Blood of Elves

I finished Blood of Elves!

( Triss has a thirst. )

There are a lot of minor characters in this novel that I ended up wanting a book about! Coën, the Witcher "from Poviss" spending his first winter at Kaer Morhen, who's presumably from another Witcher school. The group of dwarves who are guarding a caravan for a human king, whose leader lost family in a pogram. The biology geek scholar on the boat who tries to explain to Geralt how many fish species in this river have been extirpated by pollution and that the monster he's guarding against doesn't exist. (And then excitedly tries to classify it while it's attacking.)

There's plenty of Dandelion - inexplicably misspelt 'Dandilion' throughout - but while he had some entertaining scenes here and there, Book!Dandelion is not exactly the most charming fellow and honestly I could do with less of him.

( Jaskier's Four Categories For Women, a frontrunner for the 'Well, This Was Definitely Written By A Man' Award: )

On the plus side, Ciri's a darling. ♥ I love her telling Triss that she's going to be a Witcher and that Witchers don't feel fear, when it's obvious that she really wants this to true so her lingering nightmares about Cintra won't haunt her anymore. I also love the scene where she pwns the cleric trainee with a crush on her when he stealthily kisses her hair.

I thought there'd be some more unravelling of her mysterious visions and strange magical talents, but the book ends without revealing anything about how Ciri can have zero magical aura only to speak prophecy five minutes later, or what strange being is trying to possess her (or just talking in her head?) Nor do we learn what a "Source" really is, though we're told that Ciri is one. So there's lots of mystery about Ciri's abilities and magical dangers!

Her rather contentious relationship with Yennifer is interesting, too; I look forward to seeing more of that, because we get a whole lot of odd hints about Yennifer's relationships and history, but no details.

The other top candidate for the 'Well, This Was Definitely Written By A Man' Award, for the curious, is Triss's initial reaction to Ciri being given secret Witcher herbal supplements while at Kaer Morhen. She's appalled and concerned, because Ciri has recently had her first menstrual period and the supplements appear to be increasing her discomfort. Triss marches into the group of Witchers and lambasts them for not knowing she was menstruating, then demands they stop dosing Ciri and don't mess with her hormones, because...

( What were you expecting? )