Quixotic Mainer mentioned a few posts back that he was saving an Audible credit for the new Andrzej Sapkowski Witcher yarn. Staring down the barrel of a 10-12-hour business road trip next weekend, I’m thinking I may do the same.
The Witcher is a venture into the timbers of Fennario on a distinctly Slavic frontier. Sapkowski’s cycle of short stories and novels were turned into a powerhouse video game franchise, and a Netflix series that is an absolute steaming pile of Striga shit (NOT Henry Cavill’s fault; a prime example of show runners and writers who decided they needed to “fix” the source material and made a hash of something that should have been great).
Anyways…
The Witcher story The Edge of the World turned out to be an excellent treatise on settler-colonialism, universalized by its mythic/folkloric setting.
The new tale rolls back to the initiation of Geralt of Rivia as a professional monster hunter:
Witchers are not born. They are made.
Before he was the White Wolf or the Butcher of Blaviken, Geralt of Rivia was simply a fresh graduate of Kaer Morhen, stepping into a world that neither understands nor welcomes his kind.
And when an act of naïve heroism goes gravely wrong, Geralt is only saved from the noose by Preston Holt, a grizzled witcher with a buried past and an agenda of his own.
Under Holt’s guiding hand, Geralt begins to learn what it truly means to walk the Path – to protect a world that fears him, and to survive in it on his own terms. But as the line between right and wrong begins to blur, Geralt must decide to become the monster everyone expects, or something else entirely.
This is the story of how legends are made – and what they cost.
A charming young Polish BookTuber with the handle Wera expounds deeply on the world of The Witcher, with convincing passion.
By way of bonafides, this young lady has also expounded upon the dark majesties of Cormac McCarthy and Blood Meridian, so I am inclined to take her seriously.
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One of the great attractions of the “Witcher Universe” is the magnificent music crafted for the video games, particularly Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. The Polish folk-metal band Percival contributed music to that soundtrack, and have for the past decade produced a live concert around it.
This is badass stuff — perfect inspiration for a good, hard Frontier Partisan biathlon, especially at this time of year, when the veil between the everyday world and the timbers of Fennario grows thin…
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Speaking of The Witcher and a workout…
An outfit called The Conqueror Virtual Challenges has put together a program to inspire nerds everywhere to get moving, inspired by the Witcher 3 game. It’s an app that converts steps, gym reps and other activity into distance, and puts it into the context of the Wild Hunt. I think this is brilliant. Crom knows that there is a vast army of people who need to get more physical activity, why not make it fun and attractive to them.
Your real-world movement unlocks main and secondary quests, regions, and characters drawn directly from the game’s sprawling narrative. These 3 challenges are crafted with CD PROJEKT RED to bring the world of The Witcher 3 into your daily life.
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And no Witcher post would be complete without a gratuitous shot of cosplayer Irine Meirer portraying the sorceress Yennifer…
Quixotic Mainer says
Ha, Yennifer is never gratuitous!
I’m still eagerly awaiting the new Geralt tale, and have been playing the soundtrack alot to my training sets. I have an opportunity to train bludgeons and blades with martial arts great Ray Dianoldo so it’s extra suitable.
Good luck on that long haul drive!