Blood of Elves

Although Blood of Elves is the third book in The Witcher saga, you could say it’s actually the first proper novel in the series, as the previous two volumes, The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, are structured more like a collection of short stories. The transition proves to be more of a curse than a blessing, however, as Blood of Elves still tells a melancholic story tinged with irony, but now without a solid structure holding it all together.

The novel’s opening follows the events that closed Sword of Destiny. The witcher Geralt of Rivia, having found his pre-destined child, Cirilla, decides to adopt her and teach the bloody arts of his craft, taking the girl to the faraway fortress of Khaer Morhan, where she undergoes intensive training. Meanwhile, assassins, sorcerers, and kings (basically everyone) begin a tireless search for the child, as she is the only living heir to the throne of the war-torn kingdom of Cintra.

Unlike previous books, Geralt is not at the center of the story here, being only a protector and teacher for the princess, who is the true protagonist. The beginning of Blood of the Elves, for example, highlights her struggles: her nightmare, where she’s running scared and helpless through a burning city while a knight chases her down and slays her protectors, is brief but effective at portraying the nature of the girl’s main concerns – besides building suspense by suggesting that the witcher will soon find himself facing the same brutal, merciless knight.

Ciri may be haunted by the trauma of watching her city being seized, fearing that she endangers friends by staying near them, but she remains an energetic and curious child nonetheless, always ready to train some more and ask uncomfortable questions. Even carrying the heavy burden of her past, she still delights everyone around her with her pranks and sharp answers: when asked by a witcher about what she has on her face, for example, instead of “makeup,” she replies, “Greater self-esteem.”

Dialogues are very predominant in the book, with some sequences, such as the training scenes in the third chapter, being made entirely of them. The narrative plays well with the format, creating minor twists that surprise us precisely because of the lack of general descriptions – such as finding out at the end of a scene that one of the characters has been blindfolded the entire time. And for that to work properly, characters need to have their own voice, which Blood of Elves totally nails: we can easily spot the passive-aggression of the sorceress Yennefer in her lines, as well as the unsuccessful, forced politeness of the witcher Vasemir, and the crudeness of the dwarf Yarpen.

Due to this overabundance of dialogue, the general descriptions – when they appear – gain some weight, too. In the first chapter, for example, there is a very long passage – by the book’s standards, at least – describing the disposition of certain peoples in a public festival, which tells us a lot about the racial grievances at play in that world:

“Elves stayed with elves. Dwarfish craftsmen gathered with their kin, who were often hired to protect the merchant caravans and were armed to the teeth. Their groups tolerated at best the gnome miners and halfling farmers who camped beside them. All non-humans were uniformly distant towards humans. The humans repaid in kind, but were not seen to mix amongst themselves either. Nobility looked down on the merchants and travelling salesmen with open scorn, while soldiers and mercenaries distanced themselves from shepherds and their reeking sheepskins. The few wizards and their disciples kept themselves entirely apart from the others, and bestowed their arrogance on everyone in equal parts. A tight-knit, dark and silent group of peasants lurked in the background. Resembling a forest with their rakes, pitchforks and flails poking above their heads, they were ignored by all and sundry. The exception, as ever, was the children.”

The novel further addresses these issues by introducing a violent group of elven rebels and having them meet Ciri, who never thinks ill of them because of their race. After all, the closing sentence of the aforementioned passage already hints at how she’s prone to look at these issues with different – aka better – eyes.

It’s a pity, then, that Blood of the Elves’s story never reaches a proper conclusion. Or anything resembling that. The book may end, yes, but the characters’ arcs are left open, the villains are still at the colluding stage, and the novel’s central theme is still being developed. In short, the novel seems to tell only half of a story. Its climax, for example, never functions like one, as it mainly involves a secondary plotline and supporting characters.

Some of the book’s chapters also end and start abruptly, as if they were still supposed to be treated as isolated tales. The problem is that Blood of Elves is a novel, not a collection of short stories – the tales here are not really isolated – which makes this structure feel incredibly disjointed. The worst offender is certainly the transition to the fifth chapter, which suppresses the conclusion of the previous one and also suddenly shifts the focus from Ciri back to Geralt out of nowhere.

In the end, Blood of the Elves shows potential but refuses to capitalize on it, skillfully developing its characters and relationships to then postpone the conclusion, leaving the narrative without a proper

July 22, 2025.

Review originally published in Portuguese on May 17, 2015.