The Witcher

About The Witcher

Geralt of Rivia is a witcher — a monster hunter mutated and trained from childhood to track down the things that prey on ordinary people, feared and distrusted by the villagers he protects precisely because he isn't quite human anymore. Andrzej Sapkowski built the series out of dark, morally slippery fairy-tale retellings before turning it into a full political fantasy saga: Geralt gets pulled out of his solitary monster-hunting life by his bond with Ciri, a princess with a destiny several kingdoms are willing to start a war over, and by his complicated, genuinely adult relationship with the sorceress Yennefer.

Written in Polish and translated into English years after Sapkowski became a bestseller across Europe, the series is sharper and more cynical about "chosen one" tropes than most epic fantasy of its era, filtering war, racism against non-human species, and political opportunism through Geralt's studied neutrality — a stance the books keep testing and undermining. It's the source material for the globally successful video game trilogy from CD Projekt Red and the Netflix television series, both of which draw more on the novels' world and characters than their specific plots.

How to read this series

Start with the two short-story collections in story order — The Last Wish, then Sword of Destiny — even though Sapkowski originally published Sword of Destiny's stories first in Polish; nearly every English edition and reading guide puts The Last Wish first because its stories introduce Geralt and are meant to be read that way. From there, read the five-book Blood of Elves saga in order: Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, The Lady of the Lake.

Season of Storms, written and published years after the saga concluded, is a standalone adventure set chronologically between Sword of Destiny and Blood of Elves — read it there if you want story order, or last if you'd rather experience it the way Polish readers did, as a return to the character after the main saga's ending. None of the video games or the Netflix series are required reading, and neither follows the books' plot closely enough to substitute for them.