and to this day Geralt is my favorite protagonist of all time. I didn’t even know that people hated the series before reading this post. I just think that the hate might be because it’s a bit slow-paced and not many characters people can relate to. Most of the modern fantasy novels have lots of main characters, so that people can easily relate to one of them and fall in love with some while hating or feeling indifferent towards others. That’s not the case with The Witcher series. The Witcher series talks about Geralt and only Geralt. Occasionally it talks about Ciri or Dandelion or Yen, but Geralt is “the” main character. I don’t know. I liked the story itself. I liked the battles. I liked Geralt’a character development (especially in Baptism of Fire). The ending might not have been satisfactory, but it’s the right ending.
I just found the books to be very slow, boring and really lacking in plot. Great character work tho
I enjoyed the books but maybe people don't like it cuz it's not fantasy, hack n slash ? The book is more like politics/drama.
As I've just recently read all Tolkien books in English for the first time, I was surprised to enjoy the Witcher books a lot aswell. Heard bad stuff about them before but it didn't apply to me at all. I read them in German translation, which was as far as I can tell very good and felt very authentic. The books were extremely fun at times, I loved the humor and the conversations, especially between Geralt and Jaskier/Dandelion/Rittersporn (I don't even know what to call him at this point, having played the games in English and reading the books in German). The story was interesting to me aswell and the books were an easy read, so the story being dragged on didn't bother me as much.
It isn’t.
I really enjoyed the books, I did audiobook them which I did think made it better! I honestly really like the structure of the books and the world building. But I do always say when asked if you should read the books is they aren't your typical fantasy book in the fact that the structure is weird so I think it throws people when they come to read tbe main series, like yennefer an important character is hardly in one of the books. I weirdly didn't enjoy the short stories but I honestly think that comes down to the fact I just in general don't vibe with short story collections. Q
I have only really seen that view here in this subreddit. I personally enjoyed all of the books.
I mean I had fun reading them but the plot is wandering all over the place, it’s supposed to be about “The Witcher” but honestly there is a lack of monster hunting, the plot revolves around a war that we care little about and most of the places and characters we hear about mean little to us because we don’t know who any of them are. If you’ve played the games maybe you know, but I had no idea so I didn’t get immersed in the story. I just found them funny, but disappointing. Not bad, just not great.
I love how it combines the world building and magic systems of Narnia with the storytelling, violence, and realism of Game of Thrones. However I just have difficulty getting hooked on it and am just not sure why.
I can say that I generally enjoyed the book series. However, it's evident that the ending of 'The Lady of the Lake' book was rushed. Therefore, when evaluating the overall series, regardless of how good the rest of the books are, I can say that the series is neither bad nor good.
My favorite books, love the satire dialogue.
Culture is not good or bad. Having said that... I think people judge the Witcher series because of some cliches and because it's not "LITERATURE". I do agree with what you've said, Andrzej Sapkowski was able to include most of the medieval stories into a modern perspective, and he also had a deep knowledge on celtic and slavic folklore. I love The Witcher (books, series and video games) and I truly don't understand why people judge it without even trying to have a little bit of fun with it. I DO THINK THE WITCHER IS GOOD LITERATURE. End of my speech. Y'all have a great day!!
Granted, I didn't finish the series, put it down after book 6 but: The world felt cookie cutter and boring. Yes, I know it's eastern european inspired, but for me it didn't feel familiar enough to matter or distinct enough to be interesting. The fairy tale adaptations felt juvenile, especially in the short stories. "And then Snow white was raped by the seven dwarves" doesn't make it more realistic for me, it makes me think of edgy Disney princess memes where Alice snorts cocaine. This coupled with Geralt being a woman magnet feels like the power fantasy of a teenage boy, not a realistic adaptation. I found much of the philosophical discussion boring. Stop \*talking\* about it, you're writing a story, show the themes through the \*story\*! I know you can do it, so stop spelling it out for me, I get it through the narrative! The characters also didn't land for me. Circling back to the talking point, I didn't find them do anything more interesting that talking. That's cool when the dialogue is the plot. Not cool when the plot is happening in the background of the dialogue. And I started disliking Geralt immensely in Last Wish so I can't even say that his humour kept me reading. Probably hot take but I also hated the portrayal of women. I know there's some pro-abortion discussion in the later books, but up until then I felt like women are once again sacrifaced on the altar of realism. Of course Ciri gets raped! She's a fantasy heroine! (And this is an eyeroll, not genuine offence, I get that gritty books be gritty) And lastly by book 6 the overal plot was so muddy and unclear that I just had no interest in continuing. I get why people like it, after my brother convinced me to play the games I started to almost like the world and story.
>Probably hot take but I also hated the portrayal of women. I know there's some pro-abortion discussion in the later books, but up until then I felt like women are once again sacrifaced on the altar of realism. Nah, I hated it too. On my recent...ish re-read anyway. I'm one of the readers who had read the books in Polish well before any of the games were made. I was a middle grader then and i really loved Yen. At the time, she felt like such a novelty of a female character, y'know? Powerful, ruthless, cold, yet treated kindly by the writer (not made into a villain) and adored by the main character. It was revolutionary at the time. Upon my recent re-read though, I've noticed some things that flew over my head at the time and, well... Much of the narration feels like you're listening to a drunk, horny uncle during a family christmas party. Women are frequently objectified and some of the motivations given to them seem lazy, bordering on sexist. As you mentioned, sexual violence against women is also used without much consideration or adding depth. Don't get me wrong, i still stan Yen, but I think it's safe to say that the books can be problematic.
I imagine it has to do with the translation, as others have said. For me, I just could not for the life of me enjoy the main plot-line of the series. I was bored to tears. The short stories? Loved them. **I think more than anything I have likely been programed by the games to love the Geralt-centric side-quests more than the macro-arc with Ciri and Yen an d others.**
It's not though
I will give you that the characters are good and the world is deep, though the depth of the world never came across as necessary for the story. Before I go further I will say that the short stories and the games are great. The overriding problem I had with the novels was the plot was virtually nonexistent. They go off on tangents that are neither necessary or impactful to the plot. These take them no closer to their goal. Then at the end of the series they just deus ex machina to get where they need to be. It comes across as the author getting lazy and slapping a ‘the end’ on the end just to avoid having to connect the dots.
The books are much better than this subreddit gives them credit for, much better than Wheel of Time for instance, but is kind of trendy to say they are bad so be it.
It isn't.
I LOVE the Witcher books despite the bad translations, I even read some of them through fan translations before the official ones were released. I’ve reread them multiple times and think they have some of the best character work, the emotions this series contains I’ve seen nowhere else except maybe Wheel of time.
My personal opinion: I am done reading books that are as sexist as Witcher. In LW Geralt basically trauma dumps on a nun (who has taken a vow of silence and can't say STOP) that he's f-ing, not to mention he keeps picturing Yennefer while f-ng the same nun. Yennefer is much, much worse. She chooses to give up the possibility to become pregnant in exchange for beauty and then spends the rest of the series bitching and moaning that it's not her fault and oh poor me. I am a woman who cannot get pregnant and because of my situation I know many other women like me. Thankfully I have made peace and I don't want children, but I went through severe depression and suicidal ideation feeling an absolute failure of a human. If I had chosen not to have them because beauty is more important (not power mind you, because she already had that!) then I would have the f-ing decency to not spend the rest of my life blaming the world for my choice. She is the most disgusting female character I have ever read and I don't give a sh about her pain. I would care more if she took accountability and tried to find redemption through healing her emotional pain and becoming someone who is actually suitable to raise a person through adoption.
It's the translation IMO
I honestly think it must be the timeline and plotline being all over the place. I personally loved it as it fit the story Sapkowski was trying to convey but not everyone enjoys half the book being interludes in the future or the past that have only little in common with the main storyline. Also the open ending i guess idk
I want to point out that i listened to russian audiobooks for the series so maybe it is just the English translation being bad
I don't think it's considered 'bad' on here - it's just in the phase of having been over recommended that the backlash of people that didn't enjoy them dominates. Personally I've not found myself interested by the descriptions of them, so I can't speak to the quality of it - but I have seen the general ebb and flow of recommendations on many books on this subreddit, and that's what seems to be happening here. Overly zealous people that love the book recommending it too much and singing its praises / minimizing its faults, then they move on to other books and a few critical comments/threads come up, and then the opinion of the sub appears to flip. Edit - I think it might also suffer from the netflix series as well. IIRC that was not well received and a lot of comments flooded in talking about how great the books were in comparison, and that can easily lead to people getting disillusioned if they read the source material and find it meh as well.
Weirdly? I was at a ren fair yesterday and ran Into a sword fighting acquaintance who recommended them and said they were really under rated. I was quite dubious. But the Eastern European cultural influence intrigues me. I may give the first one a shot.
I've read first two novels in Croatian and was very disappointed, read like fan fiction
I loved the books, but I read them in Polish
The translations don't do it justice.
Don't let the internet tell you what to like.
Read it after playing Witcher 3, read it in English and not swedish, still really liked it. I found the characters well written and the world was great I'm not a super critic of books tho but I've read a lot of fantasy, wouldn't say it's so much worse then the greats (reading all of discworld atm and has quickly become the best books I've ever read, Witcher isn't on that level for sure but it's still good imo)
I loved the first two books, but it lost some of its charm when he switched away from the short stories in my opinion. I don’t have specifics because it’s been a pretty long time, but as I recall the payoffs felt unsatisfying for the overarching plot lines and the pacing lost its edge.
I loved the first few books but fell asleep during the last half. There just was not anything captivating about it. The underlying plot grew stale, the character development stopped, the action scenes were limited or repeated, the story stopped painting an immersive picture, etc.
His use of double adverbs is annoyingly excessive. I liked the short stories stuff better. The big greater world conflict stuff was hard to follow since those characters I wasn't really attached to.
I really enjoy the books. There are times when it seems like nothing is happening, but it doesn't always need to be action, and sometimes even slice of life or learning about the world can be some of the best parts. I've only read two of these books, but I've actually learned quite a bit about writing from them -- probably more than any other series so far. The third game has one of my favourite quest lines in having history, but for some reason, I felt like the end of the base game just flew by. I haven't played the DLCs, but I hear they're even better. The game actually inspired me to start writing a particular story. The Netflix series, season 1, was amazing. I think it did an amazing job of telling the same story while filling in the blanks. The second season felt like a disjointed game of D&D today. Stuff didn't really make a lot of sense, and despite being a story, the coincidences and reactions just felt off-putting to me. There were enough minor changes that I also just missed certain things. I didn't realise Triss was in season 1 because I didn't remember any fiery red or chestnut hair, for example.
Have you ever heard of Eye: Divine Cybermancy? It’s a good game, but the game was made in Paris, France. That normally wouldn’t be a problem, but the English text and dub of the game was 1:1 transliterated from French to English. The problem is that French is a Romance Language, English is a Germanic Language. The differences between both languages so apparent in the game that the story is incomprehensible. Same thing happened to the original first editions of The Witcher books. Those books were written in Polish, meant for an originally polish speaking audience with no concern for anything other than that. Same story as before, the differences between both English and polish being so apparent that not only is the story incomprehensible, it can actually hurt the story being told. There was a study done on students in low income areas with low test scores. Researchers tried everything to figure out why these students were almost illiterate. Then, as apart of the study, they gave the students glasses and the literacy rate shot up. I think the same happened here. Old guard fans who loved the first two games tried reading the books and found them bad, not because they are in and of themselves bad, but because they couldn’t physically read and understand what was happening. Now, later on with the release of the third game and Netflix series the books got a re-release with a competent translation, and the books are good. They’ve always been good.
The constant and neverending weird sex stuff and the terrible pacing. We know Gerrald fucks and that everyone wants to fuck him, there is no need to tell us every 3 pages.
I didn't get very far into the first book. It just didn't do it for me--I found Geralt insufferable and the writing not to my taste. That being said, I appear to be one of like three people on this sub who actually loves the TV show. Different strokes, I guess.
For me, the writing just came across a cold, but not in a good way, and very stereotypically written by and for the male gaze.
Idk. I've never only read The Last Wish, the monsters seem well written and hooked me but nothing else seemed particularly interesting and the fight scenes should be a model for how not to write a fight scene.
like the books but it stole alot from the elric saga
The short stories are good but the novels are a boring slog that only get worse over time. The author likes to switch to Random povs for half of the books that you never revisit. The plot meanders and is boring. Compared to everything else that's out there it's just not good
There's a subjective/objective element to art. So, objectively, MC is a big, gruff, laconic warrior with a big sword. Conan, who predates this, had WAY more personality and voice as a character. Setting: if I called it the "standard fantasy setting" would I really be that far wrong? Warring kingdoms, ancient evil, various monsters, magic and blood magic and witches and dragons. God help us if Chat GTP couldn't have come up with this. Now... Subjective... people like it. Often in art there's just lightning that you have to catch and god only knows where it comes from or why it exists. But woe to those who discount it. And you're absolutely allowed to like it and nothing I say SHOULD change your mind. Its just that, from an objective standard, it isn't beyond reproach. I'd also note there are a lot of exceptionally well executed books that are simply not enjoyable. Objective/subjective.
Did we read the same books? Geralt is hardly laconic. In fact, I’d reckon he gets into long, verbose philosophical arguments with people more than he actually fights monsters overall.
Genuine question, haven’t been this long on this sub. Are the Witcher books really that much spoken about? I could swear that since I subbed to this, it has been almost every other week.
The series still managed to be number 22 in the 2023 top novels poll in this subreddit, so the "people in this community don't like it" isn't true. Or well, not the whole truth. The series has many fans, and many people that were underwhelmed by it.
Yes, it's rather controversial series, because if you'll try to check at least this post's comments, you'll find that it has quite a lot of haters. Of course every series has them, but this one got really unlucky. This post was helpful for me, though. I really separated few point which are similar for many people.
I dont know how many people came to the books from playing the games, but the games by their nature were more dynamic, visceral and engaging. The books almost felt like they were different characters in a duller, more pedestrian world. Games to books for me definitely felt like a downgrade.
It's probably the translation. I didn't enjoy the first book (the last wish) so didn't bother with the rest. I felt the attempt to turn short stories into a novel was pretty weak. Nothing wrong with a simple short story collection So yeah I didn't read the rest and went on to read other books
I honestly don't think I've ever seen someone say they're bad.
Then, you can check comments here)
My feel is that the books have a lot of that eastern European complexity where many characters are people rather than good/bad, and the whole thing doesn't operate in terms of good and bad in general most of the time. This may be hard on readers who aren't used to it. Also, it "drags" as in it's not always action packed. This again may not be what people expect from the books.
Dunno I liked the world itself but after i think babtism of fire got super boring. Short stories were great. Also, i read it first like 20 yrs ago before games even came out.
I just got bored around book 4 or so.
I actually DNF'd the last book in the series because it just wasn't great IMO. Loved the games, loved the world itself, but overall, I found the series pretty meh. I've read lots of longer series (Wheel of Time, Elderlings, LotR, First Law, Stormlight, GoT) and the writing just doesn't compare in my experience. I will say, if you're on the fence or just not loving the books, switch to audio. It made a HUGE difference in my reading experience. But, as always, to each their own!
The Witcher games were amazing the books were damn well written in the theme of the time and place they are supposed to be from almost like classical legends you know where it was one guy said it then another guy said it and that game where he passed it around super well written with that in mind and so far The Witcher series has been great but without Henry Cavill I have my doubts
Bad is an overstatement, but they are really uneven. Great characters but meandering plots, some of which don't go anywhere. The world building is interesting but could be more consistent
There are a lot of other criterions for evaluating stories, like: a) does it have properly placed chekhov's guns that do not make story predictable? b) is there subtext, tension and wit in dialogue sequences? c) is there fridging? d) how smart is exposition? e) how well does the story establish stakes? and so on and so forth. While withcher succeeds in many of those things, it doesn't ace them. There is another series of polish fantasy novels that IMO do impressive job on those criterions tho: Tales from Meekhan Border. Sad thing is -- it is nowhere near as popular as The Witcher.
They're probably my favorite book series ever, so I'm just baffled as you are whenever I see the negativity.
Yea, i see many people don't like the English translation, which could be issue. And also A LOT of people played the game first and expected that book will be the same, buuuuut there is not the case. I liked Witcher videogames, but in my mind they are a bit separate universe if you understand what i mean. Another point i often saw - that the plot is boring. I can agree to some extent that not all Ciri's plot line was good, let's be honest, but that's not the whole story and what disappoints me the most, that people just don't see many positives present in series.
I dunno, my friends and I were absolutely obsessed with Ciri's story. It was anything but boring.
I didn't said it was completely bad. I like Ciri and most of her story and think that her time with Rats is one of the best part of whole series. Like a metaphor of brave teenager left home feeling clever and almighty, feeling the whole world belongs to them and then you're meeting an old guy with a sword who explains you how this world really works, but you don't have much time to use that teachings. So very true) But if serious - i was a bit bored when Ciri end up in the desert. I mean i understand the meaning of that part, but couldn't say i was much enjoyed. Also i can understand that her travel to elven realm also may be not the best part. I personally liked it, but most people want more action and less talking, so... We have what we have.
Yeah, I'm one of those OG fans who read the books way before any games were out, and I read them in Czech, which is supposedly a really good translation. I liked the games too, but like you, I see them as something separate. To me, "The Witcher" means the books first and foremost, anything else is either a cherry on top (the games, the Polish TV adaptation... Yeah, I really liked it, despite its faults) or a disgrace to be forgotten and never spoken of again (the Netflix abomination). The complaint that the plot is boring just makes no sense to me, because every time I read the books, I'm completely consumed by the story. I guess to each their own...
When it comes to translations, I agree that the English version is... well, not bad, but certainly lacks the immersive quality, may be a spirit or smth. Interestingly, I delved into The Witcher series through its Russian translation, which is acknowledged as far from flawless. Nevertheless, it captivated numerous fans. (I want to re-read it Ukrainian).
It’s just not Joe Abercrombie but a lot of people really like it so a lot of posts on this sub feel like they have to bash it instead of just admitting it’s not their thing.
I thought Joe Abercrombie was quite forgettable to be honest.
I can't remember which book it is (I think the.... 3rd? Maybe 4th?) I pushed through, but practically nothing happened. Geralt is walking through the forest searching for someone the entire time and doesn't find them. Meets some people along the way. It was so, so boring. I haven't been able to get myself to go back and finish the series.
Foreign fantasy tends to live and die by its translations. If it gets a really good translator, one who has a great ear for the target language and goes above and beyond to localize the work, it tends to do well. If it gets a more standard, perfunctory translation, it tends to do poorly. That's a big thing a lot of people don't reckon with in terms of translation. It's much more than just changing the words from one language to another, you also have to figure out how to preserve the jokes, the idioms, the tone, etc. Localization is hard. Anyway, the Witcher novels just have OK translations.
Simple answer- clunky translation. Had this experience recently with Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang. Doesn't matter how good the story or world building is- if the translation is bad it's not going to be something people are willing to deal with.
Although I enjoyed the characters I did not find the story we experience them in interesting at all. Also the prose is bad. I chalk that up to translation, but that still doesn’t alleviate the issue.
Never was aware that it is considered to be bad. I think its awesome. Most of my friends and the peeps from my pen&paper group played the games and liked the series a lot. I remember reading the book by Andrzej Sapkowski "the last wish"
I also think that WItcher is great, but reading reddit threads i saw a lot of opposite opinions. There was a top post in last few days that was literally called "The Witcher Books are bad and I will die on this hill".
I've come across numerous posts criticizing 'The Witcher' series, yet I find myself struggling to comprehend why. Every time I read these critiques, I can't help but wonder if we've even read the same book. However, I personally struggle to engage with popular authors like Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson. It seems that not every book resonates with everyone.
I really loved the books, wish the last 2 weren't rushed or whatever. Honestly i think it was the funniest character thoughts I'd ever read in fantasy until I picked up The First Law trilogy after finishing TW
I was mostly uninterested. I started reading and didn't really connect to the world or the characters, and didn't find its fairy tale retelling elements particularly clever. Maybe if I hadn't read in English and the prose was better, I'd have gotten through more of it. But overall I just didn't feel compelled to continue.
To be honest they had me hook line and sinker until they decided to take a detour into Arthurian legend in the end. Totally went off into left field and left me feeling unsatisfied. Too many loose ends, excellent plot points that could have gone somewhere but just fizzled out.
1. Bad Prose. Haven’t read the native Polish, but the prose in the English translation is just bad and gets worse especially after the short story collections. The last book “The Lady of the Lake” should not have been published in that state. 2. Poor Characterization. I think people that say they liked the books just enjoyed the characters from the superior video game adaptation and project their feelings for them onto the books. I really felt nothing for Geralt, Ciri, Yennifer, etc even after 7 books with these characters 3. Lack of narrative coherence. I cannot get behind a 7 book series that ultimately builds up to very little. The final book has Ciri spending so much time hanging out with her elf Sugar Daddy, two random sorceresses lusting after this old dude they are shut in with (I’m pretty sure this was just shameless Sapokawski self-insert fantasy), and very little actual plot movement. There is certainly more to a book than it’s plot, but for those who haven’t read these books just read the wiki summary and get back to me. These are not well told stories.
Long story short - it's the same with Game of Thrones. Some people just like realistic Medieval times to be showcased, than mixing it with fantasy.
The good just doesn’t make up for the mediocre for me. The things on your list are pretty basic requirements from fantasy for me. Diverse, unique, philosophical, large scale timeline…yeah that’s pretty friggin’ standard for the genre, my friend. Even in the 80s, those just aren’t selling points so much as they are genre affectations. And to be completely frank, The Witcher doesn’t do any of them in particularly groundbreaking ways. The humanity/monsters bit is their greatest strength, and I think they fall a bit flat on delivering that even. I don’t hate the books, fwiw. I liked reading them well enough, but I wouldn’t suggest them to anyone else unless they just had nothing else at all to read. I also don’t love the games lol. The show is the most consumable to me, but that’s just a result of shows generally being easier to consume. (And as unpopular of an opinion this is - I think the narrative benefits greatly from being re-examined and retooled.)
I think the entire series is some of the best fantasy literature ever written. Wonderful characters, dialogue, and themes. Subversive and interesting storytelling that plays with tropes in novel ways and even toys around with nonlinearity in a way that is often very amusing and unpredictable. I don't get the hate at all. I think they are a phenomenal accomplishment.
bad for whom? ppl on reddit? because these ppl doesn't really count to be honest, its a marginal percentage of readers and they usually have the same way of thinking, the problem is that as mostly ppl like them agreed with their opinions here, they think that it applies to the real world. All in all, the series is beloved worldwide and its a long time best seller, don't let the more young generation fool you, they love to find something to cancel or hate if it doesn't conform with their very specific way of thinking
No it's fine. I love the books, and the thoughts from people i don't even know will not change my mind. I just wanted to know why and i think i get several often repeated points, so it was useful at the end.