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The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
Something of a defence
I wouldn’t normally review a book in a genre in which I have been trying to write: it seems like asking for trouble. However, Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish is a strange book, and whilst flawed has received some quite tough reviews that I don't feel it deserves. There seem to be some misguided ideas attached to it as well.
To begin with, The Last Wish is not really a novel. The other Sapkowski book currently translated into English, Blood of Elves, is actually a novel, although only just, while The Last Wish is really a collection of short stories linked by an ongoing story called "The Voice of Reason". I suppose it’s more like a portmanteau, like the films Dead of Night and The Company of Wolves. It also isn’t a spin-off book of The Witcher computer game or anything else; those came later. Nor is it suitable for a young adult market. Whether you think the writing is childish or not, the issues raised and the references to incest, rape and so on are not YA fodder (the first page starts with a sex scene, which isn’t the best-written page in the book by quite a way).
So, on to what the book actually is. The stories are about the adventures of Geralt the Witcher, a modified human who travels the land killing monsters for bounty. Each story brings in a new dilemma, and no job is ever straightforward. Geralt himself reads like a cross between Philip Marlowe and The Man With No Name, and while he is a little too much of the strong silent stereotype, his attempts to deal with the various problems thrown up by monster-hunting according to his own code of ethics are always interesting. Like Marlowe, this inability to quell his conscience often gets him into a lot of trouble.
Many of the short stories reference fairy tales, which brings me onto the unusual setting of the book. The Last Wish was first published in Poland in 1993, and does feel as if it was created in a bit of a vacuum, as though the only reference books available were D&D manuals, Grimm’s Tales, philosophy textbooks and the odd David Eddings novel. Geralt’s world is populated by many talking non-humans (very unfashionable in fantasy at the moment) and a seemingly vast number of wizards. Yet the mature (by which I mean more than just gory and rude) treatment of the subjects takes the book away from stereotypical 80’s fantasy. In one story, "The Edge of the World", Sapkowski uses elves to talk about the problems faced by a more primitive culture facing assimilation. In "The Lesser Evil", he wonders, through Geralt, whether it is actually possible to make no choice at all when the options are all bad – using, bizarrely, the story of Snow White as a starting point. More than any fantasy novel, I was reminded of Angela Carter’s use of fairy tales in her collection The Bloody Chamber.
Sapkowski is also quite amusing at times, without seeming to poke fun at the genre or giving the impression that he thinks he’s doing something incredibly clever. To be honest, to be labelled “dark” or "intelligent" in fantasy sometimes doesn’t seem to take much more than an acknowledgement that war isn’t one big laugh and that being stuck in a marriage alliance is a pretty crappy fate. Sapkowski doesn’t labour this point, nor does he beat the reader around the head with Deep Philosophy. There’s no sense of irony or clever-clever “subversion” of the genre. He wears his learning pretty lightly, and to my mind deserves considerable credit for that.
The writing isn’t bad. The translator, Danusia Stok, has done a decent job, despite her strange fixation with the word “pirouette”. On occasion there are some very nice turns of phrase, although overall the prose is serviceable. Sometimes the conversations do go on a little, but there’s not too much to complain about. The characterisation is a little thin at points, and I did find Geralt’s main love interest little more than annoying.
So would I recommend The Last Wish? Yes, but approach it with caution. There are a lot of reasons for this book not to be to your taste, but there are not that many to say that it is actually bad. If a good fantasy book must have 600+ pages and several sequels, this is not for you. The Last Wish tries to do something more than just tinker with the clichés of fantasy as a genre, and while it is a qualified success at best, it is one of the more intelligent fantasy books I’ve read in the last few years.
(Note: For what it’s worth, The Last Wish is, I think, considerably better than the first Geralt novel translated into English, Blood of Elves. Also, whilst frequently bawdy and vulgar, The Last Wish felt to me much less adolescent in tone that the wenching-obsessed computer game The Witcher).
Something of a defence
I wouldn’t normally review a book in a genre in which I have been trying to write: it seems like asking for trouble. However, Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish is a strange book, and whilst flawed has received some quite tough reviews that I don't feel it deserves. There seem to be some misguided ideas attached to it as well.
To begin with, The Last Wish is not really a novel. The other Sapkowski book currently translated into English, Blood of Elves, is actually a novel, although only just, while The Last Wish is really a collection of short stories linked by an ongoing story called "The Voice of Reason". I suppose it’s more like a portmanteau, like the films Dead of Night and The Company of Wolves. It also isn’t a spin-off book of The Witcher computer game or anything else; those came later. Nor is it suitable for a young adult market. Whether you think the writing is childish or not, the issues raised and the references to incest, rape and so on are not YA fodder (the first page starts with a sex scene, which isn’t the best-written page in the book by quite a way).
So, on to what the book actually is. The stories are about the adventures of Geralt the Witcher, a modified human who travels the land killing monsters for bounty. Each story brings in a new dilemma, and no job is ever straightforward. Geralt himself reads like a cross between Philip Marlowe and The Man With No Name, and while he is a little too much of the strong silent stereotype, his attempts to deal with the various problems thrown up by monster-hunting according to his own code of ethics are always interesting. Like Marlowe, this inability to quell his conscience often gets him into a lot of trouble.
Many of the short stories reference fairy tales, which brings me onto the unusual setting of the book. The Last Wish was first published in Poland in 1993, and does feel as if it was created in a bit of a vacuum, as though the only reference books available were D&D manuals, Grimm’s Tales, philosophy textbooks and the odd David Eddings novel. Geralt’s world is populated by many talking non-humans (very unfashionable in fantasy at the moment) and a seemingly vast number of wizards. Yet the mature (by which I mean more than just gory and rude) treatment of the subjects takes the book away from stereotypical 80’s fantasy. In one story, "The Edge of the World", Sapkowski uses elves to talk about the problems faced by a more primitive culture facing assimilation. In "The Lesser Evil", he wonders, through Geralt, whether it is actually possible to make no choice at all when the options are all bad – using, bizarrely, the story of Snow White as a starting point. More than any fantasy novel, I was reminded of Angela Carter’s use of fairy tales in her collection The Bloody Chamber.
Sapkowski is also quite amusing at times, without seeming to poke fun at the genre or giving the impression that he thinks he’s doing something incredibly clever. To be honest, to be labelled “dark” or "intelligent" in fantasy sometimes doesn’t seem to take much more than an acknowledgement that war isn’t one big laugh and that being stuck in a marriage alliance is a pretty crappy fate. Sapkowski doesn’t labour this point, nor does he beat the reader around the head with Deep Philosophy. There’s no sense of irony or clever-clever “subversion” of the genre. He wears his learning pretty lightly, and to my mind deserves considerable credit for that.
The writing isn’t bad. The translator, Danusia Stok, has done a decent job, despite her strange fixation with the word “pirouette”. On occasion there are some very nice turns of phrase, although overall the prose is serviceable. Sometimes the conversations do go on a little, but there’s not too much to complain about. The characterisation is a little thin at points, and I did find Geralt’s main love interest little more than annoying.
So would I recommend The Last Wish? Yes, but approach it with caution. There are a lot of reasons for this book not to be to your taste, but there are not that many to say that it is actually bad. If a good fantasy book must have 600+ pages and several sequels, this is not for you. The Last Wish tries to do something more than just tinker with the clichés of fantasy as a genre, and while it is a qualified success at best, it is one of the more intelligent fantasy books I’ve read in the last few years.
(Note: For what it’s worth, The Last Wish is, I think, considerably better than the first Geralt novel translated into English, Blood of Elves. Also, whilst frequently bawdy and vulgar, The Last Wish felt to me much less adolescent in tone that the wenching-obsessed computer game The Witcher).
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