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So, I have just watched the first season of The Witcher on Netflix and I am hooked...

I know the series is based on books and video games, and while I probably won't play the games I definitely want to read the books.

What would be the best way to do that? Publication order? In-universe chronologically?

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Poking around, the order seems similar to this one in almost all cases:

  1. The Last Wish
  2. Sword of Destiny
  3. Season of Storms (optional)
  4. Blood of Elves
  5. Time of Contempt
  6. Baptism of Fire
  7. The Tower of the Swallow
  8. The Lady of the Lake

That's mostly the chronological order, although The Last Wish was released slightly after Sword of Destiny, and Season of Storms is a more recent release, but is set right after The Last Wish. It also is apparently fairly tangential to Geralt's story.

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    The Last Wish is a book of short stories and is partly what the first season is based off of if I’m remembering correctly. As such even if it wasn’t the first book chronologically it would probably help someone coming across from the TV series.
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Feb 1, 2020 at 22:20
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    @TheLethalCarrot First season is also based on Sword and some info about earlier stuff that's actually mentioned in later books.
    – Mithoron
    Feb 3, 2020 at 18:55
  • @Mithoron to be fair thought it might have been, only read part of that one though so wasn’t confident stating so.
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Feb 3, 2020 at 18:58
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    I very much doubt that the TV-show is going to bother with Season of Storms anyway, since it's entirely unrelated to Ciri's story and the TV-show's pacing very urgently leads to continuing right with Blood of Elves in season 2. Also a major character from Season of Storms already died so it would have to be a flashback anyway.
    – TARS
    Feb 4, 2020 at 16:04
  • You won't grasp everything in the epilogue of Season of Storms if you haven't read Lady of the Lake, however.
    – Amarth
    Feb 10, 2020 at 18:05

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