Swords in the Mist (Fafhrd & Gray Mouser, #3) [Mass Market Paperback]

Fritz Leiber (Author), Jeff Jones (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1976

A set of linked stories featuring the barbarian Fafhrd, the enigmatic thief known as the Grey Mouser, and several other mystical characters dwelling in the land of Nehwon. Two of the six made their first print appearance in this collection. ~ ~~ ~ CONTENTS: Cloud of Hate; Lean Times in Lankhmar; Their Mistress, the Sea; When the Sea-King's Away; The Wrong Branch; Adept's Gambit

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Ace Books; reprint edition (1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441791832
• ISBN-13: 978-0441791835
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,684,939 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:

3.0 out of 5 stars Only two of these stories are must-reads, July 17, 2011

By 

Kat at Fantasy Literature - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Lankhmar Book 3: Swords in the Mist (Bk. 3) (Paperback)

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.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser Stories, February 19, 2001

By 

Duncan MacKenzie (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Swords In The Mist (The Third Book of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) (Paperback)

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.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This one was weak., February 22, 2008

By 

Greg "Reviewer for fantasyliterature com" (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lankhmar Book 3: Swords in the Mist (Bk. 3) (Paperback)

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.