Adaptation: Jacek Rembiś, Travis Currit (English adaptation)
Art: Jonas Scharf
Contains spoilers
The blurb: Geralt's encounter with a beast reveals the truth behind fairy tales in this graphic novel adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski's original short story. Geralt takes a short cut down a beaten path, where he makes a grim discovery of two corpses. Backtracking their trail, he's led to a derelict mansion secured with elevated walls and a gate - mysterious and ramshackle, yet adorned with a rare elegance Geralt could not ignore. He is met with the mansion s owner - not quite human, but a beast with the faculties of a man.
With Geralt unfazed by his monstrous appearance and displays of aggression, the beast invites him inside. A kind but wary host, he shares stories of his family, his life... and his curse. If the weight of his misdeeds could condemn him to the body of a beast - a retribution spoken of only in fairy tales, could there be another grain of truth in these tales of fantasy - one that could help him elude his fate and lead him to salvation?
This graphic novel is the first in a series of adaptations from Sapkowski's acclaimed short story collection The Last Wish!
The review: As mentioned in the blurb, A Grain of Truth appeared in the volume The Last Wish but it was also the basis for a Season 2 Episode of The Witcher TV series. The story has differences to the television version; Ciri is not in the tale, which changes some scenes and dynamics, and Nivellen and Geralt are not old acquaintances. Yet the episode did follow the broad brush of Sapkowski's story and this remains faithful to the source.
It is essentially a riff on the tale of Beauty and the Beast, with Nivellen a nobleman cursed by a priestess for his crimes against her, transformed into an anthropomorphic boar, with magical powers due to the curse but still intelligent and erudite. He believes the lifting of his curse would involve love and blood and has paid merchants to leave their daughters with him, wooed them and hoped it would transform him back to human.
Geralt comes across him having found a dead armourer and woman off the road, he follows his nose and, after seeing a woman in the woods who flees, finds the manor house, After an initial mistrust Nivellen agrees to offer hospitality to the Witcher and ends up telling Geralt his story, or most of it… as this is a story that has been done a couple of times it is not too much of a spoiler to reveal that Nivellen’s latest companion is a bruxa – a vampire type.
The story is fun (as the original is) and the artwork worthwhile. It is only a thin graphic novel, adapted as it is from a short story, but it is a good adaptation and released in hardback. 7.5 out of 10.
In Hardback @ Amazon US
In Hardback @ Amazon UK
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