Basically . . . I don’t get it.
The longest book in the series by quite a bit, Lady of the Lake is the weirdest possible ending for almost everything that has happened in this series so far, and I’m hard-pressed at the moment (and have been for the last two months) to see how it resolves much of anything that this series has been about for the last four books, plus two short story collections. I don’t know what to do with this book? I don’t really think I get what Sapkowski was going for with this series as a whole. What was the point? I couldn’t have predicted this ending in one thousand years.
Anyway. How the F am I supposed to talk about this fool book? It has 1,000 POV switches, and some of the POV characters are brand new and in a different universe, and for some reason we are all about Arthurian legend and Camelot now? Even though that has nothing to do with anything? The “main plot” was practically buried in frame stories and Ciri’s jaunt to the Tower of the Swallow, which ended up being gross and weird. The entire prophecy about her was pointless. If pointlessness was the point, I don’t think he did a very good job. Especially since none of this with these elves resolves any of the issues the elves back in Ciri’s world have been dealing with.
Spoilers for the conflict with Nilfgaard . . . the entire plot ends with a battle narrated from the POV of a new character, and after all of that, a single battle decides the fate of the war and the Nilfgaardians retreat across their original border. I mean, okaaaaaay? Talk about anticlimactic.
And then almost everybody dies. Hooray.
I’m not even going to talk about the twist reveal at the end with the emperor of Nilfgaard, because it’s gross and I think it’s bullshit, and it makes no sense in terms of story! What was the point! How is that a logical thing for that character to do! And why!! Don’t even get me started on the multiple layers of deux ex machina‘s to be found here.
Anyway, basically none of this makes sense and is all weird, and I hope the TV show (which I love) can make sense out of it eventually. I’m not mad I read this series, and will probably revisit the short stories again, but the rest of the series is a mixe bag. These are my (semi-)final thoughts. (One more book of novellas, set before this book, to go.)
[2.5 stars, rounded up, I guess? It wasn’t boring anyway; I guess that’s my standard now]