Sapkowski created a fabulous world in his Witcher books, and this is a solid entry that doesn't have some of the weirdly problematic issues that the core five books do. It's fun to see a younger, only-slightly-less-jaded version of Geralt, and it was nice to finally realize that I had been thinking about Roach's name from the wrong angle all these years. Video games are where this world really shines, but I did enjoy this book.

This is a perfectly fine book. The characters were engaging, and the mystery was interesting enough. And while I have zero problem with an elderly, eccentric, female scientist in the 1910s, I did have a problem with her salty language, and apparently, I'm not the only one. The author had to do an author's note just about the language. And yes, I understand that those words existed at that time, and if it were a man using them, or a working-class woman, it would work, but Victorians had weird hang-ups about keeping the ladies pure, so it didn't work for me. It really felt wrong, and that took me out of the story every time this wealthy lady used the F word. Jerking your reader out of the story just so you can make an old lady swear because you think it's funny - is that worth it? I don't have an issue with swearing in general, but this just felt wrong. (Fun fact: many of the swear words/vulgar words in English are just the Anglo Saxon words for things, but when the French [Normans] came in with their language, they decided their words for things were more elegant and acceptable, and made the Anglo Saxon words bad. [For example: "urine" is fine, "piss" is not, but "piss" was just an everyday word for the Anglo Saxons.])

While Oliver James has a cool story to tell, it's not a book-length story. There was sooooo much repetition. I read about 2/3 of it, but then realized that he wasn't really saying anything new; he even kept using the same words and phrases when talking about different parts of his life. Several times, I read a passage and think, "Didn't he already talk about this?" Sometimes, he was retelling the same incident. Other times, it was a different thing, but he wasn't telling it in a different way. I hope James's story helps lots of people and inspires people to learn to read even if they are older, but it just didn't make the most compelling book.