Although the plot felt a little stagnant in this book, I loved the focus on the intricacies of the characters and how their stories all wove together. I felt that it gave real context to the world I was reading about and the characters I was following. ( )

The second Nilgaardian war began as the result learning about the Northern Kingdom’s secret plans and backing a coup among the sorcerers and sorceresses, the later of which found a unexpected factor in the person of a certain witcher. Baptism of Fire is the third novel of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher series as an recovering Geralt of Rivia looks to head south to rescue his ward Ciri from Nilgaard and slowly collect a cadre of fighters around him.

From beginning to end, the narrative essentially followed Geralt or his companions with only glimpses of Ciri and a little subplot amongst sorceresses from across the continent. This tight focus was a vast improvement over the two previous books from Sapkowski, showing growth as an overall writer. Coming in at roughly 350 pages, the pacing was very good and very easy to stop and start giving I read it during my breaks at work. The introduction of new major characters of Milva, Regis, and now official Cahir—who has been around but not really developed—as well as interesting or important secondary characters brought a new dimension to the narrative and Geralt’s reactions to have to work with more than one person, especially as part of a team. The surprise ending for Geralt was a nice little twist that would be interesting to see as to how it would affect his story going forward.

Baptism of Fire is frankly the best book of the series so far, Andrzej Sapkowski kept the narrative basically tight and covering the entire book with only occasional glimpses into developing subplots important in the future. After reading this book I look forward to where things are going. ( )

Originally this had a second star for Regis and Milva, and mostly the former, but that's also largely because basically every story bit involving Milva is absolutely terrible, destroying the goodness of her character. Also this book is terribly, terribly boring and bad. But I took away the second star because Sapkowski can't write a good character for longer than it takes to utterly ruin them, and even Regis cannot escape this.

Milva, the cool warrior woman... is of course in love with Geralt, because most of the women we meet fall in love with Geralt. Apropos of... nothing in particular? Geralt is Just That Special and Tragic that I guess women just fall head over heels for him all the time.

I really, really have to question why every woman-centric sex moment is either rape or about torturing men, with the one exception being the time it's implied Geralt was eating Yennefer out last book. You see, in Witcher world, women can't enjoy sex on their own, and when they do, they have to be hurting someone else. For example, when Yennefer is taking charge in her sex with Geralt, it's making him miserable because he hates her kinks, and she's cheating on him and Istredd, making both men miserable, and she constantly degrades Geralt. See also that time last book when two sorceresses were talking about raping male lovers, including Geralt, and how, canonically, Triss raped Geralt. And there's whatever's going on with Dijkstra and Phillipa. For wlw relationships, Mistle, a female survivor of rape, sexually assaults another woman, and then seems to keep ignoring her victim's consent. I'm not sure if the message is that sex with women is evil or women don't enjoy sex or this is supposed to be hotter or Sapkowski doesn't know how to write sexual relationships or what. It's not helped by Milva's sexual history, which is brought up late in this book, and is one of the dumbest plot points in a book of stupid plots.

Regis is smooth and funny and friendly and snarky and enjoyable and kicks Geralt's shit right back at him. Which is why, I imagine, besides the fact I feel writing a particular trope of female character was probably boiling Sapkowski's brain and he had to fix that, the very badly written pregnancy subplot is introduced.

For a second, I was going to give this book points for having male characters who were seemingly honestly pro-choice. And I've seen someone do an interesting run-down on how the weird scene in question is actually pro-choice, and how there is a pro-choice theme throughout the books, from Geralt and Dandelion in particular. But it's really awkwardly written. If the point of the story was to communicate a theme of being pro-choice, I'm all for it. Good for Sapkowski on including that if that was the intent. It's still badly written.

Much of the book is a journey which goes nowhere, which also isn't necessarily the problem. There's some good banter scenes. There's a funny scene where Regis, Dandelion, Cahir, and Milva all choose to ignore Geralt being a dumbass and make fun of him for it and it's great. There's a funny name origin scene. Heck, Zoltan shows up! Wooh! (we'll ignore the piss thing) There's a few badass Milva scenes, making up for the REALLY TERRIBLE opening Milva scenes because of course Sapkowski cannot write good characters well for long. Geralt's got some good snark this book, too. The central problem is that most of this book is a meandering mess (with one of the most boring hunting sequences I've read, which is a feat, given I've read the "Ranger's Apprentice" books), and about half of it is people getting together to talk about things that have already happened somewhere else, in flashbacks within flashbacks within... flashforwards? The story's going somewhere. Will you care where it's headed? Well... no, actually. Because I can barely be bothered to stick around NOW. Oh, another meeting of Named People talking about something? Another circlejerk of how truly grimdark this fantasy world is? Joy!

You want more of the Witcher universe sexism and rape? That's here. You want monster slaying? Yeah that's not here, go play Witcher 3 if you want that. This is a Dandelion-heavy book, if you're looking for that, which was nice. They have some nice scenes together amidst all the schlock. It just takes 75% of the book to get to anything decent, and then it's promptly buried under wagon wheels in the mud and blood and plague and rape. You want Ciri story? It's mostly not here.

Skip this book. Skip this series. You want adult fantasy with politics and magic and monster fighting and slaying? Read Sarah Monette's "The Doctrine of Labyrinths" (that one even has great journeys in books 1, 2, and 4, and shockingly, meetings between politicians that are enjoyable!) or Steven Brust's Dragaera series (which has great weapon discourse, unlike... whatever nonsense is in this book). You want an emphasis on magic training? Read Tamora Pierce's "Circle of Magic". You want neat stuff with prophecy and nice prose, read Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn" or Dianna Wynne Jones' "Howl's Moving Castle". Do not read this. ( )

«Salve!» gridò, fermandosi in mezzo alla strada e mettendosi le mani sui fianchi. «Di questi tempi nella foresta è meglio incontrare un lupo che un uomo, e nel caso è meglio salutare la persona incontrata con una freccia di balestra che con una buona parola!
(82)

«Le vostre città più grandi», si lamentava il nano accompagnato dalle stridule imprecazioni del pappagallo, «le avete erette sulle fondamenta nostre e di quelle degli elfi. Solo per le città e i castelli più piccoli avete posto fondamenta vostre, ma come materiale da costruzione continuate a usare le nostre pietre. E intanto ripetete incessantemente che è grazie a voi umani se hanno luogo progresso e sviluppo.»
(110) ( )

Not a lot of forward movement in terms of plot but still between 4 and 4.5. ( )