Reviews

This book is so addictive in the best way.

I usually read a story in one day, but this one took me almost a week because I didn’t want to rush it and miss any details.

It’s very long as well, almost double as usual but that didn’t discourage me to enjoy the rich characterization of some of the oldest countries in Europe and the mix of part fiction, part real history.

There’s so much to take in here, so many fascinating characters, and the interaction is just so easy to follow and understand nothing like other novels where I need a thesaurus next to me.

The maturity and real-life scenes are vividly illustrated and some topics left me a bit speechless as I didn’t expect to read about them but they exist since the word was built and even if it’s still a taboo matter for so many civilizations, the author made it authentic and part of life in every scene that matter.

I’m so looking forward to the next books in the trilogy and I couldn’t recommend it enough.

It’s so real and atmospheric, full of twists and historical issues that many people will enjoy.

traviscanread's review against another edition

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dark funny slow-paced

2.5

cwgk85's review against another edition

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2.0

I'm a big fan of Sapkowski's Witcher series so when I heard his other series was finally being translated into English I was eagerly anticipating reading it. Now that I'm finished the first book, I think I'm just going to stick to The Witcher. This one was kinda disappointing.

I would not say that it's necessarily a bad book. But it's filled with so much Polish history and passages done entirely in Latin that it became a real chore to read at times. Some familiarity with these is pretty much mandatory to know what's going on, unless you want to have Wikipedia open while you're reading.

The story picks up steam in the later third of the book but unfortunately not enough to keep my interest going. I'm uncertain if I will be finishing this series off in the future.