In the audiobook of the Witcher books, the narrator pronounces “Dandelion” not like the flower, but as “Dan Dell Eon”. It’s weird and off-putting. It made me wonder two things for the first time in the series. One, is that really how British people say that, and I think the answer is: no. Two, why is that his name? It turns out that the character’s Polish name is Jaskier, which is also what he’s called in the show. This means Buttercup. I wondered after this what that might mean in terms of cultural connections with Buttercup. Between the song “My Little Buttercup” and Buttercup from The Princess Bride, it tends to be a gendered flower in English language/American spaces, so I guess that might mean the change.
Anyway, this is the fourth main novel in the Witcher series. There’s two short story collection and a side-prequel novel. All of those are pretty good. The main novels have felt a little weak to me in general because they keep suggesting something big was coming on the horizon. This novel finally delivers on a lot of the legwork of the early novels. I felt the third novel was very much “when do they get to fireworks factory” throughout them. In this novel I feel like we’re at least at the door of the of factory. And this one is very solid, mostly because we stick to some stories as they’re happening. What I mean by this is that while we get a lot of the politicking, the best thing is sitting with a character and letting things happen with them for awhile. He does so much world-building early that is interesting, but not always compelling.