First of all, its kinda boring. It doesn’t really follow the three act structure, Geralt and Ciri don’t have a clear goal for most of the book and a lot of the word count is just made up of inconsequential chatter. I don’t care about the scientist arguing with Geralt about the classifications of monsters. In the middle of the book, Geralt is just mooching about on a boat, waiting for the plot to happen to him. There is no over-arching threat, besides the villain Rience who I fail to find intimidating at all, because he gets his ass kicked every time he shows up. Its all setup about how the Elves are gonna start rebelling big time and Nilfgaard are gonna invade soon and the Four Kings are gonna start doing things real soon.

That’s probably the main problem with this book, its entirely setup. Its like reading the Fellowship of the Ring, but stopping just as the Fellowship is formed. The book finishes with Ciri reflecting on her time in a temple and thinking about how Yennefer taught her magic, which is not a conclusion to anything. Yennefer appearing is payoff for her constantly being mentioned, but she’s only in the final chapter so she doesn’t have much time to be an endearing character. Also, as I said, no three-act structure, so the finale of the book is just Ciri and Yennefer going somewhere for some reason to do something, its all very vague. The climax of the book comes just before, when Geralt kicks Rience’s ass and also the asses of four professional killers, but is then betrayed by Philippa Eilhart, who we don’t know or like at all, so who cares. Philippa says “oooh Geralt, I have to betray you because I’m doing something that will be explained in future books.” Most of this book is just setting up future reveals, without any internal setups and payoffs or satisfying narrative structure.

Also the characters are really not vibrant. There are loads of characters in this book, way too many for a 300 page novel that is also introducing a world and magic system. This means that anyone who isn’t Geralt, Ciri, Yeneffer or Dandilion has one personality trait. Terranova is fat. Tissaia de Vries is proper. Vilgefortz is scheming. There’s a scene where we’re introduced to five monarchs (of the Four Kingdoms? This book desperately needs a map). There is Demawend, Henselt, Foltest, Meve and another who I can’t remember. For the life of me I can’t tell you a distinguishing feature of any of them apart from Meve, who is wise and strong (two whole personality traits! wow!!!). Also Geralt has sex with a 17 year old and Dandilion also had sex with her when she was even younger, so what the fuck? Why? Its so unnecessary and just makes the protagonist a pedophile for no reason at all.

Another grave sin of this book is that the world is dreadfully dull. Wow, its a medieval fantasy world based on European feudalism? With swords and spears (but no guns)? With a magic system based off the four elements? Where fake Latin exists as a scientific langauge? How fantastic, how original. The world has two good things going for it. The first is the creatures taken from Eastern European folklore like strigas, since they don’t appear much in standard fantasy. That said, the Witcher does fuck all Witching in this book and these creatures barely appear. The other good thing is the use of early modern aesthetics rather than medieval. A lot of the clothes are described as 16th century, there is a focus on universities and cities and commerce and societies more intellectually developed than most of feudalism. But there are also no guns for some reason. They really wouldn’t be out of place imo.

I think the biggest problem with this book is that it entirely relies on goodwill from The Last Wish, which is a prequel and a series of short stories about Geralt. That book is about him actually hunting monsters and meeting Yeneffer, and if you hadn’t read it first, I think there would be absolutely nothing in the Blood of Elves to entice you to read more.