I’m not keen on short stories and the first four in this book more or less just proved me right once again. They are well written and it is a plus that they’re connected, with bits of a bigger story to be found inside them, but they are nevertheless pretty much just short stories, at times forced, at times striding too far either into humor or into a fairy tale, at times simply seeming to not quite fit, and overall rather missing the tone, setting and mood that I expected, and which they perhaps sought. Also, one particular reason to be angry with Yennefer sure is stressed at some point, and by that I don’t mean the one most people reading this will assume. That one just makes me feel even worse about the way what to me is the only right choice was treated in The Witcher 3.
However, I rated this the way I did thanks to the last two stories, which definitely belong alongside the proper books in the series, being properly connected and certainly finding that tone and mood and setting, never losing their way. After reading the fifth and seeing as the book is titled after it, I assumed that will be the best one, but the last then proved me wrong. That was in good part thanks to the outstanding and guttingly bittersweet scene between Geralt and Yennefer, which caused me to need to take a break and which I’ll probably need a longer time to recover from, but definitely not only because of that.