If you have discovered The Witcher through the Netflix series or the CD Projekt video games, and you want to know its origins, we explain the literary origin of the Geralt of Rivia Saga, by Andrzej Sapkowski, and in what order you should read The books Witcher.
We are not exaggerating if we say that the fantasy universe The Witcher rivals in popularity today with that of other great sagas such as The Lord of the Rings. Both were born from literature, and achieved stardom thanks to their adaptations to other media: cinema in the case of Tolkien’s work … and video games in the case of Sapkowski’s work.
The Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski began to narrate this universe in a series of short stories in the 1980s, which later led to long novels, and finally to the Geralt of Rivia Saga (the most appropriate title of the literary series, although it is generally refer to her as The Witcher).
You probably got here because you saw the Netflix series starring Henry Cavill, which is currently shooting its second season (and planning new spin-offs, in the purest HBO Game of Thrones style).
It is also likely that you have discovered it from role-playing video games, whose first title came out in 2007 on PC, although it was with The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt in 2015 when the saga really exploded, being one of the most successful and sold games of the generation and catapulting CD Projekt studio, also Polish, and authors of Cyberpunk 2077 to fame.
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Either way, you’re sure to be looking forward to how the adventures of the monster hunter Geralt of Rivia began. Here we explain what are all the books that to date make up the Geralt of Rivia saga (The Witcher), and in what order should you read them.
AliExpress sells several of the pendants that appear both in the game and in The Witcher series, some of them worn by Geralt of Rivia himself.
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As we said, the saga began with some stories published in a fantasy magazine, starting in 1986. These were reunited in two anthologies, first The sword of destiny, in 1992, and after Last wish, in 1993 (in its original Polish editions).
Nevertheless, If you want to start the story of The Witcher chronologically, you must start with Last wish, because in this the first seven stories of the saga are collected, in which the character of Geralt de Rivia, his poet friend Dandelion and the sorceresses Yennefer de Vengerberg and Triss Merigold are presented. Later, in The sword of destiny, Ciri is introduced, the other central character in the saga and later novels.
After these two anthologies, the novel saga itself begins, with five books originally published between 1994 and 1999: The blood of the elves, Hate time, Baptism of fire, The tower of the swallow Y The Lady of the Lake.
Fourteen years later, in 2013 (with the first two CD Projekt games and several low-key Polish film and television adaptations in between), Sapkowski met Geralt in a new novel, Storm Season, although chronologically it is set after the tales of The Sword of Destiny and the first novel.
