The last wish
by Peggy Oppong · first published 2011
6mentions
4recommended by
5HN commenters
2009–2020first – last mentioned
80% recommend20% neutral
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If you want real subversive fantasy, I recommend Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish and the other of books from the saga. It has everything: The main character is a male witch (or witcher), the female wizards have formed a secret society to take over the world and nonhumans (elves,dwarfs)…
on “Terry Prachett: Why Gandalf Never Married (1985)” ↗…called "Anti-Tolkiens": obviously George R. R. Martin for Game of Thrones, and less known Andrzej Sapkowski with his short stories cycle about The Witcher (only 1 out of 2 short stories collections - The Last Wish - is translated to English, but it is worth reading just for the fresh and original view on fantasy book structure - it's short stories, nicely packed with interesting and original multi-sided conflicts,…
on “The Anti-Tolkien” ↗…being an entry point into linguistics. Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski - With the new Witcher show coming out on Netflix I finally went back and beat The Witcher 3 then read the first book, The Last Wish. It was enjoyable enough that I want to keep going with the series. Educated by Tara Westover - Was convinced by Bill Gate's blog this is worthwhile. I'm a teacher so it wasn't hard to convince me. Robot…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗I read mostly fantasy and sci-fi - some favorites: "Lord of the Rings" J.R.R.Tolkien "The Last Wish", "The Sword of Destiny" A.Sapkowski "The Last Unicorn" P.Beagle almost anything by S.Lem. My favorite mainstream book is "Wielki Las" Zbigniew Nienacki (unfortunately no English translation available).
on “Do Hackers read *other* books?” ↗Strongly agree. Just started reading it myself. One note for people picking it up: the English translation for ‘The Last Wish’ is not great but, if you power through it, all the remaining books are fantastic.
on “Ask HN: Please suggest some good books you have read recently” ↗…especially with its less common (and less heroic) settings such as Planescape, Dark Sun, etc. PS: in case you're a Pole, how did you like Netflix's Witcher? Years ago I read the English translation of The Last Wish and it felt very fresh to me -- I really liked that the monsters are non-standard, it resembled Jack Vance's fiction in that way -- but stopped short of the novels, because what I've been told about them…
on “Eastern European Movies” ↗