I Read Books: Swords Against Wizardry
This is possibly the highlight of the series. It consists of four parts. First a short and slight introductory adventure. Second a long and magnificent novella, Stardock, in which Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser climb Newhon’s highest mountain. This is a powerful mountain adventure story, in which climbing technique and the nature of mountains are matched by the strangeness they find as they continue to the peak. Obviously there’s romance as well and at the top a pouch of jewels, invisible in daylight, glowing in the dark.
The third may be Leiber’s finest achievement in swords and sorcery, the short story The Two Best Thieves In Lankhmar. Having managed to acquire a fortune in gems in Stardock they now need to sell the uncanny stones. Having fallen out on the way home they attempt to do so separately. The results leave them penniless and so they are available when agents of Quarmall offer them employment.
This leads into The Lords of Quarmall a long novella and a slightly complex one. Leiber says that his friend Harry Otto Fischer came up with Quarmall (and notes the extensive sections written by him, some of the more evocative scenes in the subterranean city. Yet without Leiber introducing the action and wit of his pair of rogues the story would have been lifeless; literally so as Fischer came up with it in 1936 and it took Leiber until the 60s to finish it.) It’s a tale of betrayal, family rivalry, and plotting with sorcerous curses, particularly worded prophecies and oaths, with the horrid slaveholding rulers of Quarmall competing for rulership. There’s some fun bits too!
Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser continue to be far too horny; when they consult a witch in the introductory section the Mouser complains that unlike a civilised wizard she doesn’t have naked girls to stare at while waiting for the foretelling. This turns out to be some foreshadowing. They manage to have some sort of romantic (or “romantic”) entanglement in each of the three later stories, some more exotic than others.
Read This: For some really first rate fantasy adventure with our cunning rogues rescued and bamboozled by women and alternately succeeding and failing by the skin of their teeth
Don’t Read This: If the two of them being far too interested in ogling and shagging is a big turn off, though at least the Mouser is not after inappropriately young women this time
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