Re-read: The Last Wish

 Back to my reading duties with Boen, I decided to read him The Last Wish, the first book in The Witcher series. There's a lot to like about this book, chiefest of them is Sapkowski's penchant for twisting fairy tale classics and turning them into a plausible story set in his grim n' gritty setting. The classic story of The Witcher encountering Snow White and then eventually killing her sets the tone for the rest of the book. You also see encounters with the monster in the Beauty and the Beast, as well as the titular story, setting up the classic relationship between Geralt and the sorceress Yennefer. I love the twists in the story and I will happily say that Boen never saw them coming. The action is also intense enough that Boen didn't fall asleep as easily from this book as from say, a typical Neil Gaiman story (which shows that when picking bed time reading you probably shouldn't pick action packed novels).

Reading it a second time, however, I'm constantly reminded of how bad a writer Sapkowski is. His conversations drag on overlong, constantly bringing up irrelevancies. The prose is stilted and he has a penchant for trying to let you view important action from a distance or from the point of view of an irrelevant or ancillary character. So for instance, the terms of The Last Wish are never disclosed to the reader. In some sense you can understand this --- the author wishes to maintain control and authorial discretion over the long term. But it feels like a nasty cheat upon second reading.

I remember that by the third book this technique becomes overwhelmingly frustrating and I gave up on the series. This is one of the few book series where the video game is way better than the book. I'll probably keep reading the next book to Boen but stop after that.