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Ill Met in Lankhmar and Ship of Shadows: Two Novellas
Fritz Leiber’s iconic sword-and-sorcery adventurers Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser share the pages with drunkard-turned-unlikely-hero Spar in this pairing of award-winning novellas
Gentleman barbarian Fafhrd, son of a northern Snow Witch, flees his family’s homeland to join a foreign lover and escape his mother’s control. Cynical thief the Gray Mouser has a mysterious past, but no one doubts his deadly skill at swordsmanship. When the two meet, each recognizes a kindred spirit in the other. No gem dealer’s stock is safe and no gambler will go unfleeced while Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser live—but the deadly chain of events that forges their adventurous partnership means they are truly ill met in Lankhmar.
Spar has no memory of his early life, no hope for a better future, no concerns other than how to obtain his next drink. A good day is one when he can avoid the abuse of his barkeep boss aboard the Windrush . But when a mysterious talking cat starts putting ideas into Spar’s head, things begin to change. There’s a larger universe out there than Spar has ever dreamed of. His destiny beckons—if only he can escape the ship of shadows.
Gentleman barbarian Fafhrd, son of a northern Snow Witch, flees his family’s homeland to join a foreign lover and escape his mother’s control. Cynical thief the Gray Mouser has a mysterious past, but no one doubts his deadly skill at swordsmanship. When the two meet, each recognizes a kindred spirit in the other. No gem dealer’s stock is safe and no gambler will go unfleeced while Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser live—but the deadly chain of events that forges their adventurous partnership means they are truly ill met in Lankhmar.
Spar has no memory of his early life, no hope for a better future, no concerns other than how to obtain his next drink. A good day is one when he can avoid the abuse of his barkeep boss aboard the Windrush . But when a mysterious talking cat starts putting ideas into Spar’s head, things begin to change. There’s a larger universe out there than Spar has ever dreamed of. His destiny beckons—if only he can escape the ship of shadows.
116 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2016
22 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Fritz Leiber
1,337 books1,051 followersFritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was one of the more interesting of the young writers who came into HP Lovecraft's orbit, and some of his best early short fiction is horror rather than sf or fantasy. He found his mature voice early in the first of the sword-and-sorcery adventures featuring the large sensitive barbarian Fafhrd and the small street-smart-ish Gray Mouser; he returned to this series at various points in his career, using it sometimes for farce and sometimes for gloomy mood pieces--The Swords of Lankhmar is perhaps the best single volume of their adventures. Leiber's science fiction includes the planet-smashing The Wanderer in which a large cast mostly survive flood, fire, and the sexual attentions of feline aliens, and the satirical A Spectre is Haunting Texas in which a gangling, exo-skeleton-clad actor from the Moon leads a revolution and finds his true love. Leiber's late short fiction, and the fine horror novel Our Lady of Darkness, combine autobiographical issues like his struggle with depression and alcoholism with meditations on the emotional content of the fantastic genres. Leiber's capacity for endless self-reinvention and productive self-examination kept him, until his death, one of the most modern of his sf generation.
Used These Alternate Names: Maurice Breçon, Fric Lajber, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Fritz R. Leiber, Fritz Leiber Jun., Фриц Лейбер, F. Lieber, フリッツ・ライバー
Used These Alternate Names: Maurice Breçon, Fric Lajber, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Fritz R. Leiber, Fritz Leiber Jun., Фриц Лейбер, F. Lieber, フリッツ・ライバー
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 7, 2016
Open Road Media has collected two unrelated novellas by Leiber for re-release in this package.
Ill Met in Lankhmar is one of Leiber's most famous pieces of writing, and I was quite certain that I'd read it before. However, I think I was wrong - it didn't seem familiar at all!
This story relates how Leiber's notorious duo, the barbarian Fafhrd and the thief known as The Gray Mouser, first met.
Although far from being first in publication order (Leiber started writing about these two in 1939; this story came out in 1970), it's a good introduction to both characters. This story won both a Nebula award and a Hugo award. Honestly, I feel that the award may have been partly in recognition of the body of work rather than solely in consideration of the story's indvidual merits. The Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories are widely acknowledged to have been the origin of many of the commonly-accepted tropes of a certain brand of sword-and-sorcery fantasy that persist to this day, just as Tolkien's ideas spread throughout high fantasy.
In this tale, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, working separately, mug a couple of members of the Thieves' Guild, and make off with their ill-gotten loot. Partying with their girlfriends, their success spurs them to essay a drunken and ill-advised assault on the Guild's stronghold. The tragedy that ensues binds the two together in shared grief.
Ship of Shadows came out in 1969, and it's got a slightly trippy feel that might be associated with that era. On a decaying, aimless generation ship, the inhabitants are focused on booze and drugs... when they're not worried about being attacked by "witches" or "vampires." Our protagonist, Spar, is the janitor at a 'moonmist' bar frequented by addicts, whores and low-lives. He's toothless, half-blind, and seems generally confused and possibly mentally disabled. He's got a goal to get a doctor to help him, but along the way ends up getting caught up in a bizarre criminal conspiracy, and discovering that not all is as it might seem.
It's a weird one - interesting, but I didn't love it.
Many thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.
Ill Met in Lankhmar is one of Leiber's most famous pieces of writing, and I was quite certain that I'd read it before. However, I think I was wrong - it didn't seem familiar at all!
This story relates how Leiber's notorious duo, the barbarian Fafhrd and the thief known as The Gray Mouser, first met.
Although far from being first in publication order (Leiber started writing about these two in 1939; this story came out in 1970), it's a good introduction to both characters. This story won both a Nebula award and a Hugo award. Honestly, I feel that the award may have been partly in recognition of the body of work rather than solely in consideration of the story's indvidual merits. The Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories are widely acknowledged to have been the origin of many of the commonly-accepted tropes of a certain brand of sword-and-sorcery fantasy that persist to this day, just as Tolkien's ideas spread throughout high fantasy.
In this tale, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, working separately, mug a couple of members of the Thieves' Guild, and make off with their ill-gotten loot. Partying with their girlfriends, their success spurs them to essay a drunken and ill-advised assault on the Guild's stronghold. The tragedy that ensues binds the two together in shared grief.
Ship of Shadows came out in 1969, and it's got a slightly trippy feel that might be associated with that era. On a decaying, aimless generation ship, the inhabitants are focused on booze and drugs... when they're not worried about being attacked by "witches" or "vampires." Our protagonist, Spar, is the janitor at a 'moonmist' bar frequented by addicts, whores and low-lives. He's toothless, half-blind, and seems generally confused and possibly mentally disabled. He's got a goal to get a doctor to help him, but along the way ends up getting caught up in a bizarre criminal conspiracy, and discovering that not all is as it might seem.
It's a weird one - interesting, but I didn't love it.
Many thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.
March 21, 2016
Ill Met In Lankhmar and Ship of Shadows by Fritz Leiber- Two novellas that both won the Hugo award in one volume is quite a good find. One is a sword and sorcery story, the other a dream-like fiction that is elusive and unsettling as it slowly draws the reader in.
Ill Met In Lankhmar- This is part of Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series and a story of how the two rascals first meet. Leiber is credited with coining the term "Sword and Sorcery" and wrote several dozen stories about these characters over a fifty year career that began with their first adventure in 1939. Along with Ron E. Howard, he helped create this genre which still flourishes today. In this sometimes gruesome tale, the two thieves meet and are thrown together by necessity in order to survive the wrath of Lankhmar's Thieves' Guild. An enjoyable read told by a master.
Ship of Shadows- This story is hard at first to get in to and can be off-putting to some. You are thrown into a world seen though a mostly blind man's blurry vision and somewhat addled mind. Strange unexplained things are happening. It takes place on a ship with sails, shrouds, ratlines and the ever-present rushing wind. But what kind of ship? For there is no gravity! Everyone floats from here to there. And what of the talking cats and the vampires and witches? My best suggestion is to go with the flow and gradually the story will reveal itself. This reminds me a lot of Samuel R. Delany, Cordwainer Smith and Gene Wolfe in its depth of unreason and its power to tantalize the interest. Stick with it and you'll get there.
I hope Open Road does this again. A great bargain and a wonderful way to keep these stories around for future generations.
Ill Met In Lankhmar- This is part of Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series and a story of how the two rascals first meet. Leiber is credited with coining the term "Sword and Sorcery" and wrote several dozen stories about these characters over a fifty year career that began with their first adventure in 1939. Along with Ron E. Howard, he helped create this genre which still flourishes today. In this sometimes gruesome tale, the two thieves meet and are thrown together by necessity in order to survive the wrath of Lankhmar's Thieves' Guild. An enjoyable read told by a master.
Ship of Shadows- This story is hard at first to get in to and can be off-putting to some. You are thrown into a world seen though a mostly blind man's blurry vision and somewhat addled mind. Strange unexplained things are happening. It takes place on a ship with sails, shrouds, ratlines and the ever-present rushing wind. But what kind of ship? For there is no gravity! Everyone floats from here to there. And what of the talking cats and the vampires and witches? My best suggestion is to go with the flow and gradually the story will reveal itself. This reminds me a lot of Samuel R. Delany, Cordwainer Smith and Gene Wolfe in its depth of unreason and its power to tantalize the interest. Stick with it and you'll get there.
I hope Open Road does this again. A great bargain and a wonderful way to keep these stories around for future generations.
Read
April 17, 2020Ill Met In Lankhmar is a classic case of a story one can't read for the first time, its architecture of Thieves' Guilds and sinister yet stabbable sorcerers overfamiliar through the many low fantasies Leiber inspired, both directly and by way of his influence on Dungeons & Dragons. But even aside from that, or the fridging, there are flaws which would surely have been apparent at the time. The streets may have suitably characterful names (who wouldn't be intrigued by the Plaza of Dark Delights?), but to someone who (until recently, anyway) commutes through an old, old city with more than a little fantasy to it, by way of places like Crystal Palace and Tower Hill, there's something hilariously American about giving "the northeast corner of Cash and Whore" as a location. And while Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are entertaining enough company, and the use of technical fencing terms to describe the first swordfight here is something I don't recall seeing much elsewhere in fantasy, I'm not convinced they were ever quite as innovative as they're presented. Characters more human in their scale and motives than Conan? Sure, but Clark Ashton Smith created Satampra Zeiros a decade earlier than their debut, and next to that old rogue these two remain a little flat and straightforward.
Ship Of Shadows, on the other hand, I knew nothing about except that it had also won a Hugo. For me, this was a much more impressive piece of work. The reader is dropped into the middle of a strange world, and while here the name also has an unintended resonance, this time it's no bad thing, because calling this enclosed environment Windrush inevitably reminds a British reader in 2020 both of the long-standing human desire for a better life, and of our even longer-standing ability to be utter shits to each other. This world of addiction, violence and disdain, with novel terminology masking old and all-too-familiar structures, exists in a territory I'd never previously imagined existing somewhere between Hubert Selby and Cordwainer Smith. Anyone familiar with SF tropes will work out pretty soon that it's a generation ship scenario, a la Aldiss' Non-Stop – but Leiber knows that too, and still has something up his sleeve.
Also, let's face it, I was always going to find something in a story where a protagonist described as a "lazy, pampered he-slut" is awoken by an occasionally talking cat.
Ship Of Shadows, on the other hand, I knew nothing about except that it had also won a Hugo. For me, this was a much more impressive piece of work. The reader is dropped into the middle of a strange world, and while here the name also has an unintended resonance, this time it's no bad thing, because calling this enclosed environment Windrush inevitably reminds a British reader in 2020 both of the long-standing human desire for a better life, and of our even longer-standing ability to be utter shits to each other. This world of addiction, violence and disdain, with novel terminology masking old and all-too-familiar structures, exists in a territory I'd never previously imagined existing somewhere between Hubert Selby and Cordwainer Smith. Anyone familiar with SF tropes will work out pretty soon that it's a generation ship scenario, a la Aldiss' Non-Stop – but Leiber knows that too, and still has something up his sleeve.
Also, let's face it, I was always going to find something in a story where a protagonist described as a "lazy, pampered he-slut" is awoken by an occasionally talking cat.
May 26, 2018
This book collects two unrelated award-winning novellas from classic author Fritz Leiber. Ill Met in Lankhmar describes the first meeting of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in the city of Lanhkar, and is a sword-and-sorcery classic, with our two heroes up against the evil Thieves Guild, first as part of a drunken con, and then for bloody revenge. Ship of Shadows is scifi, a story of a man named Spar, lowly crewman on massive spaceship falling to pieces, trying to figure out what is happening through an alcoholic daze.
Leiber had the misfortune to win Hugos for two of his worst novels. At his best, which this is, he writes richly layered gothic fiction that is both imaginative and thrilling.
Leiber had the misfortune to win Hugos for two of his worst novels. At his best, which this is, he writes richly layered gothic fiction that is both imaginative and thrilling.
May 21, 2020
I got this for “ill met” and really enjoyed it. Vivid imagery, high drama, memorable characters.
April 7, 2018
Collects -- not back-to-back, ala an old Ace Double, but side-by-side -- Leiber's back-to-back Hugo winning novellas. Both are excellent.
I'm not a huge fan of sword-and-sorcery in general, and I've tried to read "Lankhmar" many times before to no avail. But after reading Leiber's "Selected Stories" -- which contains 3 such Fahfrd and Grey Mouser tales -- I sort of enjoyed them. Usually when I read a tale, my mind works in the background trying to figure out what's going on. You know, "what's the gimmick here?" I discovered that that it not the way to enjoy these stories, and Leiber in general. One needs to relax and sit back and enjoy the telling.
"Ship of Shadows" gives us both Way Too Much and Way Too Little explanation at the end. It wraps up quickly like many old pulp stories did 30 years before this was written. I was loving its weirdness completely until then.
I'm not a huge fan of sword-and-sorcery in general, and I've tried to read "Lankhmar" many times before to no avail. But after reading Leiber's "Selected Stories" -- which contains 3 such Fahfrd and Grey Mouser tales -- I sort of enjoyed them. Usually when I read a tale, my mind works in the background trying to figure out what's going on. You know, "what's the gimmick here?" I discovered that that it not the way to enjoy these stories, and Leiber in general. One needs to relax and sit back and enjoy the telling.
"Ship of Shadows" gives us both Way Too Much and Way Too Little explanation at the end. It wraps up quickly like many old pulp stories did 30 years before this was written. I was loving its weirdness completely until then.
October 24, 2025
The first of the novellas in this slim collection more or less launches the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series, the archetype of the "Sword and Sorcery" sub-genre. Both novellas got Hugos (and Nebulas, I think). Heck, the world of those two swashbucklers was licensed for inclusion in the Dungeons and Dragons franchise!
And yet, I was not hooked. It's not that I didn't like flowery prose chock full of archaic, almost forgotten words, or that I found the characters too sketchy. Overall work simply didn't have "the pull" to me.
There is just one way to put it: "Sword and Sorcery" is not my goblet of fortified wine.
And yet, I was not hooked. It's not that I didn't like flowery prose chock full of archaic, almost forgotten words, or that I found the characters too sketchy. Overall work simply didn't have "the pull" to me.
There is just one way to put it: "Sword and Sorcery" is not my goblet of fortified wine.
September 6, 2018
I've been meaning to read some of Fritz Leiber's work for a long time, in particular, his stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. When this book was included in a Humble Bundle package, I finally had my chance, since many of the books aren't easily available (not that I've tried too hard). I enjoyed the first story, Ill Met in Lankhmar, but didn't particularly enjoy the second, Ship of Shadows. If I happen across another of his stories, I'll probably read more, but I'm unlikely to actively search them out now.
May 20, 2018
“Ill Met” I’ve read before, and is an excellent bit of sword & sorcery. “Ship of Shadows” I have not. Trippy.
August 14, 2018
Ill Met in Lankhmar was good and unusual, for the language if for nothing else.
Ship of Shadows was even better.
Ship of Shadows was even better.
March 6, 2019
What a contrast. Traditional heroic fantasy and new wave science fiction, and he was equally adept at both. You wouldn't want to be a woman in one of his stories, though.
June 17, 2022
Three status for Ill Met, a boyish romp. Two stars for Ship of Shadows, a space novella I could not fathom.
June 7, 2016
2 Hugo award winning novellas combine into this collection which I picked up before a holiday for something to read on the planes...
As with any collection a rating is always difficult to rate two stories, especially when they are so different.
1. Ill Met in Lankmar
This is set in the fantasy world of Lankhmar created by Leiber and which has a number of stories included. It is a lovely little fantasy short about two characters who have a 'disagreement' with a Thieves Guild.
5 Stars
2. Ship of Shadows
As a direct comparison to 'Ill Met...' it falls down a little as this is science fiction which has not aged well. A ship travelling through space has a crew (or passengers) who are constantly on drugs / alcohol. Unfortunately the story struggles a little to get going and the pace seems very off as well as being difficult to follow.
2 Stars
Read for the Lankhmar story - especially if you like High or Epic Fantasy.
As with any collection a rating is always difficult to rate two stories, especially when they are so different.
1. Ill Met in Lankmar
This is set in the fantasy world of Lankhmar created by Leiber and which has a number of stories included. It is a lovely little fantasy short about two characters who have a 'disagreement' with a Thieves Guild.
5 Stars
2. Ship of Shadows
As a direct comparison to 'Ill Met...' it falls down a little as this is science fiction which has not aged well. A ship travelling through space has a crew (or passengers) who are constantly on drugs / alcohol. Unfortunately the story struggles a little to get going and the pace seems very off as well as being difficult to follow.
2 Stars
Read for the Lankhmar story - especially if you like High or Epic Fantasy.
December 28, 2023
Outstanding!
This "book" is a collection of two of Leiber's better works: Two novellas, Ill Met In Lankhmar the origin story of Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser and Ship of Shadows, one of my favorite stories. I confess, I bought this book solely for the second story, but Lankhmar story is fun and interesting. The writing styles are very different. Ship of Shadows is written with the trappings of a horror story, but as you continue to read, you realize it is hard SF.
Each story is top notch.
This "book" is a collection of two of Leiber's better works: Two novellas, Ill Met In Lankhmar the origin story of Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser and Ship of Shadows, one of my favorite stories. I confess, I bought this book solely for the second story, but Lankhmar story is fun and interesting. The writing styles are very different. Ship of Shadows is written with the trappings of a horror story, but as you continue to read, you realize it is hard SF.
Each story is top notch.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews