I do not understand the appeal of this book. Maybe the other books are better, but I truly cannot fathom why this has an average rating of over 4 stars. This took me the better part of four months to read because I was so bored of it that I never wanted to pick it up and when I did I'd just fall asleep.

First of all the writing style. I know this is translated, so I don't know how much of my issues are true to Sapkowski's original text, but I can only comment on what I read. I've not read a book before that was told so much through dialogue. Like either he was literally in the middle of a fight scene stabbing all the baddies, or people were just talking. For paragraphs and paragraphs. Half the time the dialogue was the actual story because that's all that was there. I had the hardest time forcing myself to read and not just skim as fast as possible to get to the end.

And I just hated the writing itself, like the descriptions and the dialogue and just the words used. I can't really describe it because at a point I tried to stop paying attention, but it grated on my nerves. It would be stuff like "Geralt was somewhat surprised because x, y, z reasons" and then the next line would be "this random dude noted his surprise."

Also the sexism, dear god. There was this whole passage about how the sorceresses have to make themselves fake pretty but they still have the cold and angry eyes of ugly girls. Like what? There's so much wrong with that that I don't even feel like unpacking it all. And that wasn't coming from a character, that was just the narration of the story. At the end of one story when he was fighting a woman, weird sexual things kept happening like ripping her dress to expose her breasts or Geralt stuffing his face in her cleavage. In the middle of fight. It was constant throughout the book.

I also don't really like fairytale retellings in general and I had no idea this book was largely retellings (or inspired by basic fairytale plots). Although ironically the only story in this that I actively enjoyed was the Snow White retelling. I don't think it was really much different than some other Snow White retellings I've read, but it was still an interesting story.

Honestly, I don't remember many of the stories. Like they didn't stick with me. Even the ones I just finished in the last week were immediately out of my head. I just finished the last story like thirty minutes ago and I'm already a bit hazy on the details. They were so boring. Geralt finds a village with a monster problem. He insists he's not a hired killer. Then he kills something/someone. The end.

I dunno. Unpopular opinion, apparently, but this whole book dragged for me. It was kind of a miserable time and easily one of the most unpleasant things I've read this year. The next book I have is by a different translator, so I am interested in seeing if the writing style improves for me. But I wouldn't recommend this. I didn't get anything out of it. I'm not looking forward to continuing on, but I've already committed myself to the first three so fingers crossed they improve.