The Last Wish Review/ Fantasy Expectations
1. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
This was the first book I read this year- and it was genuinely so lovely to just relax and read some fantasy simply to enjoy it.
To clarify, this isn’t technically the first Witcher book, as this is a short story collection taking place within the Witcher universe, but every guide I’ve seen recommends reading this and the Sword of Destiny before starting the actual novel series. So that’s why I started here first and not with Blood of the Elves.
I watched the Witcher series on Netflix a few months back and absolutely fell in love with the interpretation. I really enjoyed the time jumps and solving the story myself, I loved the lore and all the creative and classically fantasy monsters. I really enjoyed how many strong women were shown in the series, and the fact that the casting was fairly diverse. So I had high expectations for the novels.
Normally, I try to avoid older fantasy novels written by men unless I’m in a mood to pick them apart and really analyze. Sometimes you simply want to have fun with a book, and as a feminine reader, I have a hard time enjoying books that are so often sexist and misogynistic. So I was incredibly concerned that these books would follow suit. I felt pretty happily surprised when that wasn’t the case,
I usually find older, male authored fantasy books to be centered around an unrealistic male protagonist who’s surprisingly strong and lacking emotion realistic to the scenario he’s in. He’s never easy to defeat, he’s always muscular to a very unrealistic and frankly unachievable standard, and he’s always, always great at sex. He has no flaw, and no one can challenge him.
Similarly, the women are represented in awful ways. Usually, one of two things happens. We have empty, shells of a character, women who have no substance and hardly count as characters. They exist to be conquered, they’re only present as a prize for defeating the dragon, they have no characteristics besides being pretty (which either means very childlike or very curvy. There’s rarely an in between.), and they have absolutely no issue with the male protagonist whatsoever. And when we don’t see women being treated as objects or abused in the streets, when they have some character traits, they are usually evil. Women who are very smart, are usually very ugly. Sometimes you get a “hauntingly” or “disturbingly” beautiful villain, but it’s implied that her beauty is unnatural or not something to enjoy. The power brought on by her intelligence and beauty is what makes her unlikable. Both character tropes represent how women were viewed when the books were written.
We can see the same with certain monsters and their connection to specific races. Often times, fantasy authors will create a monster or villain in their story who “oddly” represents a race that is experiencing discrimination at the time of writing. A great example of this is how Tolkien’s orcs are yellow-skinned and have “slanted” eyes.
Now whether or not the author realizes how they are showing women or people of color is an entirely different subject- and absolutely one to cover in another post. But it remains true that these comparisons often exist in fantasy. And its really tiring.
I hoped that we wouldn’t see that type of behavior in this series, especially considering how relatively new the books are compared to most other popular fantasy books by men. Although it wasn’t perfect, I found myself pleasantly surprised. There wasn’t much diversity mentioned in this book, in fact I don’t think anyone’s skin tone was ever really mentioned often. So if you’re looking for fantasy with diversity, this isn’t the case. The Netflix series absolutely came through with representation, but I don’t think the books did. I feel like women were better represented then most fantasy novels, though I did find myself worrying that Yen’s character is another strong woman who’s only “evil” because she’s smart.
But most importantly, I think Geralt is a great example of a male character who’s struggling openly (with the reader) about his emotions. He doesn’t know how to feel about a lot of things and struggles with his morality, his code he follows, love, and generally his emotions and desires. It was refreshing to see a more realistic male who doesn’t feed into the toxic masculinity standard.
So does this meet my 2021 standards all across the board? No- but I think its fair to say considering the age of the text that that’s to be expected. If Sapkowski wrote this novel today, I’d be much more disappointed with the lack of inclusivity. So if he writes anything new any time soon, I’ll be harsher with my expectations. But considering when it was written, I think it did better then most other authors in its time and I did genuinely love reading it and being back in a fantasy space.