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 2nd 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…
