The Tower of the Swallow (The Witcher #4)

Author: Andrzej Sapkowski

Rating: 2/5

War has engulfed the world. Ciri is being hunted by everyone. Geralt and his gang want to rescue her but kind of suck at it.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

Vysogota, a hermit living in a swamp, finds Ciri with a black mare. Ciri is injured and she tells him what happened. She was with the Rats but was hunted down by a bounty hunter named Leo Bonhart. She had left the Rats for a while, thinking she could take back Cintra on her own. She raced back to the village to find Bonhart had killed her friends. He kills Mistle, her lover, in front of her. Bonhart takes Ciri to this arena place. She uses her witcher training to stay alive. She threatens to kill herself on the sword but can’t do it. Meanwhile, Geralt, Dandelion, Regis, Milva and Cahir are with Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivia but Geralt wants to find the druids so they part ways. On their way, they find that there’s a bounty on their heads by a half-elf and criminals led by Nightingale. They get Angoulême, a Cintran woman who looks kind of like Ciri, to help them–she was part of their group. They are captured by the half-elf named Schirrú and Geralt’s medallion is taken away too. Cahir is injured so Geralt and Cahir limp away so he can recover. Cahir talks about how he fell in love with Ciri when he rescued her and she had left him. They make peace and reunite with the others. The gang is captured by druids who had also captured the criminals. The criminals are killed so Geralt loses his medallion but he says he’s not a witcher anymore. Geralt meets an elf named Avallac’h who tells him to stop looking for Ciri because whatever will be, will be.

Djikstra goes to Kovir to get money from the king so that Redania can have an army. There’s a crapload of history. The Lodge (the sorceresses’ secret club) want Kovir under their power. Triss Merigold internally questions the Lodge’s motives so she looks for Yennefer who had escaped from the last meeting. Yennefer is on Skellige and gets Crach an Craite to help her find Vilgefortz or something. She travels on a ship without Crach beyond Skellige and there’s a maelstrom. Yennefer is captured by Vilgefortz and is forced to reveal Ciri’s location using an empathic connection. She reveals Geralt’s location instead which is how Schirrú had killed Geralt?

Ciri finishes her story, explaining how Bonhart had taken her to Stefan Skellen aka Tawny Owl–the Imperial coroner. There’s a psychic Tawny Owl had named Kenna who tells them Rience is after them (Rience is working for Vilgefortz). Rience has a device which lets Vilgefortz talk to Tawny Owl so they discuss Ciri and how they can split her so everyone is happy. Kenna tries to read Ciri’s mind but Ciri understands what’s happening and blocks her mind but Kenna somehow gives her her magic powers back? Using her powers, I guess, Ciri gets her horse and sword and jumps the gate or something and escapes. Skellen threw a knife or something at her which is how she got the scar on her face and that’s how Vysogota found her. Ciri decides to leave after Vysogota tells her Skellen’s peeps are in the neighbouring village. She kills those people and then seeks out the Tower of Swallows and she does some ice-skating around more of Skellen’s men and kills Rience. Vysogota dies of a heart attack in his house but when Ciri is transported by unicorns through the Tower of Swallows, she sees him. The book ends with this elf asking Ciri what took her so long.

Plot and Pacing

I’ve been staring at my screen for a few minutes because I have no idea what to write. The first chapter gave me hope for a really good adventure and, more importantly, an interesting one to read. Unfortunately, after that, the only parts I liked were the ones with Dandelion getting teased about his diary. Geralt’s gang was boisterous as always but despite my fondness for them all, I had to skim the Angoulême bits because, damn it, they were so boring. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that I would get to read a lighter book if I trudged through this one. You know you’re not enjoying a book when you dread reading after a whole day of studying. Usually, the hour before bedtime is my favourite time of day because that’s when I turn everything off and just read. But nope, this book ruined that for me.

I appreciate the growing complexities of the plot. It only makes sense for more people to entangle themselves in the war and bloody their hands. But surely there’s got to be a more interesting way of describing it! I’m quite curious as to who the elf is.

I’m trying to glean some message from this book but I’m pulling a blank. Perhaps, desperate times call for desperate measures?

Characters

Ciri’s transformation seems complete from a girl still attempting to pirouette with proper technique to a young woman who has been betrayed by the world and plans on exacting her revenge. She realises her foolishness of thinking she could retake her kingdom and I felt for her when she mourned for Mistle. Yet, in the end, Ciri still goes out on her own. So perhaps the character development is a bit flawed there.

I quite liked Vysogota because he treated Ciri really well and I love fictional doctors. It’s always interesting to see how they treat their patients and contrast that with medical practices here.

Geralt has, until this book, stubbornly refused to yield to one side. I felt uncomfortable when he was parted from his medallion. That medallion–I just associate it with him–and I held out till the end, hoping he’d get it back. But nope, it just had to be burnt. You would think a witcher medallion would be more resistant. Anyway, Geralt gives up his title of witcher so I wonder if that means he’ll no longer be neutral? I guess he was always quite biased towards Ciri.

Dandelion and Regis didn’t get enough time in the book and neither did Milva. I love their chemistry and it was something this book was sorely lacking. I could read pages upon pages of Geralt’s gang travelling around the world and engaging in pure banter.

Cahir grossed me out a bit. I mean, he fell in love with Ciri, fourteen or something at the time, as he “rescued” her when he meant to bring her back to Nilfgaard. It’s just weird! He’s supposed to be, like, twenty-five? And I find it hard to believe that he was enamoured with a child.

Writing Style

Sapkowski seemed to be experiment a lot with his style in this book. There were many section breaks (is that what you call them?) which I appreciated because I usually like to read one chapter in between blocked study time but that’s impossible with The Witcher since each chapter is so long. But I felt like Sapkowski was trying too hard to be creative with his prose (like how he repeated that thing about no one seeing the hermit and the girl because they were in the swamp). I wanted a gut-wrenching fantasy story that would have me in tears–from sadness and laughter–but I got one which bored me to tears instead.

Translations are always finicky because you never know if the translated version is bad because of the translator or due to the source material. I found quite a few posts on Reddit claiming the German, Russian and Italian (I think?) translations were very well-written and closest to the original Polish. Another user talked about how some Polish jokes just didn’t transfer well into the English language which makes me sad because I’m clearly missing out on some quality content.

I’ve made it this far in the series but part of me is tempted to stop because reading is something that I do purely for fun yet now it feels like a chore. But then again, it’s just one more book. The decisions life throws at you!