The Tower of the Swallow

This is the 4th book in the series of 5. There are 7 books in the Witcher Universe. Do not read this book out of order because the Saga books pick up exactly where the previous books left off. You wouldn’t Start Watching Game of Thrones in Season 4, would you?

The short story books are: The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny, which set up the world and the main characters.
The Saga books are: Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, The Tower of Swallows, and Lady of the Lake. Read these in order!

In this book Geralt and his party continue to look for Ciri, who is on the run and has been gravely wounded by bounty hunters. There have also been cataclysmic supernatural events occurring on Samhain as a ghostly cavalcade of wraiths, known as the Wild Hunt, appear.

I’m a HUGE fan of the Witcher video games and books, and Geralt may be my favorite video game character of all time. I also really like Ciri from Witcher 3. If I did NOT like Ciri, I would not like this book because the entire book is centered around her. So, if you’re looking for stories about Geralt killing monsters, you’re much better off playing the games.

With all of that said, Tower of Swallows is an exciting, fast paced adventure, where Ciri and her fellow gang of bandits is on the run from professional bounty hunters. They ride across the country, while being hunted down. It almost feels like a western.

The writing style is engaging, the action is brutal, and there are many twists and turns. If you’ve been a fan of the series so far, this book doesn’t disappoint… unless you want a book about Geralt killing monsters. Speaking of which… I am downloading the Witcher 3 Blood and Wine DLC as I write this.
Im really looking forward to the final book, The Lady of the Lake.

This book deserves a five star rating. Sapkowski’s storytelling is fantastic, and reading it flows like a smooth river – or it would, if it had been properly translated. I cannot speak for accuracy as I do not speak, let alone read, Polish. As far as I know, he may have translated it perfectly. But somewhere along the line, whether it be the editor or just French himself nodding off, he gave up on having any degree of spelling consistency or respect for grammar. This is a problem noticeable since Time of Contempt, where the translation suddenly shifts the spelling of several names, as French clearly gave no regard to the standards put in place by Danusia Stok (who, by the way, did a stellar job in Blood of Elves). Not only that, but he constantly contradicts himself by switching the spelling of names from Y to V, from J to Y, and sometimes even blatantly changing the sound of a word entirely. Within a single paragraph. Not to mention the growing number of grammatical errors that any degree of proof-reading could have caught. It has been an issue since reading Time of Contempt, but it has reached a point where I simply must comment on his shabby work. Not five pages go by without a preposition or apostrophe missing, which completely shatters the flow of the reading. I strongly recommend that Orbit Books do a better job with their pre-publishing work, and I beseech Sapkowski and all other authors to pay very close attention to these kinds of things. To make it absolutely clear, I will even state that the edition I have is of May 2016, and beg that Orbit please revise it before doing any more printings. Typos are not okay in an industry where your entire career is based around reading the same thing dozens of times to make sure it is correct.

The sixth book of The Witcher saga is chaotic, frenetic and fun. The story centers around Ciri, though there are updates about what Geralt and Co. are up to. Sapkowski also touches base with Yennifer and Triss. A significant portion of the book happens from the POV of new(er) characters and how they interact with important events that occur around the time of the equinox.

This staggered/fractured presentation of story is a style Sapkowski makes frequent (and good) use of. As other readers have pointed out, the frequency of those interspersed POVs is at all time high, but this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, once the reader adjusts to this change in presentation, s/he will have a much better understanding of the impact and scope of the forces at work around Ciri.

Recommended for: those already taking the ride and wanting to see it through. Where, oh where, will this fateful journey lead our intrepid hero- er, protagoni- er, characters of note?

‘No one wants to suffer. But yet it is our lot. And some suffer more. Not necessarily by choice. The point is not the bearing of suffering. The point is how it is borne.’

“On the way to eternity everyone will tread their own stairway, shouldering their own burden.”

“It’s impossible to utterly destroy humans and cockroaches; at least one pair always remains.”

‘It isn’t the evil and indecent who are flung down into the depths, no! Oh, no! The evil and decisive fling down those who are moral, honest and noble but maladroit, hesitant and full of scruples.’

Im grinding through this book because Ive read the others but Im not really enjoying it anymore.
I dont like the way the guy writes hes always jumping about through time and stuff and not in a clever way.
Ive had enough but I hate to leave things unfinished.

The Tower of the Swallow is a bit of a mixed bag. Quite a lot happens that progresses the overall story of the series and there are some excellent combat sequences. Often, though, the writing is quite meandering in getting to certain points. Things are often bitty and broken, sidling around events and jumping perspectives and time zones in detailing what has happened or is happening.

The Witcher series often adopts different approaches to writing and storytelling; some more successful than others. Even if they happen not to quite work at times, they are still generally of interest in some way. Here, though, the author uses similar techniques to those he has used before but seems to get a bit carried away adopting multiple techniques and approaches, sometimes to tell the same thing. This results in a bit of overlap and repetition, rendering things a little confusing at times.

Much of Baptism of Fire was devoted to establishing Geralt and his team. They are still a good and entertaining element of the novel but there is simply not enough of them after their build up in Baptism of Fire. For a series that is entitled The Witcher it is a bit light on him.

Instead a lot of the book is occupied with the various figures that are involved in some way in tracking down and capturing Ciri. The novel is more orientated around how these characters frequently hamper each others efforts in capturing or killing Ciri because they focus on their own agendas. Following all of them is done in several ways, utilising different styles. Sometimes, though, this is too experimental and doesnt really work.

The better parts of the novel probably involve Ciri and her continuing character development as she is forced to adapt to survive those that hunt her. The setback and sufferings she has to endure begins to send her down a dark path psychologically and the novel leaves her in an interesting place character wise.

Although it possesses some good plot developments for the overall series and some strong, exciting scenes, the unnecessarily convoluted style result in this being one of the weaker Witcher books.