I Read Books: Nifft The Lean

 

Nifft The Lean

Nifft the Lean is a thief, a swords and sorcery adventurer, and dead. So the introduction to these four stories of his life claim, in the words of scholar and friend of Nifft, Shag Margold. He makes the claim that these are accounts of events Nifft was involved in, relayed either by Nifft or a friend*.

In the first story Come Then Mortal – We Will Seek Her Soul, Nifft and a companion Halder are commissioned by a dead woman to bring her former lover down into the underworld, offering in return a legendary magic key. Halder, a romantic, falls in love; Nifft desires the key, but is mostly in it for the challenge. The gate to the underworld opens when someone dies, so they make a complex plan to kidnap the former lover (the two had agreed to kill themselves when they were forced apart; he reneged), bring him to the house of a local noble on his death bed, then Nifft has to fight one of the two psychopomps who arrive. Then they have to travel through a grotesque hell, sacrificing to the lords of various realms, to a slightly tricky ending.

The second story The Pearls Of The Vampire Queen is a little more conventional. Going to try and poach black pearls, Nifft and his companion Barnar discover it’s hard work, so they plan a heist, blackmailing the titular Vampire Queen by stealing something she cannot live without. The boat and water work, the great wooden pyramid city and the casual magic, plus a fun encounter with a ghoul are all great bits of setting here.

The Fishing Of The Demon Sea returns to a more mythic adventure, and another underworld. Captured and condemned to die (wrongly for once) Nifft and Barnar are sent down a mine that delved too deep to rescue the son of a nobleman who tried to summon a demon. This is lifted by their encounter with a legendary scholar, magician and conman, and some clever wheeler-dealer twists at the end.

The final story The Goddess In Glass has Nifft as something of a peripheral figure; asked by Shag Margold to learn about the cult of the oracle in the city of Anvil’s Pasture he hitches a lift with a mercenary company on their ship. The goddess – a giant insect, believed to be from another planet, now preserved in a glass case, who speaks through an oracle priestess – told them where the city could dig out veins of very pure ore, but this caused the mountain to become unstable and threaten to fall on them. Meanwhile they had sold weapons to both sides of a conflict; unhappy at this the combatants are blockading them to prevent anyone fleeing until the contracts are fulfilled. Fortunately the goddess has plans to save them… though this is to further her own plans.

A magnificent work of fantasy, one that verges on horror in many cases. As indeed swords and sorcery often does; magic is genuinely frightening in this post-golden age world. Especially here, where it is the domain of ruthless and ambitious magicians, who make Nifft – liar, killer, thief and rogue – look positively heroic.

Read This: Magnificent fantasy with clever scams and heists in a lushly conceived world
Don’t Read This: Truly grotesque settings, with our protagonists simply looking for profit

* In a fun bit Shag explains that one story, The Pearls Of The Vampire Queen, claims to be a letter written by Nifft, but is actually by a friend and occasional lover; it’s slightly more boastful and as Shag notes Nifft was never over-modest. Come Then Mortal – We Will Seek Her Soul also has a slightly complex framing as it is written as a tale Nifft is telling to a companion by campfire.