The Witcher is a series of six fantasy novels and 15 short stories written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The series revolves around the eponymous "witcher", Geralt of Rivia. "Witchers" are monster hunters given superhuman abilities for the purpose of killing dangerous creatures. The Witcher began with a titular 1986 short story that Sapkowski entered into a competition held by Fantastyka magazine, marking his debut as an author. Due to reader demand, Sapkowski wrote 14 more stories before starting a series of novels in 1994. Known as The Witcher Saga, he wrote one book a year until the fifth and final installment in 1999. A standalone prequel novel, Season of Storms, was published in 2013.

Blood of Elves is the first novel in The Witcher series written by the Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski, first published in Poland in 1994. It is a sequel to the Witcher short stories collected in the books The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny and is followed by Time of Contempt. The book won the Janusz A. Zajdel Award in 1994 and the David Gemmell Legend Award in 2009. An English translation was published in the United Kingdom in 2008 (Gollancz) and in the United States in 2009 (Orbit).