This was amazing.
After almost nothing really happened in Blood of Elves, there is a lot happening in this one. Yennefer and Geralt reunite, Ciri is still in danger but isn't that aware in the beginning, there are new great characters and all of this is told in wonderful little occurrences that made me happy, even though near the ending the book got really intense.
I always love Sapkowski's style of writing characters and dialogs and how he has a partly poetic suffisticated writing style but doesn't mind getting close to vulgar at times. For the first time since The Last Wish I loved the plot just as much as the writing.

What I did notice within the first two witcher novels is that they aren't like normal books within a series: the structure isn't one of a beginning, middle and end as clearly as I normally like it, instead a lot of things happen and probably if you put all 5 books together you have one cohesive narrative. With other books I wouldn't like it but in Time of Contempt I still felt that it worked very well on its own.

Also I'm finally beginning to like Ciri and being interested in her personal story. I never disliked her but the adult characters just really stole the spotlight from this standart teenage girl. After what happened at the last third of this book I finally feel like I really care about what's happening to her and she doesn't just feel like a motivation for Geralt anymore.