The Lady of the Lake

The Lady of the Lake is the final book in the Witcher Saga, but the story is extended in the Award Winning Witcher Video Game Series. Reading these books makes me appreciate the stories of the games even more. If you're not a gamer, this is the glorious end of an epic adventure.The Witcher Saga is a complex story about powerful kings, sorceresses, emperors, lords, assassins, spies, and criminals battling each other in wars, diplomacy, rhetoric, and deceit. This battle is set in a dangerous world based on folklore with mythical monsters and powerful magic. Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer, is drawn into a tangled web of intrigue when his adopted daughter from a unique and powerful bloodline draws the attention of the major powers in the world. Accompanied by his most loyal friends, Geralt battles his way to the end of the world to help Ciri as she tries to evade enemies as ambitious as they are deadly.The world of the Witcher is populated with greedy simple minded peasants, deadly beasts, ancient evils, curses, and almighty kings. This story adds credibility to the old folktales and brings them to life. Because this series is rooted in folklore, it seems more genuine.The characters are complex with their own motivations, emotional scars, rivalries, and alliances. You get to know them so well, you’ll start laughing out loud at their mannerisms and grumblings.The story structure jumps all over the damn place, but it seems to work. A major event will happen with the main characters. A scholar from Oxenfort will discuss its impact on history 100 years in the future, a band of mercenaries at a campfire will talk about the legend, and the saga will resume with the main characters. This ads depth and broadens the world, and it works. In any other book series, this would have been a terrible distraction.The action is visceral and has dire consequences. There are wizard duels, beasts, skirmishes, brawls, wars, battle tactics, chases, and assassinations. It's all very well written and puts you in the middle of the action.These books have some swearing, torture, sex, graphic violence, and horror. They are not for kids.You'll need to read the other books in the series to understand The Lady of the Lake. Reading these out of order would be like taking all of the Game of Thrones Episodes and shuffling them. It's not something you should ever do.Overall, this is a great saga about a drinking, whoring, gambling, lout, who proves his love for his adopted daughter by risking everything and battling his way to the ends of the world for her. The characters and world are complex. The action is great. The fantasy and lore is very well developed. The pacing stalls at times and the story skips around a bit, but these are the only gripes I have with this series. Geralt of Rivia is one of my all-time favorite characters and his story is legendary.If you enjoyed these books, I highly recommend the Witcher Games. The stories in the books act as "Choose your own adventure" and the decisions you make ultimately determine who lives and who dies. The Witcher 3 is the greatest game I have ever played.

The book was all over the place with irrelevant stories.. All I wanna read about is Geralt and his companions. All the books before this I thought the story with Geralt and his companions was 4-5 stars.... It did get annoying when the book would have 10 pages talking about the politics of the world.<!!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!> <!!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!> <!!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!>The story line with Jarre was okay, but the whole Ciri travelling to different realities was really weird. The beginning of the book made no sense to me. Was she in our reality or what? One of the last parts was really cheesy. "I wanna see the Sun," C'mon man. Then Geralt's fight with a mob... He's fought much worst opponents and decimated them... When the series introduced "The Lodge of Sorceresses" I was excited to see what kind of crazy stories they would have but yet those parts seemed to be one of the most boring and annoying. Overall the series was really good, Except for this last book. Very disappointing ending, I'm so glad CD Projekt Red took a new turn and made this fantasy world spectacular. All 3 of the Witcher games' stories are a 10/10 for me... These books really changed the way I thought of some characters. Dandelion is great, Triss is amazing, and Geralt's dwarf friends are awesome. The biggest change of my opinion would have to be Yennefer though. I really disliked Yennefer after reading the books and finding out more about her personality/past... and finding out what she really is behind all that magical make-up lol

Just like I feared. Series stories always seem to forget about their "legend" and instead of telling a good story through to the end they screw it all up. The style of this writing is so different from the other books it seems like someone else finished it. Chapters start way in the future with side characters telling the story, writing it down, or it being studied way in the future. It ruins the flow of the story because all of these unessesssary characters appear, you know who survives and who dies, there is WAY too much writing about the war movements and battles because it doesnt move the story along, too many characters to keep track of so they get killed off in meaningless ways. They dont even accomplish anything, their deaths mean nothing so why bring them in at all? The big reveal of who the emperor is....is just stupid. Ciri is a wretched main character... I want to slap her more than anything, really dont care at all what happens to her at this point. It's one meaningless adventure full of crap decisions one after the other, the legend is just dumped (like in GoT) and everyone dies and Ciri goes to Camelot with Sir Galahad. Seriously. Who was high when he wrote this crap? One of the worst endings ever.

I really liked the first 3 books; number 4 was slow; this one was tough to finish. Only to see the ending did I press on.***Spoiler***My main complaint is there was so much build up that never went anywhere:- the prophecy about the child Ciri was supposed to have to change the world- Nilfgaard + Cintra+ northern war conclusion. So the Emperor/Duny is an ok guy who marries the impersonator and lives happily ever after? I am so unfulfilled. So many pages read for him to just ride off.- how dare he kill all the witchers friends so nonchalantly. Could at least Cahir or Regis lived? They were great characters. I thought Cahir + Ciri would have some epic conclusion but..nope- the time jumping! Gah! I could barely follow his story jumping to times + characters we don't give a rat's butt about! Final book should have been focused on the Witcher and crew.- The final ending...Ciri just lives in Camelot now? Annnd what about her world that I just spent weeks reading about? Just.... so frustrating!!!

Having played all of the games and looking forward to what was the upcoming NetFlix series (at the time) I thought I would brush up on the Witcher Lore via the original books.To be clear, I've now read every single book in the series from the short stories to the main story spread over the remaining 5 books. The short stories piece is a nice introduction in the world and gives you some intel around the additional lore than may have been missing from the games.However, when moving onto the main story line the author seems fixated on providing an endless list of towns/locations/characters which have little or no bearing on the story to the point where you begin to lose track. This seems to get progressively worse with each book with some of the major story lines having vague or incomplete endings/reasons for being. For example geralt just happens to listen to some conversation "in a cave" via some "device" which drastically changes the outcome of the story.I don't know whether or not this story was lost in translation from Polish to English but it is simply not worth the investment in time.I am purely disappointed with the story and author for such a vague and tenuous storyline but also quite impressed how a video game producer managed to get something coherent out of it.I would not recommend this series at all other than the first two short story books.

Absolutely gorgeous story-telling and world building abound through the five books.At first I was a bit unsure of the narrative trick of introducing a random character e.g. a messenger and then from his point of view him recounting how he saw three villains killed by one of our heroes. Or a battle described partially from the combatants perspective and partly through a school history lesson years later. But what it does, aided by the brilliant writing, is really immerse you in the world. It’s second to none in making real the background to our heroes adventures.And then there’s the fact that it’s smart, funny, sad, terrifying and overall uplifting.There’s a lot of grey in peoples actions, both the good and the bad people and one of our heroes goes seriously astray for a while. And there’s also one of the best out and out bad guys you’ll encounter in fiction.Throw in the fact that the author then manages to seamlessly blend his world in with some our more well known myths and legends and frankly you’ve got a near masterpiece.Loved it unreservedly.

This is probably one of the better Witcher books. As a final book in a series it is successful in tying up the various elements and drawing the saga to a satisfying conclusion.The book delves into newish, but previously hinted at, territory by exploring a multiverse concept. This isn’t necessarily a major part of the overall plot, but it helps define Ciri’s role in the series and lightly touches upon some elements concerning the nature of storytelling.It comes as a bit of a surprise that this propels the reader into our world for some segments of the novel, but considering the title and that the Witcher series has continually pillaged from various Northern European mythologies and folklore (‘Hans My Hedgehog’ perhaps being the most vital) it shouldn’t be that much of a shock.By this point the character of Ciri has extensively developed and supplanted Geralt as the saga’s lead protagonist. She has gone through a ‘coming of age’ type plot. She has proved, at least to herself, that she is not merely the vessel that others consider her and found an identity. Established as ‘the Witcher girl’ it raises the question of whether the eponymous figure of the series might refer to her rather than Geralt. Likewise, the ‘lady’ of this book’s title could refer to more than one character.There is, perhaps, a bit of a lack of Yennefer and Dandelion but the emphasis is clearly more on Ciri. Their roles and storylines are still reasonably satisfying, though.‘The Lady of the Lake’ is considerably larger than the other Witcher books, even ‘The Tower of the Swallow’ which was substantially longer than the others. But whereas ‘The Tower of the Swallow’ squandered its greater length in convoluted, almost, retelling of events from differing perspectives, ‘The Lady of the Lake’ makes better use of it.Thus, for example, we are able to see more about the decisive battle between Nilfgaard’s armies and the allied Nordling forces. Virtually all the main characters aren’t present at this and seeing it through the eyes of the young, naïve Jarre and those that deal with the wounded and the dying in the field hospital is an interesting angle.A lot of the ‘final’ confrontations against the main antagonists of the series come considerably before the end of the novel. Perhaps, it ‘climaxes’ a little early, but this does leave a lot to deal with such as the war engulfing the land, the various power struggles and settlements and the fates of certain characters.Overall, the series has wandered a bit at times and become a little convoluted with its perspectives and experiments in storytelling. This is, perhaps, not the conclusion that all readers/fans might want but it works and seems suitable.

This is difficult.. if you have made it this far in The Lady of the Lake I guess you - like me - actually think the core story in The Witcher series is good. Unfortunately a large part of it disappoint due to what appears to be a lack of a stringent editor or read through by a critical audience before publication. There are too many not-setting-the-scene-but-just-plainly-irrelevant parts and when we reach The Lady of the Lake it seems even the author has grown bored. I’d venture you could skip about 60% of the book and still have it all make perfect sense. What a disappointing turn for a story which could have been so good.

I finished reading this set of five novels today and cried because I feel as though I've lost dear friends. Funny, sad, descriptive with some of the best characterisation I have read in an awfully long time. And, it has to be said, one of the funniest, non-icky sex scenes ever - I laughed like a drain. True brilliance.Yep, there are times when the time-hopping can do your noodle but it creates a very interesting vehicle in a novel and I rather enjoyed the peculiarities and all the different POV.All I'll add is, Cahir, Regis, Milva and Angeloume, may the earth rest lightly on you.