Review
"For anyone who loves great literature, Fritz Leiber walked on water."—Harlan Ellison "If he [Leiber] weren't such a deadly fine fantasist I wouldn't be stopping everything to read his tales. I stop everything when a new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story comes into my hands."—Roger Zelazny "Leiber's writing has lost none of its luminous magic."—San Francisco Chronicle
Product Description
"There were two writers of the earlier generation whose literary standards and skills, whose talent and sensibility they (new wave wirters) still admired. One was Phillip K. Dick. The other was Fritz Leiber, whose masterly prose and urbane wit continued to outshine our callow talents. We revered him. We still do." -Michael Moorcock
Drawing themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the fantasy genre, actually coining the term "Sword and Sorcery" that describes the sub-genre he helped create. Before Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber's fantastic but thoroughly flawed anti-heroes, Fafhrd and Gray 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.
With Swords Against Wizardry, the fourth installment of the Lankhmar series, the story unveils behind the curtain in the Witch's Tent. Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are there to consult a sorceress who holds the secret to their escape but when would they ever need to escape? Would they need this knowledge when they journey to Stardock? Where is there to escape up there? No doubt the icy seduction of "the cruel one", with her greed for both gore and graciousness, could offer them several ways out. Their luck has been good so far; one way out should work. Their luck continues as thieves. They are the best thieves in Lankhmar until better positions arise: The Lords of Quarmall. Gray Mouser and Fafhrd steal a kingdom within a hill and declare themselves Lords.
Drawing themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the fantasy genre, actually coining the term "Sword and Sorcery" that describes the sub-genre he helped create. Before Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber's fantastic but thoroughly flawed anti-heroes, Fafhrd and Gray 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.
With Swords Against Wizardry, the fourth installment of the Lankhmar series, the story unveils behind the curtain in the Witch's Tent. Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are there to consult a sorceress who holds the secret to their escape but when would they ever need to escape? Would they need this knowledge when they journey to Stardock? Where is there to escape up there? No doubt the icy seduction of "the cruel one", with her greed for both gore and graciousness, could offer them several ways out. Their luck has been good so far; one way out should work. Their luck continues as thieves. They are the best thieves in Lankhmar until better positions arise: The Lords of Quarmall. Gray Mouser and Fafhrd steal a kingdom within a hill and declare themselves Lords.
