The Lady of the Lake (The Witcher, 7)

The Lady of the Lake is, for me, the most uneven book in the Witcher series so far, equal parts frustrating and fascinating. Some sections felt like a slog I had to push through, while others were so intense and action-packed that I couldn’t look away. It’s a strange reading experience: you’re bored one minute and completely hooked the next. The story opens in the future with the sorceress Nimue and her intern, the oneiromancer Condwiramurs Tilly, trying to reconstruct the past through paintings and dreams. From there, the narrative jumps across timelines, dimensions, and perspectives. While those shifting viewpoints did help fill in the gaps from the previous book and show the wider consequences of everything that’s happened, the structure was irritatingly confusing. Some of the long war passages, especially when they focus on minor players without clear ties to the core characters, felt tiringly dense. At the same time, Sapkowski wrote the emotional moments between the main characters with such care that they are genuinely tender and devastating. As the final book in the saga, it does bring the story to a meaningful close. It’s messy, nonlinear, and a little indulgent. Even though it frustrated me, I couldn’t deny that it was ambitious and memorable.