The Witcher
by Andrzej Sapkowski · first published 2014
60% recommend40% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Dark, morally grey fantasy built from short stories and novels, praised for its vivid writing, Slavic mythology details, and the way it pulls readers in; a good pick for fantasy fans who want something less Tolkien-like.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Zero to One by P. Thiel (cheezy for HN, I know) Meltdown by T. Woods (cool guy, Austrian Economy) The Witcher by A. Sapkowski (Fantasy, but It reads well only in polish language)
on “Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?” ↗…I think there are a few writers more deserving to be 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…
on “The Anti-Tolkien” ↗…multifaceted range of vocabulary. Ortega y Gasset's "Rebellion of the Masses". It is centered in the individual "I am me and my circumstances" and its evolution since the enlightenment. Sapkowski's "Witcher". Look for a good translation, lots of Slavic mythology tidbits and wonderfully juicy curse words. Stanislaw Lem's "The Star Diaries". Nice if you like to fantasize about buying pieces for your spaceship…
on “Ask HN: What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the US?” ↗The Witcher Saga by Sapkowski. For the first time in years I felt like I got really "lost" in a book again and it was fantastic. I could do that easily when I was kid/teenager, now it's much harder to achieve for…
on “Ask HN: Please suggest some good books you have read recently” ↗…historical, educational, and truly fascinating to read. For a child this can really awaken their cognitive imagination. Fiction-wise I would leave to the child to decide as that list is truly endless. The Witcher series by Sapkowski I couldn't hardly put down (the movie is a complete FAIL). One other I rather liked is titled 'The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe' by Defoe, Lovecrart, & Clines.
on “What's your favorite children's book?” ↗The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski. I'm Polish so I've read the original. This was the best fiction book I've ever read. Also Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Neverwhere.
on “Ask HN: What book have you re-read 3x or more?” ↗Complete Nonsense. The whole Witcher series is very well written (though I read only Czech translation, so I cannot speak of the English one) and Sapkowski is a good writer (which he later more than proved with The Hussite trilogy). The…
on “Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood” ↗Came here to mention the same thing. It's one of the pillars of the whole Witcher saga, but most clearly it's visible in Sapkowski's short stories - The Lesser Evil, A Grain of Truth, A Question of Price, The Witcher, to name just a few.
on “The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters” ↗Try Sapkowski if you didn't read The Witcher yet.
on “Amazon to Adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s Globally Renowned Fantasy Novels” ↗Andrzej Sapkowski in the Witcher books, through Geralt, said something that might apply to this situation: "Evil is evil [...] Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I’m not a pious…
on “Absurd Trolley Problems” ↗…period was full of tech dystopia with a dollop of absurdity: Stanislaw Lem is well known in the Western world, Janusz Zajdel less so, but he was no less talented. Even Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the Witcher, dabbled in SF dystopia in some of his less known stories. It is likely that Janusz Kamiński was influenced by them at least a bit. In Slavic dystopias, you cannot laugh at the tyrant, but you can at…
on “‘Minority Report’ Tried to Warn Us About Technology” ↗To quote Andrzej Sapkowski, author of the Witcher books, "I don't think different media van converge". Each medium has unique properties that enable a story to be told in a certain way that may not be reproducible in another medium. Take Dark Souls…
on “Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?” ↗Andrzej Sapkowski (polish fantasy author, of "The Witcher" fame), when asked about his advice for young people who want to be professional writers like him said: "get into an honest and, if at all possible, profession". We're not dreamers here in EE like people…
on “How to Do Great Work” ↗Sure they are. Plenty of film and streaming projects are based on older work. Sapkowski's Witcher series comes to mind. If his rights to the IP had expired after 20 years then not only would Netflix been able to rip his work off for free, but he wouldn't have benefitted at all from the resurgence…
on “Microsoft buys Activision – what happens to Infocom's text adventures now?” ↗> If they wrote a book 20 years ago and it didn't sell much it's not going to sell now either, no? That's not a universal rule. Andrzej Sapkowski wrote a little short story called "The Witcher" in the 80's, that he expanded on into a novel series through the 90's. Then a game development studio made a series of wildly successfully videogames based on his work, which definitely made way more…
on “Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees” ↗