This is A Review of Blood of Elves – Spoiler Free
I have to say I’m happy that I began my journey into the world of The Witcher with The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny because I really felt like I had a good foundation for reading the main series. A lot of what happens in Blood of Elves, Book One, makes so much more sense when you’ve read the first two short story collections. I loved seeing familiar characters, and I felt a little thrill every time I recognized a name or description.
I’ve gotten used to Andrzej Sapkowski‘s The Witcher books being filled with mythical beings and lots of exciting action scenes, but Blood of Elves had less of the former and much, much less of the latter. This particular book was conversation-heavy, and a lot of the dialogue covered politics and schemes and pondering over mysteries and destiny.
That being said I still found all of it to be charming and strangely engrossing, and I think a lot of that has to do with Sapkowski’s witty writing, and the audio book narrator’s talent for doing multiple voices!
I still quite love Geralt, but I was particularly thrilled to get more of Cirri in this book! It was fun to see her go through her trainings, and I just love her sort of wild personality. I’ve recently started disliking the “Special Snowflake” trope, but Cirri is definitely one of the good ones!
On the opposite end I am having a difficult time liking Yennefer. I didn’t much understand her insta-love with Geralt, and while she seems like the “all powerful sorceress” type that I am usually a complete sucker for, so far I haven’t seen much about her character that encourages admiration. I am interested in her relationship with Cirri, so I guess we will see how I feel in the next books.
I feel like this book was more about “setting things up”, and not much really happens apart from a lot of plotting and speculating and doing complicated exercises (I feel for you, Cirri baby). It’s not a bad thing as this is the “first” book in a long running epic fantasy series.
I’m thrilled that at least we still got the standard dry humor that was present in the anthologies! A lot of the dialogues were still very funny, and again the audiobook really helped sell the humor.
I kept grinning like a loon during the reading of Yennefer’s letter to Geralt, and the sass that comes from Geralt, Cirri and Dandelion are perfection. Also from this point onward I will only be referring to makeup/cosmetics as “self-esteem”. ?
