Baptism of Fire - Andrzej Sapkowski

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⭐ 10.0/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

I really enjoyed the last book despite it not focusing primarily on Geralt. I had come to terms with these books being about other characters, and I grew to love these other people and the events surrounding them. I was hoping that I would grow to love them enough to finally feel good about giving a 10 to a book in this series.

Turns out I didn't need to be concerned cuz this book is almost all Geralt. Man, what an awesome character, and what an awesome piece of atmospheric world building around him. I read about 2/3 of this book in one plane ride sitting and was completely engrossed which is doubly impressive because this book is not action packed. I just wanted to spend time hiking alongside my best friend Geralt and my other close friends Zoltan, Milva, Dandelion, Percival, and of course Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy. A wildly entertaining company of zany characters, all almost directionless and without much of a motivation. This book just works so beautifully and I really couldn't tell you how besides the force of their personalities, all splendidly written and developed.

This book is not super plot heavy, and that's almost the point. There is a major task at hand, yet nobody really knows how to achieve it. Yet the story is still moving along though it's character development and you learn tidbits of information through their adventures and the people they meet.

Their are a few other POV moments, and they are simply good. Nothing crazy, but it does a nice job of telling you what is going on outside of Geralt's wandering. The book kinda hints that the future books will focus more on Yennefer and Ciri, and while I'll be happy to get to them, I'm just happy I got a full book to spend with Geralt again.

These books are so unusual in their storytelling and reading them will surely be one of the primary memories I'll have from the summer of 22. I know there are a lot of cool things going on, but all I care about right now is reading more Witcher.

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