Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Ace (1990), Edition: Reprint, Paperback
Description
The final book in the seminal sword and sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from the Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy. The highly regarded British horror author Ramsey Campbell called Fritz Leiber "the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction." Drawing many of his own themes from the works of Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the fantasy genre, actually having coined the term sword and sorcery that would describe the subgenre he would more than help create. While The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber's fantastic but thoroughly flawed antiheroes, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, adventured and stumbled deep within the caves of Inner Earth as well, albeit a different one than Tolkien's. They wondered and wandered to the edges of the Outer Sea, across the Land of Nehwon and throughout every nook and cranny of gothic Lankhmar, Nehwon's grandest and most mystically corrupt city. Lankhmar is Leiber's fully realized, vivid incarnation of urban decay and civilization's corroding effect on the human psyche. Fafhrd and Mouse are not innocents; their world is no land of honor and righteousness. It is a world of human complexities and violent action, of discovery and mystery, of swords and sorcery. … (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Anome
This book sadly marks the decline of Leiber's talent towards the end of his life. The stories take place after the events of Swords and Ice Magic where Fafhrd and the Mouser are stuck on the other side of the world from Lankhmar. As with most of the other books, it is a collection of stories rather
For completists only. The rest of us should pretend it ends before this book.
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than a novel, and at least one of the stories is simply a rewrite of an earlier one.For completists only. The rest of us should pretend it ends before this book.
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LibraryThing member Larou
The seventh and final volume in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series, containing stories from the late seventies and eighties. This one was a bit different than the previous for me, insofar as it is the only volume I had never read before, as it had not been released (or indeed,
The volume’s basic structure is similar to Swords and Ice Magic – it starts off with some shorter stories (not quite vignettes this time, though, even though there is not really that much more happening) and then ends with what one might consider as either a long novella or a short novel. Noteworthy about Knight and Knave of Swords is that it is the longest volume in this series – it is not quite a doorstopper but it has a significantly higher page count than any of the previous books. And this turns out to be not a good thing at all – where Leiber’s storytelling used to be lean and slink, propelled by action and humor, here its most characteristic feature is a huge amount of bloat, the stories’ narrative momentum getting lost in lacklustre descriptions of pointless detail – Knight and Knave of Swords reads like a re-imagining of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser as done by Robert Jordan.
The three introductory stories are bad enough in that respect, but things take an even worse turn in the concluding novella “The Mouser Goes Below”. All the colour and wit, all the elegance and ironic touches that made this series so special seem to have been drained from Leiber’s prose, leaving a dry, dull husk that is all the more painful to read for those extremely rare moments when there is a brief sparkle of its former brilliance (like when it turns out that the Fafhrd’s child is actually closer in character to the Grey Mouser and vice versa). But those moments are so few and far between as to be almost non-existent, and the rest of the novella resembles nothing more than one of the pointless vignettes from Swords and Ice Magic – blown up to over 200 pages. Our supposed protagonists are even more passive than in the previous volume’s “Frost Monstreme / Rime Isle”, they are just being pushed around like pawns and this time there is not even any real purpose behind it, the whole novella reads like one long exercise in utter futility.
Even though after reading Swords and Ice Magic I did not go with any high expectations into this volume, Knight and Knave of Swords still managed to be a huge disappointment and I cannot imagine even the most diehard fan of the series deriving any enjoyment from this volume. Even the attempts at fan service (Fafhrd’s daughter and the Grey Mouser’s son) fall woefully flat and the whole thing is a dreary mess that leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. I had to thumb through some of the early volumes to get rid of it and to remind myself that this used to be a wonderful series. Knight and Knave of Swords is emphatically going to get skipped in any further re-readings of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser I might be undertaking.
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written) yet the last time I read through the series. Knight and Knave of Swords is generally considered the series’ low point, and with very good reason – while Swords and Ice Magic was rather mediocre, this one is outright bad, and if it wasn’t for my stubbornly insisting on reading the series in its entirety I probably would not have finished it.The volume’s basic structure is similar to Swords and Ice Magic – it starts off with some shorter stories (not quite vignettes this time, though, even though there is not really that much more happening) and then ends with what one might consider as either a long novella or a short novel. Noteworthy about Knight and Knave of Swords is that it is the longest volume in this series – it is not quite a doorstopper but it has a significantly higher page count than any of the previous books. And this turns out to be not a good thing at all – where Leiber’s storytelling used to be lean and slink, propelled by action and humor, here its most characteristic feature is a huge amount of bloat, the stories’ narrative momentum getting lost in lacklustre descriptions of pointless detail – Knight and Knave of Swords reads like a re-imagining of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser as done by Robert Jordan.
The three introductory stories are bad enough in that respect, but things take an even worse turn in the concluding novella “The Mouser Goes Below”. All the colour and wit, all the elegance and ironic touches that made this series so special seem to have been drained from Leiber’s prose, leaving a dry, dull husk that is all the more painful to read for those extremely rare moments when there is a brief sparkle of its former brilliance (like when it turns out that the Fafhrd’s child is actually closer in character to the Grey Mouser and vice versa). But those moments are so few and far between as to be almost non-existent, and the rest of the novella resembles nothing more than one of the pointless vignettes from Swords and Ice Magic – blown up to over 200 pages. Our supposed protagonists are even more passive than in the previous volume’s “Frost Monstreme / Rime Isle”, they are just being pushed around like pawns and this time there is not even any real purpose behind it, the whole novella reads like one long exercise in utter futility.
Even though after reading Swords and Ice Magic I did not go with any high expectations into this volume, Knight and Knave of Swords still managed to be a huge disappointment and I cannot imagine even the most diehard fan of the series deriving any enjoyment from this volume. Even the attempts at fan service (Fafhrd’s daughter and the Grey Mouser’s son) fall woefully flat and the whole thing is a dreary mess that leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. I had to thumb through some of the early volumes to get rid of it and to remind myself that this used to be a wonderful series. Knight and Knave of Swords is emphatically going to get skipped in any further re-readings of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser I might be undertaking.
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LibraryThing member Lyndatrue
I loved this book, but it's the last one in the series that I bought. Some of the stories in here were previously published in other places, and it didn't hold me in the way the first six did.
Life is finite. As Aldous Huxley said, "Time Must Have a Stop."
(That reminds me, I ought to add in all my
Life is finite. As Aldous Huxley said, "Time Must Have a Stop."
(That reminds me, I ought to add in all my
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Huxley, and Anthony Burgess, and other fun authors to LT some day or other.) Show Less
LibraryThing member JasonMehmel
If you haven't read a previous book in the series, don't start here!
Although it lacked the verve of the adventures from all of the previous stories, there is a kind of bravery here, to write a closing book that also somehow avoids answering everything. This does feel like the ending that these
And although the stories lack the same kind of adventure we'd come to expect, it's always clear we're in the hands of a playful and accomplished writer; ever paragraph is interesting and well-written. The prose compels you as much as the adventure might have.
(I rescind my previous advice; it would be fascinating to read this book and then comb through the other adventures... knowing where they're going but still enjoying how they get there.)
Although it lacked the verve of the adventures from all of the previous stories, there is a kind of bravery here, to write a closing book that also somehow avoids answering everything. This does feel like the ending that these
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characters would get to; it feels like a natural progression even if it's a departure from the established prose.And although the stories lack the same kind of adventure we'd come to expect, it's always clear we're in the hands of a playful and accomplished writer; ever paragraph is interesting and well-written. The prose compels you as much as the adventure might have.
(I rescind my previous advice; it would be fascinating to read this book and then comb through the other adventures... knowing where they're going but still enjoying how they get there.)
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Awards
World Fantasy Award (Nominee — Collection — 1989)
Locus All-Time Best (Fantasy Novel — 35.7 — 1998)
Language
Original publication date
1988
Physical description
6.6 inches
ISBN
044145125X / 9780441451258