The Last Wish

The Last Wish makes monster hunting interesting by asking Geralt to notice when the monster is the person paying him.

I expected a procession of creatures and a stern man with a sword. Andrzej Sapkowski gave me arguments disguised as adventures. There is action, certainly, but the part I kept turning over was the moment a simple job becomes an ethical embarrassment. Geralt of Rivia is hired to draw a line between danger and innocence. Sapkowski keeps moving the line while Geralt is standing on it.

The book is a collection of linked stories, and I think that is its best feature. Each tale has room to set its own trap, spring it and leave a bruise. I could stop after one and still feel fed. I was less persuaded by the collection's occasional appetite for provocation around women. The moral questions can be incisive; some of the surrounding gaze is much duller.

The premise (no spoilers past Geralt's first contracts)

Originally published in Polish in 1993, The Last Wish is the official first entry in The Witcher reading order. It introduces Geralt, a witcher trained and altered to hunt dangerous creatures for pay. He moves through a fantasy world where a familiar fairy-tale shape does not guarantee a familiar moral. The stories are linked by a frame in which he recovers at a temple and looks back on earlier encounters. The collection also introduces the sorceress Yennefer, though I would let their first meeting arrive in the book rather than recount it here.

That is enough orientation. Do not expect the opening volume of a continuous quest to behave like chapter one of a huge novel. It is closer to a cabinet of troublesome cases. Geralt's trade gives each story a door; what walks through it is often an argument about prejudice, power or the price of pretending a choice is clean.

What works

Sapkowski knows the dramatic value of a contract. Someone describes a threat, proposes a payment and assumes the categories are settled. The story then tests every noun in that agreement. A creature may be dangerous without deserving slaughter. A respectable person may have arranged the danger. A solution may leave Geralt with a conscience that cannot be invoiced. That repeating structure gives the collection coherence without making its stories feel identical.

The dialogue carries much of the pleasure. Geralt's reserve lets other people expose themselves through bargaining, explanation and insult. Then he says enough to show how carefully he has listened. I like a protagonist whose intelligence is visible in what he refuses to accept as obvious. He is not a silent wall for others to project onto. He is a professional who has learned that everyone arrives with a version of the truth prepared for him.

The fairy-tale revisions are also more than clever references. Sapkowski takes stories that often sort people by beauty, birth or species and asks who benefits from the sorting. I did not need to recognise every source to feel the pressure of the question. The collection's best tricks work even if you have forgotten the bedtime version. In fact, forgetting it can make a turn land harder.

The frame gives the separate adventures an aftertaste. Geralt can leave a town, but he cannot quite leave the questions its people put to him. The recurring return to recovery and reflection keeps the volume from feeling like a tray of unrelated curiosities. I admire the economy: a short form can suggest a life of work without demanding a history lesson before the first hunt.

What's polarising

The collection's treatment of women is uneven. Yennefer has force and intelligence; elsewhere, the narration can linger on a woman's appearance with less curiosity than it grants a cursed stranger's motives. I found that contrast irritating. A book capable of interrogating the way people are judged by bodies should be more alert to its own habits of looking. This does not erase its virtues. It does mean I would not press it on a friend without mentioning the problem.

Its episodic form will also disappoint anyone waiting for a single plot to climb steadily toward a finale. Some stories bite harder than others. The switching between tale and frame may take a chapter to settle in your head, especially if you came expecting the smooth entrance of a modern epic. Give it the time you would give a story cycle, and the movement begins to feel deliberate.

Finally, Geralt's moral hesitation is not a guarantee that the book will give every injured person equal attention. I sometimes wanted a voice other than his to stay in the room after a dispute had been decided. The method is elegant; its limits are real.

The Geralt of it

Geralt is most attractive to me as a critic's subject when he refuses the role of pure saviour. He is skilled, but skill is the easy part of the story. The difficulty is choosing when the job description is corrupt. Sapkowski lets his restraint look principled in one light and infuriating in another. That uncertainty is far more durable than a list of sword feats.

Do not come looking for a model of flawless tenderness. He can be distant, proud and painfully attached to the idea that he is outside ordinary human bargains. Yet his encounters keep proving that neutrality is itself a bargain. I find him compelling because the book will not let his code end the discussion. It is the start of one. A brooding hero with an argument attached is much better company than one with a decorative scar.

Spice and heat

Heat: about 2 of 5. There is brief on-page intimacy and recurring sexual talk, but this is not a romance built around escalating bedroom scenes. Geralt and Yennefer's connection is important to the wider series; here, the collection is chiefly interested in its moral knots and fairy-tale revisions. Content note for sword violence, blood, coercion, misogyny and references to assault. The tone can be wry, but the harm is not imaginary just because the stories borrow old forms.

Who it's for

You should read this if you like short stories that leave a question lodged under the skin, and if you enjoy a professional hero who cannot solve an argument by drawing a weapon. It is an especially good doorway into The Witcher for readers wary of beginning with a wall of invented history. If you require every tale to build one uninterrupted romance or one continuous campaign, you may prefer to wait for a different kind of fantasy evening.

Books like The Last Wish

• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, for fairy tales pulled apart to expose desire and power.
• The Black Company by Glen Cook, for working fighters whose trade gives no clean view of good and evil.
• The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle, for a backlist fantasy that lets many voices complicate a seemingly simple quest.

Carter is the sharpest thematic companion, though her language is much more ornate. Cook is the pick if you want the grit of people doing dangerous work for questionable employers. Beagle is the quieter recommendation, a reminder that a fantasy world can feel larger when no single person is allowed to own the entire story.

Finished the book and not ready to leave? Geralt of Rivia is waiting on Fictora.

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