The Witcher is one of the most famous and popular fantasy book series of all time. Written by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski (1948), The Witcher is about Geralt of Rivia, a white hair and yellow eyes Witcher who goes through some fantastic adventures along with incredible characters such as Yennefer of Vengerberg, Cirilla, Jaskier, Vesemir, and Triss Merigold of Maribor. This saga is very story rich and it portraits a lot of themes, like politics, racism, xenophobia, war, colonization, and more. However, it may be a little hard for people who are not used to this book’s universe to understand the correct order to read it. That is why I’m going to show you how to read The Witcher books in order.
Overall, The Witcher is not a series as big as some other famous series, such as Dune. It only has eight books that are medium to short size and some extra short stories. The first two books are a collection of short stories, but they are very important to understand what The Witcher is and to understand what is to come, so don’t skip these books. It is best to read in the following order since it is in-story chronological order. Otherwise, it may be hard for you to understand if you don’t know anything about this universe. The order is The Last Wish (it was published in 1993 in Poland, but only in 2007 in the English version, so it is considered the first The Witcher book in English. All be listing the English publishing dates from now on), Sword of Destiny (2015), Blood of elves (2008), Time of Contempt (2013), Baptism of Fire (2014), The Tower of the Swallow (2016), The Lady of the Lake (2017), Season of Storms (2018).
These books are divided into categories: the first two, as I’ve told, are a short story collection. From Blood of Elves to The Lady of the Lake you have the main story happening, and these books are considered The Witcher Saga. These are the books that mainly inspired the videogames The Witcher (2007), The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2009), and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (2015). The games are incredible, by the way. If you never played them, I highly recommend them, especially the last one. Also, they are very inspired by the books, so you are going to recognize a lot of details. However, some major parts of the story were altered, as they always are when you change from a media to another.
The book Season of Storms is a standalone novel, but the experience of reading it is better after you read all of the others.
The Witcher book saga also inspired some graphic novels, board games, and the newest The Witcher series published by Netflix, which is a huge hit. It has two seasons: the first one was released in 2019 and the second one was just released (2021). Although this show is not perfect, it is a nice experience for those who like The Witcher or those who like the fantasy genre in general. It is certainly worth checking out the shatter me series as well.