Crossroads of Ravens by Andrzej Sapkowski Review

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 beloved franchise set across various forms of media such as the recent Netflix adaptation and video-game franchise, surprisingly it’s been over a decade since Andrzej Sapkowski last touched the series himself. Crossroads of Ravens is a new novel serving as a sort of origin story for Geralt marketed as a sort-of kind-of standalone novel (more on that to come). Covering new narrative material somewhat separated from the rest of the books due to its chronological placement, Crossroads of Ravens is an excellent entry point for Witcher fans familiar with the show or video-games looking to get into the source material books which have their own style and approach to the otherwise familiar story. That said, I personally had zero experience with The Witcher in any form apart from 2^nd hand exposure courtesy of my dad’s love for the Netflix show so I went into this book with zero familiarity with the IP as a true test of whether it can be enjoyed standalone. While certain aspects were very appealing, this book overall felt like a bit of a mixed bag, ironically my ignorance with the series being less of an issue compared to the novel’s written presentation.

As previously mentioned, as a disclaimer I am very much not knowledgeable with this series’ lore and past books, but I attempted to do light reading (aka wiki research and reading other reviews) to help get an idea of how Witcher veterans might experience this book. Now before the hardcore Witcher fans start coming at me and questioning why I tried reading this book cold without context, it’s because I received this book as part of The Broken Binding’s new SFF book subscription, this being its first book pick that I could not skip; I must say, TBB’s edition is a very handsome book, the hardcover detailing in black is sleek!. Obviously if I were looking to read The Witcher series on my own free-time, I would’ve started with Sapkowski’s original start of the series The Last Wish, even though this book chronologically takes place earlier. Given that TBB’s SFF sub is supposed to be picking either standalone books or series debuts, I went ahead and tried reading this book as such. Crossroads of Ravens is an interesting book in theory as it’s sort of an origin story in concept without really going into Geralt’s backstory specifically, merely recapping loose details at the end of the story. Rather than experiencing Geralt’s training at Kaer Morhen or being one of the last Witchers trained, this book follows his early adventures and experiences as an inexperienced monster and evil slayer in a land and society that’s suspicious of his kind.

When read at a surface level, initially it appears that Crossroads of Ravens lacks a distinctive story and direction. The first two thirds of the book consist of vignettes of brief episodic events that Geralt encountered, often skipping both time and place between chapters in a drifting manner. This narrative approach is an effective choice that really conveys the aimless and vague life goal Geralt has of protecting the people from monsters across the land. As glorious and noble as that sounds, how does one person accomplish that when they don’t know where to go or what to do, especially when most of the public fear or distrust him? As Geralt meets more people, both positive and negative, and explores Kaedwen and its surrounding areas, he’s faced with different directions to go, both literally and metaphorically a Crossroad of Ravens. The short experiences are quite varied in nature, some being quite hack and slash action-focused while others are more philosophical or morality-based. Once the story reaches its last third act, it becomes evident that the episodic events are not merely a collection of happenstances but are instead linked together through a larger plot traced back to demise of Kaer Morhen as well as his pseudo mentor and early savior, Witcher Preston Holt.

As someone not experienced with The Witcher, I felt 50/50 on this book and whether it can be read cold with no prior knowledge. Geralt’s adventures and experiences themselves are fairly straightforward in nature, particularly the fast-paced action scenes which I enjoyed. While I felt like I was missing a lot of the backstory to what and how Witchers come to be (Kaer Morhen was merely just a name to me for majority of the book as the novel doesn’t elaborate on what the training entails and what Witchers are until the very end ), you can get a rough idea of what’s going on via context clues. I often felt like a lot of the monsters or beings Geralt encounters were a bit random given how far-reaching the folklore inspirations stretch, but those familiar with European-based high fantasy stories will likely be able to learn on the fly. Once the book enters its ending arc and reveals how the past events are all connected, the reading experience really clicks, and I can imagine why this series is so popular.

Although the narrative content is good and the recurring thematic motif of being at a crossroad was effectively used, I found most of the book to be a bit of a dry and lackluster read. While the aforementioned setup of Geralt’s wandering is a great thematic choice, I found it to be an unappealing storytelling choice from an enjoyment standpoint. As Geralt explores the country, it really feels like the story is directionless and doesn’t know what it’s doing (although it is revealed to all be planned at the end) which I personally didn’t really care for. The Witcher has an expansive world represented on the detailed map included in the book, but the story only takes place in a tiny corner of the whole map and many of this book’s towns and key locations aren’t even labeled, making the map’s inclusion a baffling choice. The story also has a huge number of characters that are introduced in rapid succession, and it can sometimes be tricky to follow who is affiliated with what party and is allied with whom. And while some of the episodic experiences are interesting, some being quite graphically violent and intense, I found others less interesting and rather uneven in execution. While the ending reveals how each event is related, their connections aren’t evident until the very end and I felt like the entire backstory involving Witcher Holt, Kaer Morhen, and other characters came in far too late to be impactful. The way the plot twists and surprises are revealed near the end feels off-handed, anticlimactic, and rushed, which is odd considering the book’s length and unstructured approach that could’ve very easily been adjusted with more effective foreshadowing or alluding to the villains far earlier.

Puzzling, I found the story to somehow be both too fast-paced and slow at the same time. Each chapter and event is fairly short, with introductions to characters and events so brief to be barely functional. Yet the story’s lack of a clear trajectory makes it feel like the overall scope of Geralt’s progress and adventures to be ploddingly paced  with nothing of substance really happening. Whether it be due to the adapted translation courtesy of David French who is new to the series or Sapkowski’s base writing itself, the dialogue also felt quite stilted, almost comically off beat and tone-deaf where I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be funny or not. There are some clear moments of understated ironic humor that require reading between the lines that are intentional, but I could never quite get on-board with the dialogue and tone, as well as the odd phrasing in regard to the story’s narration. The book features an almost silent protagonist approach to how it’s written, with many characters seemingly asking and answering questions to themselves out loud or monologuing in place of where a typical conversation would take place. Initially I thought it was an understandable choice as it allows the book to be read as an almost self-insert for the reader in Geralt’s shoes similar to the games that allow the player to pick responses or for readers new to the world of The Witcher. However, as the story progresses, it becomes clear that although Geralt is quiet and stoic to a point, he’s can also be quite outspoken when he feels engaged, witty, and has strong morals, making the self-conversation phrasing unusual. I generally found the story to be more interesting and colorful to read whenever Geralt would speak in his signature crude and pragmatic tone compared to the 3^rd person narrator merely recapping what he’s thinking. Notably, Geralt in this book is apparently more naive, innocent, and optimistic compared to his older versions in other books.

Is Crossroads of Ravens a great book worth reading? I believe that it highly depends on one’s interest, knowledge and experience with The Witcher series. While it can technically be read as a standalone story due to its origin-based material and the largely self-contained storyline, I don’t think it’s a particularly enjoyable read as a first foray into Geralt’s story. While the book had a lot of great concepts, ideas and a respectable arc that fills a vacant hole in Geralt’s early years, the presentation and stylistic choices made left a lot to be desired for me. While being far from offensive, I had a hard time staying invested in the story and the dialogue wasn’t for me, though it did feel like it gradually improved as the book progressed. From what I’ve read from others who have reviewed this book, I would probably recommend at least either playing The Witcher games, watching a season or two of the Netflix adaptation, or reading Sapkowski’s earlier books in publication order rather than jumping in cold with Crossroads of Ravens. It can be done but isn’t the greatest idea, as evident by my perplexed and conflicted impression of it. That said, it was successful in getting me interested in the series and wanting to learn more about Geralt and the world of The Witcher, so perhaps Crossroads of Ravens understood the assignment after all.