Customer Reviews

Lankhmar Book 2: Swords Against Death (Bk. 2)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After a self-imposed exile, our heroes; the legendary Farfhrd and Gray Mouser, are back to their old shenanigans in the sinful city of Lankhmar. Shortly after their return, they find themselves hypnotically drawn across Newhorn's Outer Sea to lands unknown, only to have to survive a perilous journey to again get back to Lankhmar; the closest thing they have to a home. Along with their other misadventures, they finally come to terms with the deaths of their true-loves.
As stated on the book's back-cover; Fritz Leiber shares the throne as a master of fantasy along with J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and C. S. Lewis. In fact, I've heard that Lankhmar was the model for the first Dungeon & Dragon games.
The Farhrd and The Gray Mouser tales are classic Sword & Sorcery. Leiber's prose and dialog have a whimsical, but almost Shakespearean feel, which lends humor to adventures that are nothing short of a good-time. The companionship between the Gray Mouser, a small thief and a former wizard's-apprentice, and Fafhrd, an almost 7 ft. tall barbarian, is endearing and reminiscent of the camaraderie between the best-friends of one's childhood. I even get a sense that there's a little "bohemian" influence (the lifestyle not the historic people) that makes these stories even more interesting.
I give Swords Against Death four stars, only because I found that, at times, the same prose and rhythm that makes the book so entertaining can also be a little monotonous. Still, Farfhrd and Gray Mouser are well-worth the read and make for a great afternoon-armchair-escape.

[...]

Ho, Fafhrd tall! Hist, Mouser small!
Why leave you the city Of marvelous parts?
It were a great pity To wear out your hearts
And wear out the soles of your feet,
Treading all earth, Foregoing all mirth,
Before you once more Lankhmar greet.
Now return, now return, now!

Swords Against Death is the second collection of stories about Fafhrd, the big northern barbarian, and The Gray Mouser, the small thief from the slums. For the past three years, the two have grown so close that they are now (as Neil Gaiman suggests in his introduction to the audio version) like two halves of the same person. They've been traveling the world together in an effort to forget their lost loves.

During their travels "they acquired new scars and skills, comprehensions and compassions, cynicisms and secrecies -- a laughter that lightly mocked, and a cool poise that tightly crusted all inner miseries," but they haven't been able to assuage their guilt or lessen their feelings of loss outside of Lankhmar, the city which they swore never to return to.

But as Sheelba of the Eyeless Face prophesied ("Never and forever are neither for men. You'll be returning again and again."), Fafhrd and the Mouser are persuaded to return to Lankhmar where, it turns out, they have not been forgotten, and soon the duo is back to their old tricks and dealing with their former enemies in these stories: "The Circle Curse," "The Jewels in the Forest," "Thieves' House," "The Bleak Shore," "The Howling Tower," "The Sunken Land," "The Seven Black Priests," "Claws from the Night," "The Price of Pain-Ease," and "Bazaar of the Bizarre."

Some of the stories are better than others (my favorite was "Bazaar of the Bizarre") but all are "classical rogue" (Neil Gaiman's term) and all are worth reading simply because they're written in Fritz Leiber's gorgeous prose, which is thick with alliteration, insight, and irony.

I listened to Swords Against Death on audio. It was produced by Audible Frontiers (Brilliance Audio is putting them on CDs soon), introduced by Neil Gaiman, and read by Jonathan Davis who does a terrific job with this series. His voices for Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are perfect -- Fafhrd sounds pensive, intellectual, and introverted while Gray Mouser sounds a bit greasy and common. I highly recommend this format; it adds an extra dimension to these fun stories.

Leiber does it again. An assortment of short adventures of varying quality (mostly 4-5 stars, one or two 3 star stories). I really enjoyed these stories, some reminding me of the Robert E. Howard/Sprague De Camp Conan stories I read as a kid. Great sense of humor, fantasy that even acknowledges the existence of black people...what a concept. Why is it so hard for this duo to actually achieve their treasure, yet so easy for them to get laid?

Lots of fun, although I still don't understand why Dark Horse has released these short books individually at such a high price. These are just short story collections, why not combine them and give the reader more bang for the buck? Which is why I still recommend the Three of Swords collection over this. There are plenty of decent used copies available for the price DH is selling this one. Either way, enjoy.

Inspired by the original Conan stories, Lankhmar inspired the original Dungeons and Dragons Game.

Story:
The book is composed of three short origin stories.
The first introduces Fafhrd, a fierce barbarian from the snow covered mountains in the north.
The second introduces the Grey Mouser, a cunning thief well versed in the arcane arts.
The third shows us how they met and chronicles their first big adventure in Lankhmar.

The World:
Lankhmar is a fantasy world full of sorcery, swords, and fantastic beasts. It becomes obvious that this series inspired the creators of the original Dungeons and Dragons Modules.

The Characters:
These are some of the most realistic fantasy characters ever written. These aren't they typical fantasy archetypes of the noble hero or arrogant mage. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser act like real people. They drink (to excess), they crack jokes, they have girlfriends, they steal. they fight... Even the supporting characters are well written with their own virtues and flaws. The characters are the driving force of the story and keep the scenes entertaining.

Writing Style:
Fritz Leiber's writing style is simple, slightly poetic, and focuses on the important details. He can craft a scene with emotion, action, and humor in two pages, where authors like Robert Jordan or JRR Tolkien would use verbose poetic detail and take twenty pages to write the same scene. If you like authors that get to the point, then you can appreciate this book. If I had to use a movie example, I'd use 'Aliens.' The Space Marines are introduced in 2-3 minutes and you understand their personalities and feel their camaraderie. You don't need long winded histories when a few inside jokes will get the job done.

Maturity:
There's action, violence, and (non-graphic) sexual situations. This book would be ok for Teens and Young Adults.

Overall:
Lankhmar features memorable characters, a magical fantasy world, and a few good plots.
If you like semi-dark heroes, camaraderie, magic, action, the original Conan stories, and D&D, you should enjoy reading this book.

If you like pages and pages of poetic prose and rich environmental descriptions, this book may be too light for you.

If you enjoyed this book, you really need to read the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard or the Gotrek and Felix novels set in the Warhammer Universe.

I prefer a continuous long story or set of books rather than a collection of short stories. With that said, this second book in the Lankhmar series does provide very enjoyable tales, still verbose but with a charming old-school literary flow revolving around two by now well-known characters, Fafhrd, the tall, strong ranger and barbarian and the Gray Mouser, the cunning and agile thief.

This writer is very adept at describing fantasy locales, easing the reader's immersion into his world and is very good at delivering chilling, disgusting scenes and moments of suspense and brutal action. So, if you read the first book in the series, which is recommended, especially for its last tale (though the characters didn't stay away from the hard drinking for long much to my distaste), and liked it, then you'll get more and more of the same in this collection, with anything from a cursed seafaring adventure to old gods to murderous crows. However, if you would like a strong connection from tale to tale with not one of their adventures missing or vaguely referenced, and have a problem with abrupt endings to certain adventures leaving some questions unanswered, then this book is not for you. Since I am in that latter group, this will be my last Lankhmar book for a while as I gravitate more towards epic sagas.

Fritz Leiber had been writing Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories for the better part of 30 years when, for reasons more knowledgable people would know better than I, he reorganized his older material into six books to provide both chronology and continuity. In order to do this, he also included some specially-written newer material. This is the second of the six volumes, and it contains multiple short stories of our heroes' adventures primarily in Lankhmar. It's an ideal starting place for those new to Leiber's style of fantasy.

For those who have never read these stories, you are in for a treat as long as you don't expect stereotypical sword and sorcery (or, even worse, the overblown epic style of storytelling). Leiber was a gifted writer of weird fiction and incorporated a lot of eeriness into his adventures. There's magic in Lankhmar, but unlike the rule-based magic in many fantasies, this is a creepy kind of magic more akin to dreams than the type of sorcery you'd see in a Tolkien novel. There's also a good deal of dry humor mixed with a surrealism bordering on psychedelia here, which reminded me a bit of Douglas Adams's writing.

The strongest aspects of these stories are always Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser themselves. Two swashbuckling rogues who never become antiheroes yet who are never traditional heroes either, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser would have been right at home with Captain Jack Sparrow. There are few characters in 20th Century heroic literature as vivid as they are, and you'll feel as if you actually knew them after reading a few of their stories. Hardy adventurers to the core, they are also exceptionally close friends and at times Leiber almost seems to be using the adventures as a vehicle to meditate on the meaning of friendship. They are also profoundly human in a way that Conan and Tarzan (to name two better-known characters in similar genres) most certainly are not. They may be "the greatest swordsmen who ever lived" and their adventures give the accomplished fencer Leiber the chance to convincingly write about parries and thrusts, but they aren't superheroes and get by on luck as much as skill.

I recommend starting you explorations of Lankhmar here as a sampler, and then read through the set of six Swords books, treating the seventh (Knight and Knave of Swords) as optional as it's the most uneven of the series.

This is the short stories I wanted. The two characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, get to shine, as they survive adventure after adventure after adventure. The only reason I don't give the book a five star rating is that, while the details change, the stories seem to be the same. They get into trouble, they discover what the trouble is, they fight their way out of it. Sometimes they think their way out but mostly they fight.
Not sure if I should continue the books. How different can it get?

This volume, perhaps more than any of the others in the Swords series, is essential reading. Not only does it contain the first of Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories (The Jewels in the Forest), but it also contains some of his best (Thieves' House, Claws From the Night). The next volume has what may be the best of the short pieces (Adept's Gambit), and the novel-length Swords of Lankhmar is probably my favorite of the series, but this volume is pivotal, and it's very consistent. For the best in swords & sorcery, look no further than Leiber.

Fritz Leiber's second collection of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser adventures is more entertaining than the first. Although Leiber is quite imaginative and conceives several unique perils for his adventurers, there is also a certain sameness to the straightforward, uncomplicated structure of each story that can grow a little too familiar after a while. It is best that none of these stories are too long, as their fast-paced nature definitely provides momentum to get the reader past the occasional dull patch. Things pick up when the duo's sometime employers, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, make their appearance. I look forward to seeing more of them later in the series.

I bought book one and enjoyed it greatly. Book 2 seems to be a smattering of individual stories rather than a continuous storyline, which is ok if that's what you are planning on. It's simple, swords and magic Fantasy with no great epic cause to support nor any great moral issues to debate.

The stories are still quite good, but when compared with some of the other work on the market, this volume pales in comparison and doesn't deserve more than 3 stars. It's good, but not something that you are going to put aside Erikson or Wurts to make time for.