#the short stories are better in terms of writing though. but baptism of fire is my favorite for this reason

[hanzajesthanza]

why baptism of fire is my favorite book out of the saga:

the overall setting in a warzone is well-written and thoughtful, and though tragic and horrific, its very 'realistic' and haunting. the fear, the eventual indifference... how the war-torn landscape influences the characters and their actions and narratives is compelling.

the pacing is great, chapters flow into one another so well it took me actual years to decidedly separate them by chapter in my head. it’s also not too long of a book and it feels like cozy, easy reading. the journey of the characters is not boring or full of “filler”, because plot-relevant stuff keeps occuring.

the theme of a “baptism of fire” is reiterated throughout the novel, but you as the reader are not hit over the head with it extensively or annoyingly (coughs... like in... time of contempt)...

ciri is spiralling downwards (no spiral pun intended) as her trauma builds, but she hasn’t yet faced the powerless gore-strewn tragedies which are ttos and lotl, since bonhart isnt here yet she can be as evil as she wants and its interesting to see her character get caught in the frenzy. she is practically rebuilding her identity from scratch outside of the constraints of moral guidance, and “falka” is overtaking her.

yennefer finally receives solo scenes as an individual character in which we get her point of view and we learn how thoughtful and intelligent she is, she is thrown into a political frying pan fighting for her fucking life with the lodge of sorceresses and we finally get some answers to ciri’s background. 

geralt’s character is at his lowest since the beginning of the series, and he has a choice to make in terms of how he wants to react to losing everything and who he wants to become during this painful climb back up. his utter devastation at losing his child and his lover are ‘realistically’ written and he says and does unlikable, prickly things - yet he never becomes a bad person and his ethics (and motivation to act in the face of injustice) actually grow stronger during this period. we as the readers can hate him and think he’s a dumbass and laugh at him as he tries to shun company.

best dandelion characterization in the series as he helps geralt the most and is the least misogynist in this novel. his stubbornness to not leave geralt’s side is actually admirable and ethical, and we get to see his and geralt’s friendship evolve in this new situation, and dandelion repositions himself in terms of what the role of a best friend is

milva barring

emiel regis

i already put milva, but the conversation scene between her and geralt with "i cannot help you..." "you just did. now go, please. go away, witcher before you destroy my entire world"

i already put regis, but his value as a comic relief character is astounding

cahir is finally introduced as a side protagonist, and is actually just some guy. he proves himself brilliantly at the end of the book. and there is no introduction or even *thought* of cahiri

fish soup scene. everyone collectively makes fun of geralt and we as a reader are laughing it up alongside them.

zoltan, percival, and the rest of their company are introduced as silly comic relief side characters, but represent a jewel of optimism in the side of the death-strewn landscape and keep being these beacons of humanitarianism and “good” in an evil world. considering that they are side characters and disappear for most of the novel, this says something about how goodness is rare, but not impossible to find, it does exist...

it’s short but thank god for that, the scene of djikstra and his spies finding vilgefortz’s lab is horror-filled and shocking, but sets vilgefortz up well as an absolutely wretched villain

the ending battle scene is action-packed and full of drama, but it has deeper messages than what is said on the surface, it has meaning and intention behind the character decisions. huge anti-war and anti-imperialism sentiments

it’s admittedly the first book of the witcher saga that i read, so i’m incredibly biased :B

[hanzajesthanza]

As someone who read the fan translations and then official English, I'm always curious about how things are translated. For example, official English is "epitome of humanity' and fan translations were "incarnation of humanity". Same thing with "comrade" and "friend" in the scene where Geralt tells Regis he'll have his back in Toussaint. Any thoughts on these?

same, i read the fan translations for my first and second year in the fandom. it’s a vague matter because there are multiple fan translations out there, and some are better than others. but the ones i have had since 2018 are similar in quality to the official translations because they’re both as good and bad as each other in different ways.

in some parts, the fan translations are better and actually more accurate because it’s, at times, a direct translation where there’s no adherence to a certain style of speech. for example, geralt calling cahir “whippersnapper” in the official english vs “kid” in the fan translation. in other parts, they are worse because of spelling or grammar errors (“you’re presence irritates me, vampire,”) names being cut short (“fulk” instead of fulko, “pegas” instead of pegasus), or things are translated wrongly — an example of that i can remember is a description of regis as wearing a black jacket at stygga when the original text doesn’t specify what he was wearing, only that he was dressed elegantly in black. but the official translation also does the latter — removal of text, mistranslations, or interpolation — such as removing cahir from the company breakfast, mistranslating seemingly every light hair color to “flaxen,” or calling regis elderly (haha.)

at the end of the day, with all summed and subtracted, they’re pretty much equal in terms of ‘legitimacy.’ official translation calls nimue “squirt”, fan translation calls her “thumbelina,” she’s actually “elbow-high.” neither of the translations were “correct,” ie., an exact translation.

i think the official translation (2nd edition! not the 1st edition, which can be clunky and weird-sounding at times) is easier than the fan translations for an english reader to read and ‘fall in love with,’ it just reads “easier,” you don’t have to do any brain work to think about the text and its nuances or the fact that it is a translation. some english readers have expressed that they like the mistranslations and extensions of the text because it adheres to a fairytale-like writing style, i’m not one of them, but the sentiment exists.

but though the official translation requires the reader to be more alert while reading and considerate of the text, it doesn’t make it more accurate or “better.” in my own opinion, i’d actually say it’s theoretically worse because it reads like it’s a story written in english — which is a problem to me, because it’s a translation. translations should read as translations! if it sounds like perfect english prose, it’s stok and french writing the story, not sapkowski, which is an issue for me because the original prose has significant qualities to it that i want to be aware of.

if someone reading this is trying to choose what the start with, i’d say it depends on your goal — do you want to just read the story immediately, as fast as possible, do you have time to sit down and read it (are you going to continue reading it even if you get frustrated with clunkiness?), also what is your budget, what are you going to want to read — do you even like reading PDFs or reading a physical book? i have the physical copies but a lot of the time i’m too fcking tired to get out of bed and take it from my shelf, so i just go on my phone to read the fan translations anyways.

basically what i did:

i read whatever was free, whatever i could get my hands on. i didn’t want to drop $80 on some books i wasn’t even sure i was going to like. i didn’t even read them in order, i began with baptism of fire and skipped around a bunch, but quickly fell in love with the characters from these books. then i made my way into the short stories and had read most of the series by this point

i had to bring in a physical copy of the book for a school assignment, so i took this as an opportunity to get the official english translation 2nd edition. i liked it (it was nice to have everything formatted neatly and with no spelling/grammar issues — i’m someone that is bothered by those kinds of things because it’s distracting to me) but a lot of the conversations were different to how i remembered them.

i listened to the english audiobooks and that basically wiped my fond memory of the fan translations because i quote the books basically based on what i remember listening to, and the audiobooks are of the 2nd edition translation.

i learned more about the mistranslations and cultural nuances that were taken out by talking to my friends and that made me really curious. i saw all these differences between the translation and the actual, i started thinking about what was actually said, and then i didn’t have anything better to spend my money on so i got the polish editions to comb through to find certain phrases or descriptions that i wanted to look at.

i started listening to the polish audiodramas this winter break (i’ve paused for now because i don’t have time to read anymote 😔) and before someone’s like ‘wait how does that work if you don’t know polish’ — i play the audiodrama while i have the polish text google translated to english on my laptop (so it shows both polish and english), as well as the official english translation in my hands, to see what is translated to what. (or, if i’m reading the short stories, i use astro’s translation bc it’s direct and i can trust it 😎.)

but just to point out, this hassle-heavy manner of reading that i do now wouldn’t work for me four years ago, because it was then that i didn’t already love these characters, i didn’t know them yet — i needed to start with the free fan translations and the english audiobooks in order to fall in love with them. and now, because i am already in love with them, i can re-fall in love with them with a more analytical style of going through the text. but just because something is more ‘analytical’ to the translation doesn’t mean it’s ‘better,’ it’s more about what is most comfortable to the reader and what suits them the best.