Sword of Destiny

Sword of Destiny is the second collection of Witcher stories and the bridge into the novels. Its six stories include The Bounds of Reason, A Little Sacrifice, and the closing sequence in which Geralt, bound to a child of the Law of Surprise, meets Ciri in the Brokilon forest and again on a battlefield's edge. Without this book, Blood of Elves begins mid emotion; with it, the saga's central relationship is already earned.

The current standard US edition is the Orbit trade paperback new edition of July 5, 2022, at 9780316452564. The earlier Orbit trade paperback of 2015 was 9780316389709. With The Last Wish, it forms the Stories boxed set at 9780316565165. A Gollancz UK edition exists; its ISBN was not verified in this census pass and is honestly not stated here.

Japanese publication is the page's documented gap. A Hayakawa Bunko FT edition of Sword of Destiny exists, published March 16, 2022 as the second short story collection, but its Japanese ISBN-13 was not retrieved in the census pass and the field is left blank rather than guessed. The same honest blank applies to Time of Contempt's Japanese ISBN; the other seven novels' Japanese ISBNs are verified and appear on the Japanese editions page.

Sword of Destiny is also the most skipped book in the series, because English publication order long made it easy to miss: it reached English after several novels despite preceding them in the story. Modern editions and this Library's reading order both correct that. It belongs second, immediately after The Last Wish.

The collector note is modest: this is a paperback first series, with no separate illustrated hardcover recorded in the census for this title. Buy the 2022 Orbit edition to match The Last Wish, and check the ISBN rather than the similar cover art.