Swords in the Mist (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #3) [Paperback]

Fritz Leiber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1981

"Fritz Leiber has a wicked imagination. Wicked enough to make us laugh at an impossible future containing nightmarish aspects of our own times." Edmond Cooper, Sunday Times 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. Swords in the Mist, book three in the Lankhmar series, thrusts our indentured sword-swinging servants into the question of hate, its power and its purpose. You see, it happens to be lean times in Lankhmar, illuminating that link between money and love. Luckily, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser don't always believe in love. When Lankhmar gets too gritty, our travelers take to their other, less harsh mistress, the Sea. But the Sea can play tricks on men, and so can the Sea King. He can break a man or worse yet, curse him. But when he's away it's all play for the formidable swordsmen and the Triple Goddess-and two luscious sea queens. But luck may not always be there as they discover on the way to Ningauble, their wizard employer. After a long journey in defense of their control over their own fates, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouse find themselves pawns in a life and death chess game, all of Lankhmar being the pieces. How many pawns will be left on the board before someone wins?

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

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 --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: Ace (April 1, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441791859
• ISBN-13: 978-0441791859
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,001,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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.

2 of 3 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.

5.0 out of 5 stars "Lean Times in Lankhmar" is worth the price of the book, February 21, 2012

By 

Work In Progress (San Bruno, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swords in the Mist (Lankhmar) (Kindle Edition)

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.