This review is going to be a little different than usual. Today, I’m not discussing a book I’ve read but one I am exceptionally excited for. Following its late November release in Polish, Andrzej Sapkowski released a prequel to the eight-book Witcher series in English this past September. While Crossroads of Ravens predates the others by at least twenty years, it comes a whole twelve years after the last in the series, Season of Storms.
The Witcher fandom has been buzzing with anticipation since the announcement we’d once again get to go on another monster hunt with Geralt and not the hardened, silver-haired expert we know and love, but a young, untested and uncertain Geralt just leaving the walls of Kaer Morhen. Fans will get to experience him as a novice witcher long before time, monster slaying, and xenophobes grind away at him.
In Crossroads of Ravens, Geralt is inexperienced and naïve and struggling to navigate commissions as a first-time witcher in a world that fears and despises him. Lovers of the books, the games, and even the show will get to see what choices and encounters shaped him into the complex and often cynical character we see at the start of the series in The Last Wish. In his defense, those experiences throughout his lifetime help him to become more a philosophical and protective man in the later books. But either way, it’s going to be incredible to see what formed the beginning of his arc.
While the book is a standalone,making it accessible to newcomers, Sapkowski rewards veteran fans with lore from the main saga and plenty of “Easter eggs” for us sharp-eyed fans. Even better, the story is set primarily in the Kingdom of Kaedwen, offering new details about its history and culture.
“But no bestiary and no book will prepare you for the unknown that we know not.” — Andrzej Sapkowski, Crossroads of Ravens
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.
