I've just finished playing The Witcher and totally loved it; the game's based on a series of novels and short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, and after playing the game I'm really interested in Geralt's world and where it came from (I'm always interested in knowing source material for anything I like really) so I've been thinking about buying the first novel Blood of Elves, but I wanted to know if anyone else on here's read any of them and whether they're any good.

I read a few lines of the first book once, and enjoyed going back to the world. Somehow I never got around to finishing it. Thanks for reminding me, I'll read it now!

For what it's worth, I was compelled to read through the entire book ( The Last Wish) yet only made it about 3 or 4 hours into the game... about five months ago.  So yeah, if you really enjoyed the game itself, then the book will definitely add to the experience since I read it before playing and already felt like I knew a great deal about the world and characters despite barely touching The Witcher just by reading The Last Wish.

Hi, I'm new here, but I saw this topic and wanted to help.  

I've read all the Witcher books, and why, yes, I'm Polish, if you have to ask. :p 
Here in Poland it once was the most popular fantasy series, we had comic books (absolutely terrible) and even a movie ( even worse. It became somewhat the synonym of absolute crap in Poland. But it can be watched like newly found Ed Wood movie :p)  
Yeeeeaaaah..Those kinda suck...But the books are essentially awsome. 
Unfortunately I do not know what books are translated into English, so I will just mention all seven of them. 
 
"The Last Wish" and "Sword of Fate" are two books composed of short stories. They are fun, intense and quite clever little fellas. Most of them are travesties of popular fairytales. So, basicly we have a Snow White (she goes by some other name, well, come on!) that is a leader of gang composed of seven brutal thougs and things like that. Off course, Geralt solves majority of problems with the grace and subtlety that he is known for.
Yeah it sounds little campy, but you know, if you summarize something it usually sounds cheesy. In fact the ideas for reasons of those magic conditions or the ways of solving them are usually really, really fun and/or thought-provoking.  I'll just say that many concpets used in the stories are inspired or connected to theories of   Bruno Bettelheim .  If you don't know the guy looki him up. :p 

And there is the Witcher Saga, five books, lots and lots of small letters and no pictures. :p 
This is the story preceding the game. 
Basicly there is a number of little countries which are at constant variance with each other and a young, quickly growing and economically strong new Empire of Nilfgard which, in past, has lost the war with the said kingdomes, but seems to be getting stronger recently. 
And the things get really awkward.  
There are conspiracies, banquets, ancient prophecies, crude language, swordfights, cool vampires (well, one cool vampire at least), even cooler tragically obese spies and Geralt who just everyone to leave him alone.
Lots of specific dark humour and even more of the specific dark lack of humour. Yeah, despite loads of cool one- and manyliners the saga is definetly more grim and down to earth.  But the story  is not a hardcore fairytale for a change, it is very, very good. Be ready for good dose of turns and bumps along the way. 
 
Oh, geez this post is terribly long, and confusing. Sorry for that (and for any language mistkes obviously).  
I hope I helped at least one bit. 
Well, all in all I strongly recommend reading the book cos' its fun, dark and offers uniqe feel of Eastern Europe mythology and culture ;) 
Cheers!

It is available on amazons kindle store, so you can read it on your pc, mac, iphone, ipad, kindle, etc etc. Plust it's only like $6

I thought I had read somewhere that an inkeeper gives you books in game you can read that are actually the full novels. 

@Arkham Thank you for your post.  I found it very helpful.  The Last Wish sounds interesting so I am going to order it from Amazon.com.  The image of the cover says "introducing The Witcher" so I'm going to take that as confirmation that it is the first book in English.  I hope the publication in English follows the same order as it did in Polish.  Sometimes an English publisher will release translations out of order.