Customer Reviews

The Knight and Knave of Swords

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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.

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

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.

I'm mixed in my opinion on this book. I loved the third short story (the name of which escapes me) where our heroes are cursed by the gods and vie with assassins. It's perhaps the best Fafhrd & Mouser story I've read.

The novel included in this volume is awful. Leiber includes gratuitous sex to titillate the adolescent reader. Soft-core pornography. The story is curiously bland as well. The Mouser is trapped underground for a hundred pages, while Fafhrd tries to rescue him. Then Leiber causes Fafhrd to be abducted and pleasured by maidens in a flying airship. It's awful. Really nothing here for the discriminating reader. Leiber should have left the Twain alone.

For a Lankhmar book, The Knight and Knave of Swords is quite a weighty tome. Fahrd begins by learning to get along without a left hand, a problem yet again caused by those annoying god types. Hanging around leisurely should be peaceful, shouldn't it? Not when they have two women around, and others that would like a little payback coming. This is the weakest of the series.

Knight and Knave of Swords : 01 Sea Magic - Fritz Leiber
Knight and Knave of Swords : 02 The Mer She - Fritz Leiber
Knight and Knave of Swords : 03 The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars - Fritz Leiber
Knight and Knave of Swords : 04 The Mouser Goes Below - Fritz Leiber


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3 out of 5


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3 out of 5


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3.5 out of 5


Godly disagreement, unexpected underneath adventures, a fair bit of girl-on-girl action, and in the case of Sister Pain, running-away-from-girl action.

3.5 out of 5