It's hard to review The Witcher without comparing each individual book to its previous entries. While its predecessor Blood Of Elves was a character driven affair, serving to round out previously two-dimensional characters, Time Of Contempt serves as a story-driven entry. 

For a book series called The Witcher, Geralt gets surprisingly little page time. This is not a complaint; Ciri once again serves as the main focus and protagonist, and over the course of the last 2 books, has really grown into her own as a character. Geralt does get his own fair share of the action, but his entries mainly serve as altered POV's for the story surrounding Ciri. 

While Ciri's story is advanced during the events of Time Of Contempt, the emphasis on story telling lays not on individual characters, but the world surrounding them. The world is very much teetering towards war, and the bulk of this text serves as a means of surveying the land. The deeds and misdeeds of kings and rulers, as well as the sorcerers and enchantresses that do or do not serve them is the emphasis of this book. Being the shortest entry into the main Witcher series, it would have been nice to see more content to blend the glorified story exposition and character work into a longer, more cohesive volume. 

Check your content warnings! (depictions of sexual assault)