The Tower of the Swallow

Title: The Tower of the Swallow

Author: Andrzej Sapkowski
Publisher: Gollancz
Year: 1997 (20170 Gollancz)
Pages: 436
ISBN: 9781473211575
Series: The Witcher #4
Genre: Fantasy
Reading Time: 10 - 19 Apr
Binding: Paperback
Goodreads

Stars:
★★★★★

Blurb:
 The world has fallen into war. Ciri, the child of prophecy, has vanished. She has take on the guise of a petty bandit and finally lives free.
 But the net around her is closing. The Witcher has assembled a group determined to rescue her, while both sides of the conflict send brutal mercenaries to hunt her down.
 There is only one place left to run. The Tower of the Swallow is waiting . . .

Review:
 It's weird. Now that I've decided this one was a 5 star book, I can't work out how to put in to words why. I'm nearing the end of The Witcher series now so it makes sense that things started to pick up quite a bit in this book. I have to say that the beginning few paragraphs really had me wondering what was going on and if I'd picked up the books in the wrong order, things quickly started making sense though.
 In Baptism of Fire we spend a lot of time with Geralt and practically no one else. We see Geralt again, enough to make us happy but not enough to bore us. This book is noticeably longer than the previous installments and we get so much time with Ciri! Finally! Her journey in this book is just stunning and gut-wrenching. That skate scene, I cannot wait to see that in the Netflix series, I'll be clenching my fingers a lot through that scene! Yennefer makes another appearance, more than the previous two books but still not a massive amount. I'm glad more came up in the later part of the book as I'm really starting to wonder how she's so loved in this fandom when she's hardly present in the source material!
 I noticed a different writing style in this book that previously. I'm reading a translated version but I assume this is something Sapkowski has changed as he's come along. Where we previously went along with the story we now have lots of people revealing their accounts of the event and then having a flashback to it. I quite enjoy it, slightly refreshing to have a style change but my goodness does it bring in a lot of new characters!
 I do feel like we're now going somewhere in this series. But it's almost like things are just about to start as opposed to end. I've said for some previous books that there was almost nothing to further the plot and story for the overall series. The pace is picked up a lot in this book but I can't hep wonder that is this series were being written today or by a different author then the books so far would perhaps be two big books in the beginning of a series rather than all but two of the books. I hope that makes sense.
 I have to circle back to Ciri, my goodness that girl goes through so much in this book. Yen too but for a much less visible period. There's not attempt to shy away from the really awful things that happen in the world of political war where individuals are trying to gain all they can with no regard for the welfare of others.
 I'm kind of sad to be nearly finishing this series, I think I'll end up slowly going through the next book!