The first two books are collections of short stories,where the first one is paroding various fairy tales.
The other 5 books are one story about Geralt and Ciri. And I have to say that it's the only book series I can remember where the POV change between 2 characters far away from each other didn't really annoy me.
I'd really recommend to read them, they are one of my favourite fantasy stories.

I only read the german translation though, since I don't know the least bit polish.

only read the first one so far, English translation . Quite decent/enjoyable . Definitely gonna read the others as well.

Hemingway-ian ?

Did you mean Hemingway-ish

:P

I had one on Audible, didn't really care for it, but that could be a result of the translation.

I can only speak for myself, but I count the Witcher books by Sapkowski among my favourite pieces of literature (fantasy or not). I like how they are dark, melancholic and grim at times, but full of humour, beauty and joy also. I've read tons of books in the past, and still read as much as I'm able to, and I think I have a pretty broad spectrum of reading. I like how Sapkowski writes very much to the point and packs lots of references to "our world" and social comment into his stories without ever raising a wagging finger. Compared to other fantasy books I like The Witcher a lot more than ie. Song of Ice and Fire and a bit more than Tolkien. Maybe comparable to Neil Gaiman (American Gods).

I've read the German translations (all of the Witcher books and Something Ends... several times, except for Season of Storm which I've read only once so far) and The Last Wish and some excerpts in English. I think the German translations are... okay. I find them a bit vulgar in comparison to the English version - of course I don't know how earthy the original Polish writing is. Interestingly, with the games it's the other way round. The English versions are pretty juicy, the German version's dialogue is toned down quite a bit. For instance in the English version Ciri is taunted "cunt" by some enemies, which would be "Fotze" in German. But it's translated as "Schlampe" (~bitch). Or in Witcher 2 the song in the siege tower is a lot more... poetic in German.

I've also read The Hussite Trilogy which was very interesting since a lot of the events take place in a region very near my original home. Those have been translated by someone else (a woman) and the language is a lot more beautiful IMO. I don't know if the original writing style differs a lot between Witcher and Hussite Trilogy but I'm tempted to blame the translation. My problem with those books are that while I really love the style and the setting I really don't like the protagonist very much.

Better then the game that's for sure.

Same goes for the Metro 2033 book and Roadside Picnic (Stalker)

I'd say it's a similar style. I was reading those in Polish when they came out. Loved the first one, but it went (slightly) downhill from there. I've only read the last one once.
Sapkowski did very good historical research for this one, and while the Witcher was definitely superior, overall the Hussite trilogy is something I'd recommend too.

I haven't read any of Sapkowski's writing yet but I'm very much looking forward to reading my copy of A Polish Book of Monsters: Five Dark Tales from Contemporary Poland - edited and translated by Michael Kandel (an absolutely brilliant translator of Polish fiction renowned for his wonderful translations of a wide selection of Stanislaw Lem classics) - which includes Sapkowski’s 'Spellmaker' ('Wiedźmin').

I read them and liked them. You do have to account for translation. I read most of them based on fan translations, before the official English versions came out. I actually thought the fan translations were better than the English print books. Both worked, but I think the fans kept things more in what appeared to be the spirit of the books even if there were more grammatical errors.

Maybe a pet peeve, but Jaskier is a far better name than Dandelion. Too many names of people and places in the English print versions were too English-ized and it took away much of the foreign spirit of the books. It also didn't help that the official English books were not translated chronological order. I was fortunate to run across the fan translations.

Jaskier is Polish for Buttercup. So his name in the original was Buttercup. I like Dandelion better, personally.

I know that, but maybe it's just me, but if I'm reading a book series based on 13th century Poland, even in English, I prefer the people and place names to sound Polish. I remember reading most of Elizabeth Boyer's books, an American author who studied Scandinavian mythology whose books were based in a fantasy world similar to Scandinavia. The people and places sounded Scandinavian and it helped create the setting for me. You lose immersion with the setting when so many names and places are English.

It's an exotic setting, let it sound exotic.

For example, if you have a setting in medieval Germany from German...
Which sounds better and puts you in that place...The Black Forest or Der Schwarzwald. Not every term or name needs to be Americanized.

The point I'm making is that his name in this case is a word. It made sense for that to be translated. Just like it feels good when names aren't translated, it retains more of the actual original feel when a pseudonym that has other meaning is. For instance, if a guy's nickname was the dragon, and everyone in their language was calling him "the dragon" it would make sense that that word would be translated instead of staying as the original language. It's a personal preference, so I'm not telling you you're wrong, it just makes sense to me as to why his name was changed to Dandelion.

the italian version is pretty good. I think I like the book better than the witcher 2 and 3...