Poland does everything bigger: sausage, busty models, character-based fantasies. With the latter, I refer to Andrzej Sapkowski’s Geralt of Rivia — aka “The Witcher” — a gray-haired but young man who fights monsters with magic. In his own words: “I kill monsters for money. Beasts which endanger people. Horrors conjured up by spells and sorceries cast by the likes of you. Not people.”
Overseas, it’s a wildly successful franchise that has extended from books to comics, movies, TV and video games. Over here, we’re just getting our first taste with Orbit’s publication of THE LAST WISH, originally published in 1993. Something not initially apparent about it is that it’s not a novel at all, but a collection of short stories.
But that may be the best way to meet The Witcher and settle into his world. The first story, “The Witcher,” has him facing a “striga” of royal lineage. See, a girl was born so ugly that she was buried in underground vaults. Only she didn’t exactly die. But she did grow teeth, and grow up to eat about 50 men a year. Her family hopes The Witcher can cast a spell to turn her from mutant to marriage material.
In “A Grain of Truth,” The Witcher finds two hideously mauled dead bodies in the forest. Exploring, he comes across a tower, which he enters, only to find it’s inhabited by a monster … with whom he then dines.
“The Lesser Evil” concerns a mutant woman (again?) terrorizing a village, so the ruling wizard asks The Witcher to kill her so that peace can be restored. In a playful twist on “Snow White,” she’s shacked up with seven gnomes, poisoned by an apple and knows how to use a sword.
All these stories offer a good time when centered on the central plot at hand, but later ones feel listless. Whether they’re truly inferior or it was simply a case of reader exhaustion, “The Edge of the World” and “The Last Wish” did nothing for me, respectively involving a “deovel” and many, many elves. Similarly, the framing device, “The Voice of Reason,” is a case of confusion overshadowing concept.
Even for someone as fantasy-averse as I, THE LAST WISH isn’t too tough to get into, akin to stepping deeper into a slightly too-cold pool until your nerves adjust. Danusia Stok’s translation is at times clunky (for example, “Velerad, castellan of Wyzim, scratched his chin” is followed seven lines later with “‘I am Velerad, castellan of Wyzim,’ said Velerad”), but not problematic. Once Sapkowski dispenses with slightly elongated setups and gets into the meat of the stories, pace quickens.
His imagination shows with the kinds of creatures The Witcher goes up against, and these scenes are the heart of this anthology (and, I assume, the entire series). It only makes one wish Sapkowski didn’t adhere to the J.R.R. Tolkien school of nomenclature, cluttering up scenes and stories with more invented names than is necessary. On one page alone, we’re to keep straight Haxo, Calanthe, Drogodar, the Duchy of Attre, Rainfarn, Windhalm, Cintra and Baron Eylembert of Tigg. Anyone know of a good de-naming spell I could cast? —Rod Lott
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http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/10/24/third-base/
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.