To be honest, I was thinking this might be one stars for the first couple of stories. There are six in total and I truly hated the first three. They offered nothing in terms of story, character development, world building, or any real purpose. I'm not sure why they existed to be read. Getting through them was such a slog. The last three, while I still didn't enjoy, I did understand why I was reading them. There were some themes or development of worlds that mattered in the larger scheme of the books. So at least there was that.

I didn't like his writing style at all. So many of these stories were just dialogue. Like most of the book was dialogue. And then occasionally there'd be a little narration limited to describing fights. But then right back to the dialogue. I cannot fathom why you'd choose to tell a story that way and why so many people enjoy that writing style. It was indescribably boring.

It was also really sexist. Every single female character, with potentially the exception of Ciri, was treated as an object, both by the characters and by the storytelling. I genuinely don't know when I've read anything so sexist. Maybe never. Like I was warned going in about the sexism, but it was really bad. Two characters didn't speak, weren't even addressed by their real names, and were passed around for sex. One was introduced by describing her breasts. One was fought over repeatedly. None of them were allowed any agency.

I'm planning to continue on and try the first novel to see how that compares to the short stories, but I'm not a fan of these books. I don't understand what people are getting out of them. The one person I talked to basically validated all of my negative points, but said he really enjoyed the game and that was where a lot of his enjoyment of the books stemmed from, so perhaps that's it. But I wouldn't personally recommend them.