Saturday, February 9, 2019

"Season of Storms" by Andrzej Sapkowski

This is the last book about the Witcher Geralt of Rivia.  It was written in 2013, the previous volume, "The Lady of the Lake" being finished in 1999 (half a decade before the first Witcher game by CD Project RED was released).  Since the plot logically finished in "The Lady of the Lake", Sapkowski went back and wrote this timeline somewhere between the different stories of "The Last Wish", just after Geralt and Yennefer broke up, and a couple of years before they get back together (in another story in "The Last Wish").  Ciri is barely mentioned.

Geralt and Dandelion find themselves in the kingdom of Kerrack, where some political games are being played, and of course there is a sorceress involved, Coral, and her beautiful assistant Mozaik. Geralt is being framed by Coral, and he gets imprisoned, and his Witcher swords stolen.  Eventually she frees him (it was a 'game') and has sex with him for several weeks.

He gets used by a local criminal to fight a beast in the arena for others entertainment and gets sent to a wizards castle where they manufacture different 'inventions' like half-trolls-half-dwarves and different giant lizards and spiders to be used as guards.  Unfortunately the wizards in the castle are mostly crazy psychopaths who kill over 40 people in surrounding villages for their own entertainment, having their dwarf trolls tear 5 year old children in half.

Geralt finds the truth, and kills some of the greatest offenders, but leaves the castle with the rest of them, to go back to Kerrack for the wedding of the old king, because he was blackmailed by the kings younger son, who tries to kill Dandelion.  The king learns about the plots agains him by his sons, and exiles them both, however the third son comes back and kills his father becoming king.

Coral runs away from the kingdom, and Mozaik has about two weeks of sex with Geralt, before he leaves her alone in their bed one morning, never to return.  Yennefer buys Geralt's sword which were auctioned in Novigrad, and Geralt continues on his adventures with Dandelion.  Oh, Nimue is in the book too, 105 years after Geralt's death in 1378, just going on her way to Aretuza to become a sorceress.