I read The Sword of Destiny to Boen after reading The Last Wish to him. Once again, I'm struck by how bad a writer Sapkowski is. His characters never use a sentence to make a point when they can use twenty. Dandelion was super whiny.
The plot and allusions to fairy tales and the references to the Law of Surprise was superlative, however. Sapkowski manages to introduce the concept in a way to make you accept it unquestioningly. This draws you into his fantasy world in ways no mere exposition can. The reference in the title of the book is with his relationship with Ciri, his adopted daughter (who will turn out to be a key MacGuffin in the video game).
Here, Sapowski breaks convention and never tells us what motivates Geralt. Did he want a child surprise in the hopes of continuing the lineage of witchers? Yet he never refers to his experience of becoming a Witcher as being pleasant, nor does he seem to delight in his life. Yet when given the chance to claim his child surprise he denies this destiny, which leads to several horrifying events (which may or may not be linked to Geralt's denial of the claim) and ends up with his being united with Ciri as a result.
We also see the seams in Sapkowski's world building, since despite various claims in The Last Wish that sorceresses cannot be fertile, we discover that Geralt was indeed beget of one. The whole thing is never explained.
I'd say that the only reason to read the books is that it adds depth to the video games, but the truth is this is one place where the video game is actually better than the book (or the Netflix TV show). I'd pass on it unless you became a big fan of the video game.
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