A nice little palate cleanser to round out the series. ( )

I should have read this before the series, but it doesn't really matter. The stories are really just vignettes from the world of The Witcher. It's actually kind of exciting to hop back to the beginning. ( )

Mostly boring and completely forgettable. It has familiar characters and story beats, but there is no tension, no stakes, no vibe of the other Witcher books.

This book has some good moments, but they are brief and don't leave the mark on the story. For a half of the book I was waiting for it to start, for the other half I was looking forward for it to end. It seems like the author had a couple of drafts for short stories, none of them developed enough to stand on its own, so he stiched them together. The end result feels more like a collection of side quests in a computer game you need to go through to collect XPs before you can return to the main plot - you could change the order of chapters or skip some of them entirely and no one would notice.

Plus half a star for the audiobook production quality and great voice actors in polish edition - Gosztyła, Pacek, Opania, Talar. They made this book bearable. ( )

It's neither particularly better nor particularly worse than any other entry in this series that I've read thus far. Perhaps the biggest place it falls behind the others is that its plot is almost more incomprehensible than any of the other books/short story collections. Perhaps there's a reason for the random storm late in the book, other than giving the book its title for no apparent reason, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what the reason was. A better title for this would have been "And suddenly, a storm".

There does seem to be some growth here, at least insofar as the commentary about the patriarchy using lack of access to abortion to women's healthcare as a way to control women. Perhaps Sapkowski learned something, somewhere. It's really hard to reconcile that with the off-handed eugenics comments from a character we're maybe supposed to like, the "bisexual(?) man is a serial killer psycopath who was raped(?) by an older man who was also raped and found he liked raping men, too, and attempts to rape Geralt" and the same-old, same-old cattiness of literally every female character.

There's a lot of rape as wallpaper in the book. As usual. But I guess we're supposed to be fine with it because someone auctions off a dildo to a rich lady. I’m also not sure if it’s a joke or not that Coral roofied Geralt. So many women with any form of power sexually harass men - and Geralt in particular - and sorceresses have joked and succeeded in roofying him - canonically, Triss did something of the sort - that I have no idea if Geralt is saying the flowers and apricots were enticing or were actually masking a magical working. I really wish Sapkowski would stop using male victims of sexual assault as a joke. It’s very likely this is meant as a reference to Yennefer, who, as I recall, always smelled of two things: lilacs and gooseberries. Geralt is stated to have faced sexual harassment from other prisoners while in prison, which may be an allusion to the high rates of sexual assault in male prison, but again, this book is just so filled with it and does nonsense like weird maybe jokes with it that I don't know what to think of this.

It says something that the women in this story - particularly the sorceresses, always hate each other for some reason, but the men actually seem to stand behind and support each other, even going to great lengths to do so. I don't know what it says other than that Sapkowski literally cannot write anyone at all. He can write despicable characters, I guess. I'm not sure how successful he is at writing characters you enjoy reading about. This was certainly the most unforgiving slog I've had to deal with in this entire series.

The In Lust plotline was also so boring, and I think it was going with "more of what he's done before". Geralt hops in a lot of beds this book, but unfortunately, this is before he reunites with Yennefer, so Yennefer can't be his love interest. But he has to have one because... it's a Witcher book and for some reason all women fall in love with him.

I have no idea what to make of the idea that women who are rejected from magic school, still with a hunger for magic, become lawyers. Or that the judiciary is a “safe haven” of some kind. And the female judge is apparently HIGHLY concerned with… housework and dealing with the outcome of the anal sex she apparently had, that was injurious, and that is worth mentioning for No Apparent Fucking Reason. While doing her job. I don’t know if this is meant to emphasize Geralt’s lack of importance in the grand scheme of things to most people who aren’t him, or that female judges apparently cannot focus on their jobs, or that Sapkowski literally cannot imagine what else a bored female judge might find to occupy her time, like, oh, I don’t know, A MOUNTAIN OF OTHER CASEWORK???

I'm also not sure what the purpose of the farting guard tower run entirely by women who sexually harass Geralt is meant to signify, nor Geralt’s lack of faith in what is seemingly no different than any other guard tower, just run by dudes. We did just leave a room where the kings were described as pirating pedophilic morons who struggle to be considered decent society. But then, it's not much better or worse than any other introduction to a Witcher book.

There are some good moments with Dandelion. We meet Dandelion’s cousin, Ferrant. And Dandelion interceded on Geralt’s behalf! And was smart about it actually! …And then he describes this “She’s a sorceress. An enchantress and a woman in one; in a word, an alien species that doesn’t submit to rational understanding, and functions according to mechanisms and principles incomprehensible to ordinary men.” And yup. Still the same book Dandelion. You love to want to throw him off a bridge. I actually rather like the book's last Dandelion scene, though. That would make a nice piece of art.

Mosaik seems like a nice character. Addarion Bach seems like someone with a far more interesting story than any other character in this series. I think that's one improvement this book had over others - it really tapped into creating a world where clearly all these side characters have intricate backstories and Geralt is not the center of the universe. Unfortunately the result is that you'd rather be in THEIR stories, and the story on its own is an overly convoluted mess of honestly boring nonsense and rape.

Watch the 2019 Netflix show. Play the third game, even if it's too cowardly to have made a game focused on Ciri with the excuse that the trilogy is meant to be about Geralt when even the third GAME isn't about Geralt and the second one is BARELY about him. You want magic hijinks? Read Tamora Pierce's "Circle of Magic". That's got quite a few bad people screwing around with sorcery, and some rather good commentary about good versus evil, political machinations, the plight of the marginalized, and the cost of war, politicking, and "it doesn't happen to me, so it's not my problem" rhetoric. And romance! And humor! And friendship! Sarah Monette's "Doctrine of Labyrinths" is also a wonderful series about trauma, grooming, magical political machinations, mental illness, zealotry, imposter syndrome, and the feeling of trying and failing. You want a story about a mad king and the bad decisions made when you've stopped caring about anyone but yourself? Watch the first two seasons of the "Castlevania" anime. Don't read this. ( )

The worst of the series. For some reason there is a lot of Latin and French jammed into the book in a really haphazard way. That took me out of the universe everytime I saw it and it didn't add anything to the writing that couldn't have been directly translated. Much like Lady of the Lake there are interludes with famous philosophers and writers like William Shakespeare that, again, don't have any business being in a fantasy series that does not take place on earth. Those quibbles aside, the writing does have some bright spots and certain plot points are well done, but nothing of consequence happens throughout most of the book, and the things that are meaningful don't affect Geralt. When something is taken away, shouldn't that result in some creative problem solving? Not for Geralt apparently. ( )