thatokiebird 's review for:

The Tower of Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski

2.75

adventurous dark reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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The Tower of Swallows is basically a 16 hour chase scene as our main characters search for Ciri before the baddies find her, all the while Ciri, while recovering, tells her story to an old hermit who rescues her. Some of the book was great, dialogue, action, choices, but most was filler. These books would be a thousand times stronger if 50% of the fluff was edited out. (But I think that about a lot of books, and a lot of people don’t agree and love these lengthy tomes for the length and world building and character building.) 

 

I wish Geralt got to spend time actually being Geralt the witcher and being a strong character with an actually essential plot, but he seems so often unnecessary and weak in this book. The politics in this book were also so heavily politicking as usual and making my eyes glaze over in boredom, because there’s war and corruption and factions and who really knows or cares about who is on the good side or bad side when they’re all boring and annoying. 

 

Ciri is awesome of course and this book is heavily centered on her, both her telling her story and on everyone searching for her. Also for my sanity my brain completely tunes out to skim the sexual assault parts because it’s literally just there to be violent and adds zero to the story. I’ll still be reading the final book in the series and hope it’s a great ending with much better pacing that makes all the previous books worth it.