Sword of Destiny

Sword of Destiny is a rougher, more scattered read than The Last Wish, and also a more honest one. It spends less time proving Sapkowski can build a world and more time showing you who's actually walking through it. The structure is looser this time around, and it shows. A couple of these stories feel like filler waiting on either side of the ones that matter. The book is really carried by two entries, the title story and "Something More," with "A Shard of Ice" doing solid work in between. I went a good stretch without the pull I felt reading the first collection, and I noticed it. What holds the whole thing together is Yennefer and Dandelion. Neither one is doing anything Geralt would do, and that's the point. Yennefer argues with him instead of accepting him, Dandelion talks his way through danger instead of cutting through it, and Geralt gets sharper in the space between the two of them. It's some of the best character work in the series so far, mostly because it isn't really about Geralt at all. The writing itself creaks in places it didn't before, particularly around the women. Sapkowski clearly enjoys writing Yennefer, and it still shows through some flat, dated instincts about how she and other female characters get described and used. It's the one place the book feels like it was written in the era it was written in. Then Ciri shows up in the closing stories and the whole collection snaps into focus. Those last chapters are the first time the series feels like it's building toward something bigger than a monster hunt, and by the time I closed the book I'd forgotten I was ever lukewarm on it. I liked The Last Wish more. I'm still all in for the first full novel.