The Witcher Books in Order
Geralt of Rivia hunts monsters for money. That sounds simple until you realize the humans who hire him are often worse than the creatures he kills. Created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski in the 1980s, The Witcher follows a mutant swordsman through a medieval world where elves face genocide, mages play political games, and moral choices rarely have clean answers.
Witchers are made, not born. Boys are subjected to mutations that kill most of them. The survivors gain superhuman reflexes, resistance to disease, and the ability to brew potions that would poison anyone else. In return, they lose the ability to feel emotion, or so they claim. Geralt feels plenty. He just pretends otherwise.
The series starts with two short story collections that read like dark fairy tales. A princess cursed into a monster. A djinn granting twisted wishes. Snow White reimagined as something genuinely disturbing. Then come five novels following Geralt's attempt to protect Ciri, a teenage princess everyone wants to use for her powers. The story sprawls across political intrigue, guerrilla warfare, and dimension-hopping before reaching an ending that divides readers to this day.
CD Projekt Red's video games (2007-2015) made Geralt a household name, followed by the Netflix series. But the books came first, and they're stranger and more literary than either adaptation suggests. Sapkowski draws from Slavic folklore rather than Tolkien, and he's more interested in asking uncomfortable questions than providing heroic answers.