Customer Reviews

Swords in the Mist (Ace Books H-90)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Leiber's sword books stand alone in heroic fantasy for their gallows humor, perverse plots, and decadent settings. He treats his heroes with a respect, compassion, and maturity not common in fantasy or horror writing.

This books of stories includes material written in the 1940's to 1960's. In addition to the famous "Lean Times in Lankhmar" - the story of Issek of the Jug's rise on the Street of the Gods - and "Adept's Gambit" - where the heroes come to the Macedonian empire on our Earth, the book includes "The Cloud of Hate", "When the Sea-King's Away", and a pair of short-shorts written as segueways between the previously published stories.

Swords in the Mist (1968) is Fritz Leiber's third collection of stories about Fafhrd, the big northern barbarian, and the Gray Mouser, his small wily companion who has a predilection for thievery and black magic. The tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser originally appeared in pulp magazines, short novels, and story collections between 1939-1988. Swords in the Mist contains:

* "The Cloud of Hate" (1963) -- This is a short eerie metaphor in which hate becomes a mist that reaches out in tendrils throughout Lankhmar to find corruptible souls to use for evil deeds.
* "Lean Times in Lankhmar" (1959) -- In this novelette, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser part ways and find themselves at odds when Fafhrd becomes an acolyte and the Mouser is hired to extract money from Fafhrd's cult. Humorous and cynical, this story makes fun of Lankhmar's polytheism and makes the seediness, decadence, and corruption of the city come alive. The ending is hilarious.
* "Their Mistress, the Sea" (original publication) -- This story makes a nice bridge between "Lean Times in Lankhmar" and "When the Sea-King's Away" but it's entertaining in its own right.
* "When the Sea-King's Away" (1960) -- This is a fun fantastical story with a great setting (under the sea!) in which Fafhrd has a sword fight with an octopus.
* "The Wrong Branch" (original publication) -- This is a bridge between the previous story and the following novella:
* "Adept's Gambit" (1947) -- Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser arrive in our world (Macedonia) in this novella. There are some funny parts here -- Fafhrd kissing pigs and analyzing Socrates, but mostly I found this story dull. The sorcerer Ningauble of the Seven Eyes has sent the boys on a near-impossible quest, but the exciting parts are quickly skipped over and too much of the story is spent with an unpleasant character's excruciatingly long autobiography.

I love Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser because they're intelligent rogues. They look like a big dumb barbarian and a sneaky little street urchin, and they love nothing more than drinking, fighting, and wenching, yet they've got big vocabularies, make glorious similes and metaphors, and enjoy philosophizing. When they're doing these things, they're irresistible, especially in the audiobook versions narrated by Jonathan Davis (Audible Frontiers).

However, half of Swords in the Mist consists of a novella that was not as fun as I've come to expect from Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories (perhaps this is partly because it doesn't take place in Lankhmar). I would suggest that, unless you consider yourself a completist, you find "Lean Times in Lankhmar" and "When the Sea-King's Away" and skip the rest of Swords in the Mist.

I must say first that I'm terribly biased. My introduction to Fritz Leiber was hearing the author himself reading "Lean Times in Lankhmar" in Berkeley. His Shakespearean voice made this the single most memorable reading of my life. The story is a satire of formal religions, but a rather gentle one in most ways, it is very funny and the closest comparison I can make is Terry Pratchett's "Small Gods" with a similar, though rather more harsh appraisal of religion (Pratchett is an avowed fan of Leiber...Ankh-Morpork is an homage to Lankhmar). We learn when Fafrd becomes an acolyte of "Issek of the Jug" ("...not to be confused with 'Jugged Issek', who owed his fame to being confined to a not overly roomy eathenware jar...") what the difference is between the Gods OF Lankhmar and the Gods IN Lankhmar. This volume is Leiber at his best with his best characters, Fafrd and the Grey Mouser. The first collection "Swords Against Death", was mostly dark. In "Swords in the Mist", the third book, Leiber lets out the lighter side of his characters more than any of the other collections. Not that there aren't dark stories here, both "The Cloud of Hate" and "Adept's Gambit" are dark explorations of evil, familiar territory for Leiber. But with Fafrd and the Grey Mouser...and he is GREY for a reason...navigate between good and evil and always triumph in the end. They are certainly not your classic do gooder heroes, though they always seem to end up on the side of right...one way or another.

It's a shame that these Leiber books are out of print. They're well-written and exciting. Reading these I felt the same excitement I had reading Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in that once you're done with a story..you get to start another one all over again.

All due respect to the late Fritz Leiber, but over-all, this book was weak. The first story, "Cloud of Hate" was good. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser unwittingly take-on Hate embodied in a noxious mist that turns already shady characters into rampaging serial killers. The next one, "Lean Times in Lankhmar", starts out interesting as the life-long friends go their separates ways, but goes flat. "Their Mistress, the Sea" builds-up well but the ending seemed to be missing something. The rest of the book brings Farhrd and Gray Mouser to our world's ancient history. Which should've made for a great read, but contradictions concerning their memory (they supposedly lost all knowledge of their previous life in the world of Newhorn, but make references to it), adventures told as second-hand accounts, and a prose that seems meant to be humorous and clever, only made the story confusing and monotonous. I got the impression these stories are a satire, maybe of something going-on either in literature or in society at the time they were written, but I didn't get it.

I'm a big fan of Farfhrd and The Gray Mouser, or at least of their first two books. But if "Swords in the Mist" had been my first Lankhmar book, I don't think I'd have read any more of them. Fritz Leiber is rightfully considered one of the original masters of fantasy. His writing spans over 50 years. So it's only natural that he's produced at least a few clunkers.

This volume is a tad more interesting than the last because some of the stories now focus on the friendship between Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Thess stories are more character driven and, the result is, they hooked me. One story shows the two split, each on a different side of the conflict. They even visit our planet in one story!

I just need to provide an alternate opinion to the two customer reviews that complain about "Adept's Gambit", included in this collection "Swords in the Mist". This is one of my favorite Leiber novellas and it works in so many ways, for example: the ever watchful eyes (or prognostications) of Ningauble that appear at important moments are priceless and original; the skillful way Leiber lets us in on what is said and sometimes left unsaid, sometimes crucially, between the two heroes.

I have read elsewhere that this novella was originally written at a time when Leiber was corresponding with HP Lovecraft and that he intended to pay at least some homage to the Cthulhu stories. Which is why it is strangely set on Earth, in Tyre (and east of there, mostly) during the time of the Seleucid Empire. (Perhaps Leiber was toying with more of these "beyond Nehwon" stories.)

I will say that, for me, it bogs down a little with Ahura's telling of her and her brother Anra's story, but I applaud the choice: Leiber so often fleshes out his female characters with an intuitive understanding so lacking in other sword and sorcery writers of his era and before him. Their mother is presented as a Persian figure of tragedy among Greeks; Leiber hits some high notes in the story within the story, based loosely (as he implies at least twice) on the story of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis.

As ever, Fafhrd and The Mouser deliver comic and hair-raising thrills as they become entangled in a deeper web of evil design than they expect.

This is an incredible book. Probably my favorite of the Mouser and Fafhrd series. The first few stories are very well-written, especially "Their Mistress, the Sea". But the Novella Adept's Gambit is simply awesome. The knowledge of the post-Alexandrian world history displayed here, the characterizations, the sheer pace and sense of the work, are all just too good to be believed.

I just received this edition and was pleasantly surprised to find that it includes Book 4 "Swords against Wizardry." As for content, the Fafhrd/Gray Mouser series is fantasy at its best.

Great, just like all other Leiber's books of Lankhmar. I recommend it for fans of heroic fiction novels.