The Witcher books

[HAL4294]

Anyone else read these? I'm in America, so I've only been able to read the first 2 books + The Last Wish. The games seemed to be very ASOIAF-esque, so I thought I'd check them out and they do not disappoint.

[baxus]

i'm on book 5 (the baptism of fire) at the moment.

that's the last one to bet translated to serbian for now.

[Larry.]

I've read the entire series (in Spanish translation) and the series contains many elements, ranging from Arthurian references (much more explicit toward the end of the story) to some hilarious send-ups of older epic fantasy tropes (one favorite is how the character of Regis, introduced in Baptism of Fire, is portrayed; I'll leave it at that for the spoilerphobes).

Thanks for reminding me to buy the English translation of The Time of Contempt, as I'm curious to see if the quality of the translation has improved any after the years of delays.

[Seli]

Some of the short stories are reworkings of classic fairytales.

I read the Dutch translations (IIRC), which run out of sync with the English ones this time.

[King Robert's Warhammer]

Very enjoyable!Would recommend.

[Larry.]

Read the first chapter of The Time of Contempt in English. It seems that David French did a better job capturing the witticisms of Sapkowski than Stock did in her two translations.

[HAL4294]

I agree, Larry. Times of Contempt was better than Blood of Elves. Seli, I did pick up on the fairy tale element, it was very cool. Did anyone play the games? I feel like the Witcher 2 drew some inspiration from Game of Thrones. Anyone else? I would say the books fall under the same subgenre of mature fantasy, as well.

[Seli]

I played the first game and liked it. The second seemed to be a bit too much for my poor laptop. It will have to wait a bit. Luckily I got the game on GoG during a good sale.

[Bolivar]

If you're having a tough time running the game, checkout nVidia's Tweak Guides site.

I really liked The Last Wish although some stories stood out more than others. I like how he subverts the Elf stereotype of a fading race that has fond nostalgia for when it was their time and is now graciously backing away. They're bitter and the idea of then needing to learn agriculture was pretty interesting.

I thought the Blood of Elves was pretty great with how it introduces all these groups and their motivations with the girl at the center. I'm really looking forward to the Time of Contempt now that I hear the translation is a step up.

I haven't started the Witcher 2 yet, really enjoyed the first oneand found it to be one of the better modern computer RPGs.

[C0bR]

I read them all (being Czech as an advantage for once) many times. What can I say about them? They hold a firm place in my TOP 3 fantasy series.

Great world building - from interpretations (and subversions) of classic slavic myths and tales (as well as other mythos, as someone pointed out heavy connection to Arthurian legends) to realistic and unforgiving portrayal of human behavior.

Dark and gritty, but with great humour and lovable characters. Often archaistic in language, but often dealing with present day problems. Every possible social problem thinkable is present - from racism, ghettos and genocide, through politics (both international and domestic) and backdoor machinations, to a freedom fighting turned into a terrorism.

I probably liked the first two books (short stories collection) more than the following 5 book saga, which in my opinion had some problems with pacing, but overall I love them all as one piece.

Unfortunately, a lot of its beauty lies within the language Mr. Sapkowski uses and even though the Czech translation is fantastic, I heard that the English one pretty much sucks. I for one think that translating this into languages that difer from Polish too much is virtually impossible without leaving out the "feeling" of the books and thus taking away a huge part of the work.

[Larry.]

Yes, the English translations done by Danusia Stok failed to capture much of the in-jokes and nuances, but so far (I've only read the first couple of chapters), the David French translation for The Time of Contempt reads better. As for the "feeling," I would say the Spanish and Italian translations seem to capture quite a bit of the wordplay (they, especially Spanish, have different registers than the first English translation, which didn't have the archaic/modern mix). Perhaps I should learn some Polish in order to be better to compare them better, but I do think it is very possible for translations from Slavic to Romance or Germanic languages to be well-done; the first English translations, however, just were not, possibly because Stok apparently focused on translating non-literary, non-fiction works and the extra step of making it fit into English literary syntax wasn't done as well as it should have been.

[C0bR]

http://hatak.pl/contents/sezon_burz3drgb-1382613876.jpg.pagespeed.ce.KWxCQfuMfc.jpg

New book "Storm Season" announced.

Coming out in Poland before Christmas, maybe even in November.

I hope it gets translated to Czech soon, although it seems it will take maybe even a year as our translator is very careful and precise (I will gladly wait if the quality of translation remains the same).

edit: It also seems I have missed the other thread in this sections about this.

[3CityApache]

New book "Storm Season" announced.

Coming out in Poland before Christmas, maybe even in November.

Official premiere date is November 6th, as I mentioned in Andrzej Sapkowski thread. But the quality of the first chapter, already available online is... questionable at best. So I wouldn't count for anything particularly good, unfortunately.