The Last Wish - Andrzej Sapkowski (translated by Danusia Stok)

Now that The Witcher is on Netflix, I was curious to see if the series' books had the same sort of feel as The Expanse, in which the authors got to retroactively fix some of the confusing or poorly-thought-out parts of the books. From reading The Last Wish, it definitely seems that this is the case.

Most of the episodes in the show are chapters in this book, told as the main character reminiscing on past adventures while healing from a horrendous wound inflicted in an early chapter. The constant jumping back-and-forth in time of the show is, therefore, somewhat present, but in a much more structured way here. The frame story set up early in the book is, itself, an episode of the show -- in my estimation, the most jarring and shocking one, wherein our protagonist, Geralt of Rivia, must combat a cursed vampire thing holed up in an abandoned castle.

The book is fun and light reading, with really no oomph of emotion. It's accessible fantasy. It does follow plenty of fantasy tropes (elves live long lives and have pointy ears), but in an interesting way where humans are like a plague on the planet, messing with magic and reordering the environment in a harmful way. The book also obeys fantasy tropes such as indulgent, detailed descriptions of women's bodies and combat gore, which feel quite a bit outdated. Given that it was written in 1993, it's not surprising, just something to notice. This book is a male fantasy.

Overall, I think it's an interesting read if you've watched the show. However, I feel that the show is better (at least, more up-to-date) than the books, so I'm not planning on reading more of the books.