The Knight and Knave of Swords [Hardcover]

Fritz Leiber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1988

Ramsey Campbell, the highly regarded British horror author called him, "the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction". Drawing many of his own themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P Lovecraft, master manipulator Franz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the Fantasy genre, actually coining the term "Sword and Sorcery" that would describe the sub-genre he would more than help create. While Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber’s fantastic but thoroughly flawed anti-heroes, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, adventured and stumbled deep within the caves of Inner Earth as well, albeit a different one. 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. "Fritz Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are virtually a genre unto themselves. Urbane, idiosyncratic, comic, erotic and human, spiked with believable action of a master fantasist!" William Gibson "After too long a wait, the master story teller of us all returns with a huge, anecdotal adventure in the magic-drenched lives of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Glowing imagination melds with gorgeous language to make this one of Leiber's very best...which is a better best than this poor world usually has to offer. Leiber's back: rejoice!" -Harlan Ellison "It's all Fritz Leiber's fault. If he weren't such a deadly fine fantasist I wouldn't be stopping everything to read his tales. And if he weren't such a master I wouldn't occasionally look out of the window and wish he'd interrupt my routine again, as he doesn't do it often enough. The Knight and Knave of Swords came into my life and took over an otherwise fully programmed afternoon. I stop everything when a new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story comes into my hands." Roger Zelazny

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Leiber's first published story in 1939 began the Fafhrd and Graynnouncements has Grey/i don't know/we have this from the review/which the house supplied/pk Mouser series of sword and sorcery tales that concludes with the four entries in this volume. One of the great works of fantasy in this century, the sequence is unequaled in its ironic wit, mordant romanticism and baroque invention, as well as a range of tone and affect not usually associated with the genre," lauded PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The Nehwonian duo of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser face their greatest challenge against old enemies in The Mouser Goes Below , a new novel by sf/fantasy veteran Leiber. Together with three other stories, this seventh volume of bawdy adventures featuring the author's famous pair of heroes belongs in libraries where sword and sorcery is popular. JC
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (December 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068808530X
• ISBN-13: 978-0688085308
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,214,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I just wish this wasn't the end of the series, October 1, 2002

By 

Ramathael (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Knight and Knave of Swords (Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Bk. 7) (Mass Market Paperback)

It's been a long time since I read the first 6 volumes in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series (about 20 years), and I still can picture the two clearly. The Mouser in particular has always been one of my favorite fictional characters.

This book (a collection of three short stories and a novella) is an excellent addition to the series, and covers some of the Twain's later adventures while in their more settled life on Rime Isle. Leiber's writing style is beautiful, poetic and flows elegantly and smoothly. This is fantasy written for, and meant to be appreciated by adults, rather than for the teenage audience much of the more recent fantasy seems to be written for.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In which the heroes' adventures come to a fitting end., June 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Knight and Knave of Swords (Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Bk. 7) (Mass Market Paperback)

A fitting, if somewhat unexpected end to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. This book lacks a bit of the majestic prose and black comedy that the previous six were known for, but it gives our beloved pair one last great adventure before retiring.

If you've read the first six books of the 'Swords' cycle (for lack of a better series title) you will enjoy reading this. In it the two heroes retire to live a happy old age, but find much to their own surprise that their legend will live on . . .

In addition the title so perfectly describes the two it is impossible to not have it sitting next to the others on the shelf. I just wish they had included it in the lovely three volume hardcover reprint of the first six books!

David

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Original mood and lead characters undermined by voyeurism, December 3, 2003

By 

Trevor Kettlewell "trevsbookreviews" (Nowra, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Knight and Knave of Swords (Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Bk. 7) (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read this book years ago, at the end of the rest - so obviously I didn't mind the series. But I'm wondering if Book 7 was a particularly low point!
 
Sure, Lieber has created a distinctive world, with some distinctive characters. The mythology underpinning it (of mercurial and at times petty gods) is refreshingly original, and now and then our heroes find themselves caught up in some dreamlike event utterly beyond their control. He creates his own mood.
 
But, blimey, the prurience. Like, really seedy, man. Sure, I could handle the comic 007/Capt. Kirk style antics of swooning bikini clad babes turning up at the most unlikely (and frequent) intervals - as long as they merely work as props/scenery, taking up, say, as much space as the next tavern or horse, and don't distract from the strengths of the book, such as characters, nice genre ideas, and novel plotting. But perhaps Lieber was still caught up with that 70s, Hugh Hefner is cool - everyone else is repressed nonsense. It's not quite 'The erotic adventures of Fafard and the Grey Mouser', but at times he devotes several pages to gratuitous soft porn about bondage and orgies.
 
Were the earlier books quite as bad as this? I don't think so: I read The Swords of Lankhmar a year or so ago and don't remember such extended voyeurism (nor, however, do I remember much in the way of plot). Maybe I excused it before on the basis of the immediately read earlier books, but now I'm quite happy to get rid of the book, even if it jeopardises my chances of having a full set. Like Julian May's Golden Torc series, better to leave some holes.
 
Oh, and I noticed the cover has a ringing endorsement from Michael Moorcock - a very good anti-endorsement in my book. Moorcock was only good when I was 13, and metamorphosed into similarly prurient dross upon re-reading post-puberty.