Anyone else a Witcher fan?

I'd played the 3 Witcher games in the past, but have to admit I'd never finished any of them. Then the Netflix series came out and after really enjoyed that I decided to explore the books. But not having time to read them I listen to the audio books on Audible whilst driving to work. Highly recommended.

There are 8 books and well worth reading/listening to. Far better and much more depth than the series. After finishing all the books it actually annoyed me how they had altered some of the stories in the Netflix series as they didn't need to, and they make more sense in their original versions.

The only disappointment with the books was the last book. There are 3 standalone books that contain short stories that explore the Witcher's earlier life and are used for some of the stories in the TV series. Then the final 5 books are a complete story arch of the lands being invaded by Nilfgaard. But the fifth and final book was very strange and I just couldn't get on with it. Unlike the others it was written in a different style, almost like a different author. It was from an historical viewpoint, looking back at the events surrounding the events, whereas the others were directly from the character's viewpoint. And the final ended was really stange and didn't actually make sense, with many online having conflicting opinions on what actually happened. Maybe that conclusion was the intention as it lets the reader draw their own conclusion, but for me it left too many questionmarks and felt disappointing as it didn't wrap it up properly. Hopefully if the Netflix series doesn't get cancelled they will reach the end of the main story and draw a better conclusion.

The most confusing thing about the series was why they changed the name of Garalt's friend from Dandelion to Jaskier. But looking into it his name in the original Polish was actually Jaskier. But it can't be translated properly and it's closest to Buttercup, which doesn't fit the character properly, so the English book changed the name to Dandelion. But for the series they changed it back. Why didn't they just keep Jaskier for the English versions? No idea.

Anyway, now I've read all the books and watched the series twice, I'm going to go back and replay The Witcher 3, especially as its getting a PS5 upgrade soon. I really want to see how they realised some of the other charactersfrom the books, such as the Vampire.

I've also just discovered their's another strategy RPG called Thronebreaker: the witcher tales. A full open world RPG centred around a Witcher card game called GWENT, using that for the game mechanics for battles. I just grabbed it in the PS4 sales but not played it yet.

Also whilst looking through recent Star Wars Black series figure releases I noticed some brilliant looking The Witcher collectable figures from Dark Horse. I had decided not to collect any more figures other than a few of the 6 inch Black series Star Wars releases, but these Witcher figures look brilliant. Not cheap though, with the cheapest being £39.