Andrzej Sapkowski knows how to tell a story and tells stories within stories. This is like playing a game and finding yourself enjoying all the side missions instead of playing the main storyline. I loved every second of it.

I watched The Witcher on Netflix before reading this, and the show follows The Last Wish pretty closely. There were some differences, but I enjoyed both. I’m not sure I could put one over the other, but I will say that I felt a great sense of sorrow for the elves in the book, more so than the screen could portray, so maybe I liked the book a bit more. They’re both so great though and the show does the book justice! Speaking of the show, I can’t wait to see the story of Nivellen on screen, even if it’ll give me nightmares.

Let’s talk prose, specifically dialogue. I loved how characters mentioned the actions of other characters in the moment and the movements of the environment while talking; it paints a photo of the scene around them and is a small detail that I appreciated so much!

The characters are the spotlight in this story. We get elves, kings, princesses, sorcerers, strange and terrifyingly demonic creatures, and a witcher who’s at the center of it all trying to make a living fighting monsters; I don’t think it can get better than that for a fantasy. Well, okay, we also have portals, djinns, all sorts of dark magic, and curses.

The Last Wish is what I want out of a fantasy; It delivers everything and builds an entire universe in under 300 pages without dreadful information dumps! Do yourself a favor and read it now!

I can’t wait to dive into the next of this series!