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The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning series of sword and sorcery--featuring two unorthodox heroes--from a Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Long before George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones became a worldwide phenomenon, Fritz Leiber ruled the literary universe of sword and sorcery. This novel and two short story collections chronicle the adventures of Leiber's endearing and groundbreaking antiheroes: the barbarian Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, a former wizard's apprentice--in the series hailed as "one of the great works of fantasy in this century" (Publishers Weekly). This is a must-read collection of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser short stories, featuring the Hugo Award-nominated novellas "Scylla's Daughter" and "Stardock." Swords Against Wizardry: Bold Fafhrd and the sly Gray Mouser find adventure wherever they tread quick and lightly, whether it be in consulting a witch for advice, climbing Nehwon's highest peak in search of riches, discovering that they may not actually be the greatest thieves in Lankhmar, or working both sides of a royal battle for the throne of Quarmall. The Swords of Lankhmar: With a plague of rats teeming in Lankhmar, Fafhrd and the Mouser are hired by the city to guard a shipment of grain overseas. But when the duo returns, they discover the sentient vermin have taken over Lankhmar for themselves! And now it's up to the barbarian and the thief to build a better rat trap. Swords and Ice Magic: Fafhrd and Gray Mouser make their way by sword and stealth as they face death in many forms, earn the ire of gods whose names they rarely even speak in vain anymore, lazily drift on the Great Equatorial Current, and venture far into the icy wastes of the Rime Isle to confront a pair of deities and a pillaging fleet in this World Fantasy Award nominee. … (more)
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The four stories of Swords against Wizardry alternate between substantial novellas written in the mid-1960s and short bridging pieces
Swords of Lankhmar is the only full-fledged novel of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser that I've read. At first, it seems like it might not even be such, because a preliminary nautical adventure seems to set it up to be episodic, but indeed, the whole thing is a single, complicated tale centering on an attempted conquest of Lankhmar undertaken by "Lankhmar Below," i.e. the city of rats underneath Lankhmar. There are love interests for both heroes--likely the oddest such in all their adventures--assistance from their sorcerer-patrons, and more detail than previously available about the unimpressive upper reaches of Lankhmarian aristocracy. In this edition, Swords of Lankhmar is prefaced with a map of the world of Newhon--a welcome feature which is nevertheless awfully difficult to read, owing to varied calligraphy and an odd quasi-global projection.
The last book Swords and Ice Magic is full of retrospective glances at the earlier adventures of the two heroes, and is in many respects a sequel to "Stardock." It starts with short stories, but these wax interdependent, so that by the time the reader reaches the long culminating novella "Rime Isle," it feels as if they had merely been opening chapters of a novel. "Rime Isle" itself has more than a little taste of Neil Gaiman's American Gods about it, concerning as it does fugitive gods trying to reestablish their bases of worship. It is strange that the conclusion of six volumes of Leiber's stories leaves the heroes somewhere quite remote from the City of Lankhmar, i.e. the titular Rime Isle far out to the north in the Frozen Sea. Although I don't know if it will assuage this particular discomfort, the fact inclines me to seek out and read the fugitive seventh book: The Knight and Knave of Swords.
Across the four books I've read, it's not surprising
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"In the Witch's Tent" (1968 / newly written for this book)
"Stardock" (1965 / Fantastic)
In effect a preface in base camp and a long novella of the ascent. A classic example of Leiber's use of specialist terminology but never in a show-off way, here for mountaineering but elsewhere in the series for seafaring and fencing / swordplay. I'm no judge of veracity of it, but it reads well, not as technical as O'Brian but giving the impression Leiber was personally familiar with the activity and not merely the vocabulary.
"The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" (1968 / Fantastic)
Egos and Achilles Heels, and knowing manipulation of both. Leiber again departs from the party line with a tale in which our heroes emphatically do not triumph, a theme of the series.
"The Lords of Quarmall" (1964 / Fantastic Stories of Imagination
The classic story first envisioned in 1936 and 10,000 words written by Leiber's pal Harry Otto Fischer. Elaborated and finished a quarter century later, and reminiscent of Gormenghast but uncertain whether Peake was any influence even if familiar to Leiber, given how much was written before Titus Groan (1946). The odd origins of this tale makes it all the more impressive for how tightly fitted are the stories leading up to it. And each story here absolutely necessary for an understanding of the characters overall, and the story cycle.
(wikipedia, LT and Leiber's prefaces again used here)