Blood of Elves (The Witcher, 3)

Just found this a bit boring. Since I started reading fantasy and sci-fi back in the 80's I have very rarely given up on a book half way through. Unfortunately, this was one that I just couldn't be bothered finishing.

I read lots of fantasy and sci-fi, although had never read the Witcher books before. I did play a bit of Witcher 3 which provoked me into buying this book and finally reading it. To be honest, I thought it was spectacularly mediocre - so much so that I’ve actually walked away about 2/3 of the way through, and I’m a reader who tries hard not to do that! Why? Well, it lacks any real narrative thread at all. The construct of short stories joined together doesn’t work as a novel. There is a semblance of investment in world building, but in the main I thought there was lots of unwieldy dialogue masquerading as character-building, whilst manifestly failing to actually do so. No pace, no momentum, no real sense of threat or engagement in the characters, no standout sections to interrupt the tedium. Just dull, like I say. I never expected to say this, but the game is vastly superior in every respect.

I read this after reading The Last Wish, the first collection of Witcher stories, which was great. I've also played the first two Witcher games years ago but not the third yet. With that backdrop, Blood of Elves was a real disappointment. Maybe all the tedious set up that goes nowhere in this book pays off in later books, and I've already bought the next Witcher book, so I'll give it one more shot to get the story moving. But this book as a standalone was a boring waste of time. I'd say there's four main problems: 1. Geralt is not the main character. He's only in I'd estimate about 1/4 of the book, and half the time he is in it he's sulking about something and not talking. So there's only about 1/8 of the book where Geralt is being the Geralt I liked from the Last Wish. 2. Instead of Geralt, the main character of this book is Ciri, and she's just not an interesting character at all. Yet another 'chosen one' child with some great destiny that's hinted at but never given any substance in this book. There's a long section where's she's training to be a Witcher, then she gives that up, and there's a long section where she's training to be a sorceress, both of which are just boring. In fact, the whole last chapter of the book, which is 50 pages long, longest in the whole book is her training like Luke Skywalker with Yoda. 3. In that last chapter Yennefer is reduced to being Yoda. This is not the bad ass Yennefer from The Last Wish, but a changed, boring teacher character. Yennefer in The Last Wish was drinking herself into a stupor and sleeping around town that she was in illegally. She bedded Geralt then put a spell on him to make him go around town thrashing her enemies, generally making a fool of himself and getting himself arrested. Then she had no qualms about destroying the whole town and nearly getting herself killed trying a control a genie that would have made her magical powers near omnipotent. From that, in this book she turns into Yoda basically, teaching and scolding Ciri about how to use the Force. Literally. It's such a knock off that she is actually teaching Ciri to "use the Force." E.g., an actual line spoken by Yennefer that could have come Star Wars -- "I know the force is bursting out of you, but you have to learn to control it." 4. There's no story. Nothing really happens. Ciri learns how to sword fight from Geralt's buddies and to cast spells from Yennefer. There are some unidentified bad people trying to find her. Geralt tries to figure out who they are, lets them get away a couple times without finding out much, then disappears from the book. There's a lengthy meeting of a bunch of kings planning a war that didn't actually result in anything, at least not in this book. There are repeated disjointed flashbacks to a battle in a prior was in which some better characters from the Last Wish were...