The Lady of the Lake wraps up this story we’ve been following at this point, and it is a bit of a wild ride. Time, quite literally, goes out the window, we bounce around a lot and that is a little confusing, but the author uses these time jumps to do some really interesting stuff to connect different stories, so despite my usual antipathy to time travel as a trope, I give it a pass in this one. Now, while Baptism of Fire I felt prioritized Geralt a bit more, and Tower of Swallow prioritized Ciri’s story, our conclusion jumps between a lot of different characters to show how we are all merging to the conclusion. Ciri, instead of being the typical maiden in distress waiting for her hero Geralt to rescue her, she decides Geralt is the one in danger and starts fighting towards him and Yennefer, and they only come together at the very very end of the story. While our central characters have been trying to find each other, the world has been at war for the last few books now, and that is a lot of what is slowing them down. So narratively we are being yanked around, begging for the reunion that we know will happen, but instead we flip between Geralt and his crew, Yennefer and her fellow magicians, Cir and her whole mess, and assorted villains and minor characters who tell us a little more of what is going on in the world, only further driving home the craving that Geralt and Ciri are feeling, which makes the conclusion that much better. It is also in this book that it becomes the most obvious who Geralt’s literary parallel is. Sapkowski did this really cool thing where he used references to different classical fairy tales and references them but in a completely different, typically more violent, form. Snow White is a major player in the first book, one of Geralt’s friends is the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and there are a dozen other references. And I had my suspicions about who Geralt was the whole time, and this book the author makes it the most obvious. And if you think about the title of this book, you’ll probably figure it out too. While I enjoyed this book, and it is well written, I feel like this ending, though thematically fitting, is a little dissatisfying. So in all, I give this one a respectable 3.9/5.