Apart and Drawn Together

We recently looked at the first book of The Witcher Saga, the short story collection titled The Last Wish, and I was pleasantly happy with that book. It was a solid riff on fantasy storytelling, creating a world that toyed with concepts like myths, legends, and fairy tales, all while putting at their center a gruff, grumpy guy that felt as far removed from the normal heroes of these stories as you could get. It was not only a solid collection of stories, but it also served as a solid foundation for The Witcher showrunners to create the first season of that series.

Funny that, an episodic collection of stories leading well to an episodic season of television. Who could have guessed that would work?

We move on, though, to the second book in the saga, which is another collection of stories. This time, though, most of the material didn’t actually get used in the television series that came much later. In fact, one could argue that the books are already proving themselves to be a better version of this saga (as if that was a surprise) because they take their time and develop a lot of backstory for the characters, the setting, and the world. Where the television series gets bored and rushes ahead to tell the larger saga of Geralt and his “family”, the books take longer, reveling in the world and enjoying the potential to just tell stories with the protagonist. It’s stronger because, up until the end of the second book, it doesn’t really have anywhere it has to be at the moment.

Book two of the saga, Sword of Destiny, is, nominally, concerned with destiny itself. This is a recurring theme, with the main characters of the stories – the witcher, Geralt; his lover, the sorceress Yennefer; and his child of destiny, the princess Cirilla – who loop and whorl around each other, clearly drawn together by fate even as they resist and fight against where the world keeps pointing them. Geralt loves Yennefer, but also kind of hates her at times, as she does with him. They want to stay away, but then find themselves pulled back once more, an irresistible urge between them that goes beyond lust and feels more weighty, and much scarier.

Cirilla, meanwhile, is the child Geralt accidentally bargained for. It is a tradition that when offered payment for a great deed, like saving another man’s life, the witcher will ask for “that thing, when you return home, you did not expect to find.” This is generally expected to be a child, born while the man was away, and a “child of surprise” is then taken to be trained (and mutated) to be a witcher. This is how they populate their ranks. But Geralt never expected to actually get a child of surprise, certainly not from the royal family of Cintra. Destiny, though, had other thoughts on the matter. And time and again (especially late in the book as time moved forward in the series), Geralt finds himself meeting with Ciri, realizing she is where his destiny lies… although for what reason he does not yet know.

Sword of Destiny can be considered as two different things. On the one hand, it is a collection of short stories that seemingly have little connective tissue. There are six stories in this book, two of which are about Geralt and his relationship to Yenn, two about him and Ciri, and two that are just… there, although you could argue that point even then. If you didn’t know that the Ciri stories were coming, you could even assume that these stories weren’t building to anything specific. That, like with The Last Wish, these were just stories that helped to flesh out a world and give us a protagonist we can read about.

Take, for instance, “Eternal Flame”. This is a story about Dandelion and Geralt meeting up with a halfling, Dainty Biberveldt, only to then realize that Dainty wasn’t Dainty; he was a doppelganger. The real Dainty shows up, and the heroes go on an adventure around the town trying to stop the messes the fake Dainty caused, only to then learn that the fake Dainty was actually a business genius and, because of his work, the real Dainty is now one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Does this have any connection to Yennefer or Ciri? Not in the slightest. Maybe it’ll become relevant down the road, in a future book, but we haven’t gotten there yet and I’m only guessing. As far as Sword of Destiny is concerned, it’s just an amusing tale about mistaken identities and stolen fortunes. But it is fun.

Another story similarly seems to have little weight on the proceedings. “A Little Sacrifice” (which served as very, very loose inspiration for Sirens of the Deep) is about Geralt and Dandelion ending up in a seaside town, looking for work so they can afford to live. There they get wrapped up in a bit of a conflict between the local seafarers and the mer-creatures that live off the coast. But the real meat isn’t about the merfolk (despite what the anime movie would have you think). Instead it’s about another bard they meet there, Essi, who becomes smitten with Geralt much as he finds himself attracted to her. But their relationship is doomed because even if she isn’t there in person, Yennefer still weighs on Geralt’s mind. He can’t be in love with Yenn and Essi, and so he has to decide what he can do.

The tale is a story nominally about Yennefer (without her ever appearing), but it’s really about Geralt trying to decide what he wants, and who he wants it from. The mermaids, the royal intrigue, it’s all set dressing so that Geralt can be forced towards a choice so he can decide where he wants to be. He realizes he can’t be happy with Essi because, much as he likes her, he doesn’t feel the way she needs. And that means even if he and Yennefer can’t figure out their shit, they’ll still continue to circle around each other regardless.

Two of the stories are directly about Yennefer, though, with her appearing in the first two tales, “The Bounds of Reason” and “A Shard of Ice”. There the two circle each other, hurt by the times they’ve been apart but then annoyed by each other when they find themselves together. They are lovers that cannot figure each other out, each set in their own ways and on their own paths, and they struggle to find a way to fit each other into their lives in such a way they can both work. And that’s because they don’t work, but destiny has other plans. They try to flee, but they are always brought together because something more is on the horizon.

That something is Ciri, the child of surprise, who features in the last two stories, “Sword of Destiny” and “Something More”. For a while Geralt doesn’t even realize that Ciri is his child of surprise, that she’s drawn to him as much as he finds himself drawn back to her by destiny. Something is coming, something the stories only hint about in the background or explain to us after the fact. They’re the world beyond Geralt’s scope but (unlike the television show, which had to write a bunch of fan-fiction to fill in details only alluded to in the books) the books never leave Geralt’s side. People have to tell him what happens in the world beyond his own journey. He’s just one man, out in the world, and it’s not like the internet or cellphones existed.

This means that the book keeps its focus on Geralt and we aren’t to know what comes next. But we want to know. Sword of Destiny does a solid job of getting us invested in Geralt, in Yennefer, and in Ciri, hoping to see them come together for whatever is to come next. Some kind of war is brewing and Geralt has to keep Ciri safe. But what comes beyond that is, for now, any reader’s guess. The stories, though, get us invested in these characters and we want to see them be safe and happy together.

Unfortunately there’s five more books to come in the saga so even as they may come together over time, I doubt happiness will be forthcoming for them any time soon…