"Blood of Elves" by Andrzej Sapkowski

This is the first novel in "The Witcher" pentalogy of novels (for now), and if you count the first two collections of Witcher short stories, then this is the third book in a fantasy heptalogy.  Sapkowski published his first Witcher (Wiedzmin) story in his native Poland in 1986.  The books were apparently very popular in Eastern Europe, but they really got to be known in the west after the Polish software/gaming company CD Project RED published the series of Witcher games, the third installment of which, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is proclaimed by many specialized magazines and sites as the "Best Action RPG of all time" (btw, Action RPG is different from just RPG).

Well, the author of this blog LOVES the game Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and has already sunk about 120 hours of playing into it (still just level 31, and haven't finished the main story, nor started the DLCs).  And because (obviously) the author of this blog also loves to read, he (yes, a guy! how curious!) also found the books, that is the English translations, by Sapkowski and started reading.

Let me tell you form the get go that if you expected something of Tolkien or even Martin quality - you will be very disappointed.  The writing is much poorer, and so are the characters and plots.  However it is not that bad.  True, the first 150 pages of "Blood of Elves" are so boring and horribly written that it is an act of masochism to force yourself to read them, but it gets better.  The last 50 pages are actually gripping.

You will meet familiar characters from the games, the Witchers: Geralt, Vessimir, Eskell, Lambert; the Sorceresses: Triss Merigold, Yennefer of Venderberg, Philippa and others; and the other assortment of characters: Dandelion, Zoltan. the Scoia'tail, the Nilfgardians, and of course, Ciri.  The characters have much more dialogue, and do not sound exactly like in the games, but the differences are welcome.  There are differences in characters' looks and manners from the games (Triss does not show a neck cleavage), but they are not major.

The book starts after the conquest of Cintra and many parties looking for Ciri, the last heir to Cintra's throne and possessing Elder Blood which gives her special powers.  Geralt saves her and takes her to Kaer Morhen, the Witchers' fortress, to be hidden but also trained as a Witcher, though there have never been female Witchers in the entire history.  Eventually Triss Merigold arrives at Kaer Morhen to give Ciri a female perspective and advises that Ciri is moved somewhere else because many sorcerers already learned about her location.

Many betrayals and battles happen during the moving but eventually Ciri is given as a ward to Yennefer who undertakes to train her as a sorceress.  After initially butting heads, Ciri and Yennefer take to each other and the actual sorcery training begins.  The book ends with Ciri learning telekinesis and Yennefer comparing the Witcher's Aard sign to real telekinetic sorcery.