Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

35 reviews

brittni_in_ink's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.25

I enjoyed this more than I expected! The episodic format and time jumps were interesting, and I liked getting to know Geralt and his main circle through the short stories that make up the book. The "monsters" had nuance to them, and the action sequences were very well written. Having fairy tale references throughout was also interesting! Also props to the translation team - the quality of the writing really shone through.

I'd played a little of the Witcher 3 before reading this, so I was familiar with the characters and the kinds of stories I'd encounter. But I didn't expect the book to be so funny. There were some legit laugh out loud moments. Geralt does say "hmmm" a lot.

Overall, the lore and the characters were compelling, and I'll definitely continue reading through the series.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Ableism, Body horror, Bullying, Death, Gore, Infertility, Misogyny, Sexism, Blood, Medical content, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

casdelvo's review against another edition

adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Cursing, Death, Xenophobia, and Vomit

Minor: Infertility, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, and Sexual harassment

doriandelioncourt's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Incest, Infertility, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Kidnapping, Murder, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

pvbobrien's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror, Rape, Sexism, and Sexual content

Minor: Incest, Infertility, and Injury/Injury detail

lovefromhannah's review against another edition

adventurous funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Misogyny, Violence, Xenophobia, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Gore

lucecanon's review against another edition

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

1.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Sexism

Minor: Incest and Torture

ohthatsgrayt's review against another edition

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Cursing, Death, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Murder, Sexual harassment, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

jewelkr's review against another edition

dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

My adult kid gave me this book as a birthday present because we enjoyed watching the Netflix series together.  This is one of the cases when the moving image production is better than the book.  I'd like to say it's because the stories were written in the previous century by a boomer male and obviously men's opinions of women/people have changed so much since then but regrettably  I can't - women's lives are still a full of  inequity and fear.  I will say that the people who produced the series addressed a lot of the absolutely disgusting misogyny in the book, as well as restringing the story in a cohesive manner and giving Geralt a personality.  Reading one account after another of what a woman (always referred to as a "girl" by the author) looks like, whether she passes the male-imposed standard for attractiveness, the incredible, cliche'ed detail of their breast-enhancing, thigh-revealing, hip thrusting outifts (compared to the male characters of whom very little is said about what they wear), the sexualization of the fight scenes between the Witcher and his female foes (always thighs and breasts exposed during a viscous fight to the death), the opening scene of an actual girl sexually attacking the Witcher in his sleep as part of her priestess training - it was all so gross that I had a hard time processing the stories behind these disturbing revelations of what men think when they see women.  The stories were interesting, although I was hoping for more of Geralt's back story, and you have to keep in mind that these stories preceded the Game of Thrones celebrity not to find them kind of hackneyed.  Sadly, no matter what male writers imagine, women are always relegated to one of three roles - virgin or girl I'd like to have sex with, whore or in this case demon, and female bringing beverages to men.  If we are imagining a different world, couldn't we fantasize something different for the women for change?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Death, Fatphobia, Gore, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

bluejayreads's review against another edition

3.0

This was a weird reading experience because I'm already fairly familiar with the Witcher settings, concepts, and characters from the video games (I've never played them myself, but I've watched my husband play through The Witcher III twice). I think if I didn't have that context, it would have been a lot harder to follow this book. (Although to be fair, a large part of that is audio is not a good format to read this and the audiobook narrator was not the greatest.) The internet recommended I read this short story collection before jumping into the first novel because chronologically they're set before the novels, but they seem to be written for people who already at least a little bit understand what's going on. I'm still going to give the first book a shot, but I'm not sure The Last Wish is really the best place to jump into the Witcher books. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, and Blood

Minor: Body horror and Incest

bookishchef's review against another edition

funny mysterious medium-paced

2.0

So, I just finished the Dutch version of The Last Wish audiobook: the first book in the Witcher series. 

Was it badly written?
Yeah. It mostly consists of dialogue. And pretty weird, clunky dialogue at that.

Was the romance incredibly rushed?
Yeah. Kind of suddenly happened.

One moment they're fighting, next moment they're fucking.

Was it incredibly sexist? 
YEAH

I read that infamous 'her nipples touched his eyelids' scene a few years ago, and Oh My God that set the bar so incredibly low. And yeah it's bad. It's a terribly written scene, and most women (although not all), including the main love interest Yennefer, were just there to be a pair of tits. A feisty pair of tits sometimes, but a pair of tits nonetheless. This single book has more descriptions of breasts than the entirety of A Song Of Ice And Fire.

Yet it still wasn't as bad as I expected. And I guess that's something. I definitely enjoyed some scenes and some of the jokes. 

The Dutch audiobook did change some names and words into Dutch 'equivalents' that aren't really equivalent at all. This made the book feel even clunkier than usual, I think. Using 'neuk' instead of every 'fuck' doesn't really work in the Dutch language anymore, even if that is the literal translation. 

For some reason they changed Dandelion's name into 'Ranonkel', which means Persian Buttercup, not Dandelion. Ranonkel is a godawful name. Why oh why did the translator do this?
Later translators hated their colleague's decision too apparently, because later in the series his name gets changed into 'Ridderspoor', which means Larkspur and is a little better (still a shit name though).

Jelle Amersfoort acted as the VA for the Dutch version of the audiobook. He read every male character with the same intonation though, and he would often cut off his sentences in weird places, as if he ran out of breath. This sometimes made it hard to distinguish between characters. I wouldn't realize Geralt had said something, instead of some other character, until a sentence ended with 'Geralt said'. Still, this was the first Dutch audiobook I ever read to the end. Usually, the VA is incredibly cringe (which might just be due the Dutch language itself), but I actually managed to listen to Jelle. So kudos to him. 

2/5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Cursing, Incest, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism