The Knight and Knave of Swords

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #7

by Fritz Leiber

Ramsey Campbell, the highly regarded British horror author, called him: "the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction". Drawing many of his own themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Franz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the Fantasy genre, actually coining the term "Sword and Sorcery", which would describe the sub-genre he would more than help create.

While Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber's fantastic but thoroughly flawed anti-heroes, Fafhrd and Grey 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.

"Fritz Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are virtually a genre unto themselves. Urbane, idiosyncratic, comic, erotic and human, spiked with believable action of a master fantasist!" - William Gibson

"After too long a wait, the master story teller of us all returns with a huge, anecdotal adventure in the magic-drenched lives of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Glowing imagination melds with gorgeous language to make this one of Leiber's very best... which is a better best than this poor world usually has to offer. Leiber's back: rejoice!" - Harlan Ellison

"It's all Fritz Leiber's fault. If he weren't such a deadly fine fantasist I wouldn't be stopping everything to read his tales. And if he weren't such a master I wouldn't occasionally look out of the window and wish he'd interrupt my routine again, as he doesn't do it often enough. The Knight and Knave of Swords came into my life and took over an otherwise fully programmed afternoon. I stop everything when a new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story comes into my hands." - Roger Zelazny

Contents:

9 · Sea Magic · ss The Dragon, December 1977
29 · The Mer She · nv Heroes & Horrors, Whispers Press, 1978
63 · The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars · na Heroic Visions, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Ace, 1983
117 · The Mouser Goes Below · na - portions first printed as “The Mouser Goes Below” (Whispers #23, 1987) and “Slack Lankhmar Afternoon Featuring Hisvet” (Terry’s Universe, ed. Beth Meacham, Tor, 1988)

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Sword and Sorcery, Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Collections, Science Fiction

303 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1988

About the author

Fritz 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

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Farewell to Lankhmar--the last volume in the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series--is a strange book, and hard to evaluate. It is an old man's book with an old man's preoccupations, and the reader who expects the usual mixture of free-wheeling, picaresque adventures will be disappointed.

His two aging heroes are now grudgingly monogamous men with daily responsibilities, settled in the arctic outpost of Rime Isle, far from the the sultry sexual multifariousness of Lankhmar. The two are literally cursed (by some minor gods) with old mens' hobbies (Fafhrd stargazes, the Mouser collects trash), and literally pursued by their own deaths (two assassins referred to as "The Death of Fafhrd" and "The Death of the Mouser.") In the course of the narrative, Fafhrd undergoes a mock funeral, the Mouser spends at least half his time buried alive, and Leiber indulges in a dirty old man's penchant for soft-core porn and yet concludes his raciest scene with an unpleasant surprise guaranteed to discourage prurience and to turn even a young man's fancy to thoughts of death and pain.

Still, there is something fascinating and admirable about this book: Leiber refused the easy comforts of established formulae and easy fame, and ends the saga by writing the cold final twilight chapter his heart told him he must write.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the seventh and last book that Leiber wrote about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, lifelong friends and brothers-in-arms, rogues and rapscallions who roamed over Leiber's rich world of Nehwon and beyond. I loved the first five books, didn't care much for the sixth, and really didn't much care for this one. It has some bits and flashes of the brilliance of the early stories, but it's essentially about two old men and their unpleasant thoughts and poor circumstances, which is the kind of thing we read fantasy stories to escape, not embrace. I wish they had stayed in Lankhmar and never thought about Rime Isle.

[J.G. Keely · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, the last few collections of Leiber's epic series cannot measure up to his earlier stories. In this volume, he once again refrains from the short, punchy stories which won him fame. Instead, he writes a single slow-going, bloated story originally released in chapters, which means Leiber is constantly reminding us what we're reading and what happened.

As we chart the ebb of Leiber's once-voracious imagination, each book has less semblance of plot, moving sluggishly between unimportant problems and convenient solutions. Leiber's heroes have grown older and settled down, but even so, he doesn't provide us anything new to carry the plot to take the place of their lost derring-do.

A charming portrait of their dotage might have been an amusing and satisfying conclusion to our heroes' lives, but we don't get that. Instead, we get more of Leiber's fetishism, meaning allusions to orgies, whole-body shaving, awkward euphemisms for anal sex, and even some teen lesbian teasing. He does momentarily ask us to consider what The Mouser and Fafhrd's relationship might have been, if they were more than friends, but this brief aside hardly balances the otherwise one-sided sexuality.

We also get more of his poetry, which isn't pretty, though I was taken aback by the way he dropped in the four-letter words. I don't mind such good Anglo-Saxon language, but it didn't make his awkward verse any more palatable.

If he seemed like Pratchett in the former volume, this one has taken a half-step into sex farce. Unfortunately, a sex farce is not something that should be done halfway.

Little remains of the bold characterization or striking language that marked the height of his talents. The growing cast of undifferentiated characters (including a gaggle of sexy teen girls) muddles about the dull, cold island trying to solve a problem whose source is never clear and whose solution provides little in the way of a conclusion.

The simplest definition of plot may be 'things happen', but woe to the author who takes that too literally. Leiber's early stories are some of the most delightful, imaginative, and varied in the genre, but the latter are mere shades, faltering in a mummer's dance of a glory that they cannot recapture.

My List of Suggested Fantasy Books

[Algernon · Rating 3 out of 5]

an extra star for the overall enjoyment I got from this pair of amoral scoundrels. but ...

Other reviewers pointed out that the last book in the series compares unfavorably with what went on before. I felt the decline in quality already in the previous book ( Swords and Ice MAgic ) but as a completist and as a fan of the Twain, I decided to give it a try anyway. Most of the dissapointment might come from the fact that I expected the adventurers to go out in a blaze of glory, something like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or like The Wild Bunch. Instead of drawing their steel (not one duel in earnest in the whole book), the heroes rely on luck and deux-et-machina interventions to get them out of some tame magical perils. Leiber went for the subversion of the genre, and imagined his heroes settled down with their women on an island beyond the edge of the world (Rime Isle) , far from Lankhmar and devious patron wizards. I might have accepted this, if the quality of the prose had retained some of the sparkle and inventiveness of earlier books, but the thrill is mostly gone. Another letdown is the replacement of the lighthearted sexual innuendo in relating the bedroom conquests of the duo with some extremely explicit and slightly cringeworthy BDSM fantasies.

Without further ado, here's what can be found in this last collection:

1 - Sea Magic: Fafhrd in in Salthaven, recuperating (see end of book six) , when he is caught up in an effort by a sea enchantress to steal the town's gold relics. A boat chase and a confrontation in the middle of the ocean close this opening short tale that makes the transition from events in Swords and Ice Magic.

2 - The Mer She: the corresponding mirror story following the Mouser's adventure as a merchant and sea captain, falling under the spell of the same sea witch, here taking the form of a teenage seductress with silvery hair and deep green eyes. A lucky escape, due mostly to paranoid suspicion and an eye for safety, something I found out of character for the Mouser.

3 - The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars : Probably the best set in the novel, has Ningauble and Sheelba plot to bring back to Lankhmar the two rogues who are still lingering on Rime Isle. The title refers to the enchantments put on the duo by their patron gods in order to force them to abandon their comfortable refuge and come back to the capital city. Complications arise when higher deities decide that they don't want the heroes back in Lankhmar, so death stalks our friends once more. Again no swords are drawn and the escape is based on luck and a little help from the friends on the Isle.

4 - The Mouser Goes Bellow : opens with an unnecessary recap of events from the last two books and with a rant about the public who will not let the heroes enjoy their rest: 'both knew well how cruelly and unreasonably demanding audiences can be' . The last story covers about 3/4 of the novel, and feels padded, with the same actions narrated twice from different points of view, plenty of references to events from earlier adventures, unrelated scenes shoehorned in from other publications (The Rat lady and her servants), and a general lack of direction and logic in the development of the plot. Made me think this type of adventure works better in a shorter form, more concentrated and faster paced that a full length novel.

Recommended for dedicated fans of the series and for completists like me.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Cranky Old Men edition

We’re old, we’re gray, get off our lawn.

A somewhat unfair assessment of the last FatGM book by Fritz Leiber, who died 4 years after it was copyrighted, at age 81. A few statements within the first few pages seemed to indicate that he was writing to placate fans of the series—you know us fans, we are always clamouring for more adventures of our favourites! I imagine that it’s hard to scrape up enthusiasm for a project that feels rather forced on the writer, especially after 50 years of writing these adventures.

Fafhrd and Mouser are reluctant adventurers in this installment. They would far rather settle down with their current lady-loves, go on the odd commercial venture, and live comfortably for the rest of their lives, but when your life is entwined with nosy gods there are bound to be interruptions.

Leiber was obviously concerned with issues of mortality while writing this, as Fafhrd and Mouser end up with a spell on them, making them elderly in outlook before their time. His earlier beautiful vocabulary gets much coarser in Knight and Knave and I don’t think he got the same delight out of writing about these two rascals anymore.

It was rather sad to watch the decline of the barbarian and the cut-purse, just as it is sad to watch the subtle decline in an elderly relative.

Book 238 of my science fiction and fantasy reading project.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

And so we come to the end of my collected omnibus editions. I will admit that I have ripped through these books having read them many years ago. (that and the fact I decided to cut out TV and just read for a week, my head is starting to ache but that is self inflicted)

This book is just a single edition and rather a shock I must admit for being that. I think from the very outset - the title does sort of give it away) you realise you are about to say goodbye to Lankhmar and the characters of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser - and to be honest you cannot shake off that feeling as you read the stories

I will not give away anything but I will say that this books is really not the end, Fritz Leiber was still adding to them and it was said more stories were planned however time caught up with Mr Leiber and we will never know. I think then that it is fitting as we leave them to even more adventures that their story is left uncompleted. Like the table top games their inspired, tomorrow there will always be a new adventure to be had.

I think reading these stories I could not help but find similarities to other great fantasy stories but as i have said in the past who influenced who. sometimes it is all to easy to read a story and dismiss it as a thinly skinned copy of another only to realise you are holding the original and it is that other story which is the copy. This series has taught me a lot which I had not picked up the first time around and I think I will maybe read them again in the future as i suspect there is even more to be learned from them.

[Theo Logos · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Knight and Knave of Swords is the final book of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It finds them aging, cursed, slowed, and (in Fafhrd’s case) maimed, entering the twilight of their careers.

I was hoping, after so many brilliant tales of adventure past for a noble ending for our heroes, like something out of Tennyson’s Ulysses —

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.


But instead, the half-hearted writing and the diminished tales told in this final book felt more in line with the pessimism of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men —

This is the way the world ends,
not with a bang but a whimper.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the wandering sword-and-sorcery hero fiction equivalent of the old guy down at the bar talking about how totally amazing things were back in the old days and how he got up to all these crazy adventures and he totally banged all those hot girls and their sistersmaids, too, and hey, where you are going, he has a dozen more stories that are even better than that one!

I think the greatest enemy of sword-and-sorcery short fiction is continuity. Part of what made the earlier stories so interesting is that each time, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were in a new situation. Any familiarity came from the patterns of their interactions and the way they resolved the crisis, not the people they met or the situations they found themselves in. This broke down rather a lot in Swords and Ice Magic, and completely collapses in The Knight and Knave of Swords, much to the latter's detriment.

I'm not sure whether it was during the part where the Mouser watches a random S&M session with Princess Hisvet from The Swords of Lankhmar or the part where Fafhrd runs into Frix's airship and starts reminiscing about all the hot sex he had with her and her maids and her friends and why are you even telling me this, Leiber, this is completely irrelevant and I don't care at all. It was bad enough in Swords and Ice Magic when there was some comment about the older men get, the younger they like their women, as a way of justifying sending tweens to "minister" to Odin. Now there's a bunch of ink wasted on talking about how attractive and dextrous a girl who gives handjobs to sailors as part of their crew is. What.

It's not like that's the only thing I'm annoyed about, either. Even if you stripped out all the teenage lesbian fetishism or the bizarre focus on shaving, most of the book just isn't interesting. I suspect there's a great story to be told about wandering adventurers getting older and realizing that they aren't all that interested in wandering treasure-seeking anymore, and instead finding their attentions turning towards stability and having a consistent source of income and the same roof over their heads at the end of every day, but The Knight and Knave of Swords is definitely not that book. There has rarely been that much effort paid to the duo's inner life during the series, instead focusing on their heroic deeds and the battles they fought, and that was enough to carry the stories early on. If you strip out the heroic deeds and the battles, though, and when you add in the thinking but focus it almost entirely on nostalgia for events that you've already read about and were way more exciting the first time...

The first two stories are totally uninteresting--one is just a bridge between the previous book and this one--and I'll deal with the longest story in a bit, but "The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars" is the only reason I can give to read this book at all, and even there it's a very weak recommendation. It actually reminded me a lot of the Discworld in terms of tone, since the assassins are dealt with in almost a farcical manner, but Leiber here doesn't have Terry Pratchett's gift for being both silly and profound at the same time. There is one paragraph that almost justified the story to me, though:

So the Order drew up death warrants, chose by lot two of its currently unoccupied fellows, and in solemn secret ceremony attended only by the Master and the Recorder, divested those of their identities and rechristened them the Death of Fafhrd and the Death of the Gray Mouser, by which names only they should henceforth be known to each other and within the profession until the death warrants were served and their commissions fulfilled.

And now that you've read that quote, you don't need to read about random divine curses making the duo ridiculous and assassins defeated through almost slapstick.

"The Mouser Goes Below" is the main part of the book, and the last story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and really it's a pretty good metaphor for a lot of people that fail to age gracefully and spend their time dwelling in the past. This would have been the perfect opportunity either to deal with the duo wanting to set up a legacy for themselves, or in going out in one final blaze of glory, and while their children do appear within, there's no actual closure provided. It's the story of another assassination attempt, but one more subtle than the one in "The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars." So subtle that you only learn a hint of it in the last dozen pages of the story and most of the earlier part of the story is nostalgia and faffing around and creepy fetishism. After all the padding, there's very little meat on the bone here. If I wanted ruminations on Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser's previous deeds, I'd reread the previous stories and think about them myself.

Now that I think about it, another way of looking at the overall arc is characterizing it in terms of Dungeons & Dragons, since that game takes so much inspiration from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. In the beginning, it's all delving into dungeons and stealing treasure and surviving by the skin of one's teeth with danger around all corners. As time passes and the characters rise in levels, they eventually settle down, claim lands, and start to become movers and shakers, and this continues for a bit until everyone realizes that it's not nearly as fun as going down into dungeons was and the game kind of peters to a halt. That's definitely what happens here.

Unless you're a sword and sorcery fanatic and have to read every word about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, skip this book. Go reread "The Howling Tower" or "Ill Met in Lankhmar" or "The Bazaar of the Bizarre" or "Lean Times in Lankhmar" instead. You aren't missing anything.

Previous Review: Swords and Ice Magic.

[Kat Hooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Knight and Knave of Swords is the last collection of Fritz Leiber’s LANKHMAR stories about those two loveable rogues, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I had read all of the LANKHMAR stories up to this point but it took me a while to open this book because I just wasn’t ready for it to be over. Neil Gaiman says something similar in his introduction to The Knight and Knave of Swords and I’m sure that most of Leiber’s fans feel the same way. I know I can re-read these stories at any time, but it’s just not the same thing. It’s sad to know that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser’s adventures are over.

The Knight and Knave of Swords, which has also been titled Farewell to Lankhmar (sniff!), contains these previously published novellas and stories: ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Baal Of · Rating 2 out of 5]

How disappointing. After enjoying my re-read of this series, especially the first three books, I was not prepared for how unpleasant this book is. Gone is the deprecating humor that served to soften the sexist character of these two anti-hero rogues, who were never meant to be role-models. Gone is the bizarrely clever, weird adventures for something that felt pale, and tossed-off. What remained was ugly and cranky, reading like the spewing of an angry old man, resentful that he had to fill the demands of the fans to bring some kind of closure to the lives of his creations, and there's even a breaking of the fourth wall explicating just as much. There's a lot of erotic content, although calling it erotic feels incorrect to me because the sex is abusive and coercive, making the proceedings nasty instead of arousing. On top of that, there were dozens of sections that were just recaps of previous adventures (remember back when we were actually interesting?), and there were even recaps of sections of the book that we had just fucking read. I'll be sending this book on rather than putting it back on my shelf.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sigh. And this is where everything ends. Swords and Ice Magic, the sixth and previously final book in the series, had been published in 1977, but Leiber did continue writing a few more stories about the famous Twain, all set in the twilight of their (and his) career, taking place almost entirely on Rime Isle where they had actually settled down after leaving Lankhmar (for good?) in the previous book.

And, as with the stories in the previous book, Leiber is getting much more comfortable with letting his freak flag fly, so: Fair warning.

This time we open with three medium-length stories, all of which had been published in various short fiction markets earlier in the 70s & 80s (including, I note with approval, one story appearing in an issue of TSR's Dragon Magazine) and close with a much longer piece -- I think it's the second-longest single Fafhrd & Gray Mouser story, after the novel The Swords of Lankhmar, and might be long enough to be considered a short novel on its own -- "The Mouser Goes Below".

And while it's interesting to see a classic sword & sorcery duo allowed to actually grow older (well, I think they're supposed to be maybe in their late 40s at this point in their careers) and suffer consequences (Fafhrd's hand has not, in fact, grown back so he's getting used to having a hook at the end of one arm, although sometimes he also mounts other items there, like a bow), and while Leiber's prose remains as witty and elegant as ever, the whole thing feels, in the end, like a bit of a letdown or an anticlimax (ironical term, that, considering what F&GM get up to at multiple times, with multiple partners and described at multiple levels of detail).

Part of the issue is that in pretty much all of the stories, F&GM are much more acted upon than acting -- events instigate because somebody else (various gods, their sorcerous patrons Sheela and Ningauble, the overlord of Lankhmar, etc., sometimes all at once) decide to start messing with the Twain. And the final, longest story carries this to extreme lengths by having Mouser spend almost the entirety of the tale entombed alive in dirt, being dragged semi-ethereally from point to point to witness various tableaus, sometimes of an erotic nature, while Fafhrd mounts aloft to a cloud-pinnace crewed by yet another of his former ladies, Queen Frix of Arilia and an assortment of her winsome handmaidens. And while at some level it does make sense that F&GM are, every time they thought they were out, being dragged back in, it's also ultimately a bit unsatisfying.

Which isn't to say the book is entirely without merit -- at risk of repeating myself, Leiber's prose is a joy to read, and there are delightful touches such as the pair of assassins dispatched from Lankhmar who prepare for their roles by effectively becoming their targets even if they don't actually look anything like them.

Probably somewhere around a 3.5, but this time I'm rounding down to 3.

[Clint · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps more thoughts later, but chief among them: disappointment. Disappointment with this final book. Disappointment that a series that had me so entranced at first, faltered so at the end. This was not my least favorite. That honor belongs to book 5.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 1 out of 5]

A weak book.

[Fantasy boy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The knight and Knave of swords is the conclusion of Fafhrd and the grey mouser series. The finale is nostalgic and somehow disappointed. I’ve read several of stories In the series, but this one is repetitive and elliptical at what the author tried to present the story. The writing is not as good since the sixth installment, previous four books have the best quality of writing, in the fifth installment the tone in the writing shifts a bit but still mediocre. It seems that Leiber lately used words in sentences not deft and abbreviated of some beautiful sentences in the previous books; those sentences are vivid enough to picture the images but do not feel the same sublime sentences would resonate my soul when I was reading it.

Both heroes after the event of Rime Isle, they wanted to get retired from their adventures. So basically, the whole story would be what happened after the finale chapter in the book six. Their mentors, gods and Death etc had different thinkings about the duo retired; the duo was escaping from their grasp of fist in order to live a peaceful life. Fortunately they had friends, girlfriends and their crews supported them, owing the fact to their stalwart friendships. But the whole stories not innovative anymore which compare to the previous five books. Reintroducing the old characters and previous stories from the previous books; follow the same formulas in the already established story lines; some of sexual things are portrayed. I think it would be better to see the duo retired from their most exciting journeys not the lament ones. At least, I feel nostalgic after finished the series, I think I felt content at some point.

Overall, this series is in the classic S&S genre with reasons. Our heroes eventually will retired from the stories the same as in real lives.

[Adam Getchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful ending

Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser have one last jointly separate adventure which links the past, present, and possible future.

It’s a bit sad to know there won’t be anymore masterful adventures from a masterful storyteller. But the two heroes are appropriately frozen at a good stopping point ... one could just imagine another series of adventure for the duo and their expanded family, had we but the grandmaster scribe to recount them to us.

[Silas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fafhrd, the towering barbarian, and his best friend the Gray Mouser, a cutpurse small in stature, are now middle-aged swordsmen with an abundance of adventures behind them. But the fates aren't through with them yet, and in this collection of stories, Fritz Leiber gives us more of their exploits. A rollicking read for sci-fi and fantasy fans.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the whole series back in the 80s. Some of the best, most imaginative high fantasy one will come across. And, the characters grow and learn from novel to novel.

[Jefferson · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Heroes (and Authors) Age Past Heroic Feats

For decades I’d put off reading The Knight and Knave of Swords (1988), the last of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser collections, not wanting to finish them. After finally reading Leiber’s farewell to his “humorous darkside heroes,” I feel glad, sad, and disappointed because although the first three stories are mostly fine, the fourth is muchly repugnant. The stories begin a few months after the last events in Swords and Ice Magic (1977), in which Fafhrd--at the cost of his left hand--and the Gray Mouser try to save legendary Rime Isle, if not all Newhon, from a sea Mingol horde and Loki and Odin and then to start living with their lovers Afreyt and Cif on the island.

Audiobook reader Jonathan Davis enhances the tales, doing his usual American Fafhrd and Australian/cockney Mouser voices and going to town with wizards and gods. But why does he pronounce Loki as Lo-kai?

Anyway, here is an annotated list of the stories:

“Sea Magic” (1977)
Missing the Mouser (absent on a trading mission) and “the sleazy grandeurs” of Lankhmar, the one-handed Fafhrd practices shooting arrows around corners and falls into a violet dream of adventure and a bone-white silver woman who may be a ghost or a princess or a fish, while the five gold Ikons of Reason go missing from the treasury. The short story is marked by Leiber’s cynical view (e.g., “A crooked Arrow of Truth and a rounded-off Cube of Square Dealing strike me as about right for this world”), alliteration (e.g., “No sign of a sail or hint of a hull”), and vivid, evocative descriptions (e.g., “Gale rolled it off ahead of her. The target-bag was smoky red with dye from the snowberry root, and the last rays of the sun setting behind them gave it an angry glare. Afreyt and Fafhrd each had the thought that Gale was rolling away the sun.”)

“The Mer-She” (1978)
The Mouser is feeling smugly pleased captaining the goods-laden galley Seahawk back home to Rime Isle when he is tempted by an appeal to his egotistical love of power and nubile waifs. Featuring a timber-laden galley, a chest of colorful fabrics, a sea demon fish girl, a Mouser doll, and a black leviathan, the climax is suspenseful and comical. This short story, too, is full of Leiber’s wit (e.g., “You could trust folk when they were trussed”) and rich descriptions (e.g., “she responded in a lisping whisper that was like the ghosts of wavelets kissing the hull”).

“The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars” (1983)
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are settling into unadventurous lives on Rime Isle with permanent mates, responsibilities, and homes, when their wizardly masters Ningauble and Sheelba, needing Fafhrd’s romantic credulity and the Mouser’s brooding malignancy in Lankhmar to make magic work, get the duo’s three gods (devious Mog, surly Kos, and limp-wristed Issek) to curse the men into returning to the city. The gods smite the pair with old age obsessions, setting the Mouser to collect mundane objects and Fafhrd to counting the stars. Meanwhile, two elite assassins nicknamed the Death of Fafhrd and the Death of the Gray Mouser head for Rime Isle. This suspenseful, amusing, well-plotted, and richly-written novella depicts gutter gleaning, star gazing, backgammon playing, and gender transmogrifying as it pokes funs at aging and plays with the two heroes being halves of a single ur-demon-warrior and their lovers halves of an ur-witch-queen. Leiber writes nice lines, like “Their existence was rather like that of industrious lotus eaters” and “the lovely litter, as though each scrap were sequined and bore hieroglyphs.”

“The Mouser Goes Below” (1988)
Middle-aging on Rime Isle, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are blithely enjoying sporting events like picnicking when life gets interesting: the Mouser’s lieutenant Pshawri dives after the Maelstrom-quelling gold Cube of Square Dealing (which is melded to a cinder of Loki), a mysterious “child ship whore” called Fingers appears with Cif and Afreyt’s nieces, and then during a Moon Goddess ritual the Mouser vanishes into the earth. The rest of the novella depicts the efforts of Fafhrd and company to exhume the Mouser by digging and dowsing, while the Mouser tries to breathe and Loki and Death’s sister Pain get involved and a former lover of Fafhrd’s comes calling in the sky. I like that the friends must face some of the consequences of their past womanizing. And that women like Cif and Afreyt are “women of power.” And I was impressed by Leiber’s still vivid imagination in detailing the Mouser’s descent into the earth and Fafhrd’s ascent into the clouds. And by his still fine language (e.g., “things went most grievously agley”) and philosophy (e.g., “Why does a memory wink off, whenever you try to watch it closely? Is it because we cannot live forever?”). But unfortunately the novella is deformed by excrescent BDSM sex. We hear about Fingers’ work pleasuring sailors with her moist hands, officers with her mouth, and the captain with her nether orifices; Fafhrd remembers erotic escapades with multiple long-limbed amazons, though Leiber mercifully doesn’t depict his seven-woman and two-girl orgy in the sky; and in by far the longest chapter in the book the entombed Mouser watches depilated, pert-breasted maids called Threesie and Foursie being degraded, punished, and pleasured by their mistress until Pain excruciates him with a drop by drop orgasm. None of this creepy kinkiness is vital to the plot.

Some readers have complained that there is little exciting heroic violent action in the collection, but Leiber’s importance to sword and sorcery (epic fantasy) is largely due to his freedom from genre conventions. At their best, the stories here reveal an original, sardonic, and vivid vision. At their worst, they reveal a lecherous imagination. And readers new to the series should begin with the classic older collections Swords and Deviltry (1970), Swords Against Death (1970), and Swords in the Mist (1968).

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Contains scenes of a sexually explicit - and at times unpleasant - nature.

If I had to summarise what this book is about it might be: What happens to heroes when there is no quest. There are creative ideas in here, but I spent the whole book waiting for some kind of plot to emerge. I suppose there is one, but it isn't very good. In my opinion there is enough here for a captivating short story and had the author condensed it into that form, eliminating unnecessary characters and episodes where nothing significantly happens, I would have enjoyed it far more. I may even have come away wanting more.

It reads like a sequel, but with the clear assumption that the reader knows the characters and previous plots (assuming there were any). The two main protagonists are not particularly interesting or pleasant characters, there are loads of supporting cast whose personalities are not really developed, and there are bondage scenes which seem to have been shoehorned in because...well, I suppose the author is into that kind of thing.

I guess all this means I don't agree with Publishers' Weekly that this is 'One of the great works of fantasy in this century' (front cover - the century referred to is the 20th), but then I haven't exactly surveyed the literature.

Postscript: after writing this I found out it is, in fact, book seven of a series. I guess the reason all the apparently irrelevant characters are crowding the book is that they played significant parts in earlier episodes. It is also likely that I have started with the worst writing by this clearly much-acclaimed author. It's a relief to know that he won't be reading this and getting upset by it.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some media is difficult to consume, when we know it will be our last taste. This is how I felt watching the last episode of The Wire, the last Morse mystery, and now reading this book. It's why I put off reading the last Dark Tower novel. Reading The Knight and Knave of Swords I was filled with melancholy. I'm certain I first discovered Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser when I was 10 or 11 years old, and while scouring used book stores happy to grab any of the paperbacks collecting their adventures. These stories filled with adventure, humor, magic, not-overly powerful gods, and sexy women were a great pleaure to read.

For D&D players, not enough credit can be given to Leiber, who came up with a dozen of the concepts incorporated into the RPG.

I've always thought Leiber had the best story titles, Ill Met in Lankhmar being my favorite.

And so I'd put off reading this book for more than 10 years. I finally added it as a briefcase read. The book includes two short stories and a novella. I'd call one of the short stories, a gem. Fafhrd is cursed to look up and obsess with stars, while the Mouser is cursed to look down obsessing with trivialities like the shapes and colors of pebbles and sticks. Their obsessive curses prevent them from taking note of assassins sent from Lankhmar hired to settle old scores.

The other short and the novella were not as good. Not bad, but not particularly good either. The heroes are too passive, riding out circumstances with essentially no power to influence events.

The cover of the book is A-1.

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Último libro de la saga de Fafhrd y el Ratonero Gris (como anticipé, hasta el último libro no he sido capaz de aprenderme el nombre del héroe norteño). Este es el que menos me ha gustado de todos, plantea unas situaciones curiosas y originales, pero trata a los dos héroes de una manera bastante poco heroica, supongo que sería la intención del autor, ya desde el principio ninguno ha sido un "dechado de virtudes" pero este final me ha sabido a bastante poco, en estos dos últimos libros he visto un un poco de desigualdad a favor del Ratonero, aunque puede ser una apreciación mía.
Un final un poco tibio a una gran saga, luego leí que Fritz Leiber tenia pensado continuar las aventuras (quizá por eso el final es tan poco concluso) pero que no pudo hacerlo, me hubiera gustado que algunas tramas anteriores hubieran tenido una conclusión más cerrada, no obstante, esto no empaña una gran saga de aventuras.

[BQ · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Mild spoiler in second half of this review)

Disregarding the last short story in this volume, the rest of the entries get a 3/5 from me. Nowhere near as good as previous books in the series. The last short story, The Mouser Goes Below, was mostly garbage. Boring and smut filled. Had this book been one of the earlier entries, I would not have kept reading.

That being said, the very ending was okay, with Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser mostly settling down and growing to see the importance of family as they get older. Though they are definitely still scoundrels. I’m glad I finished the series, but sad The Knight and Knave of Swords wasn’t better.

[Howard Brazee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I used to really like this series, but this book was only OK. I didn't mind ending it. This had longer stories with gods and magicians trying to get our heroes from Rime Island back to Lankhmar. The prose seemed the same, but it has been a half-century since I read those stories. (except I have re-read Ill Met in Lankhmar)

This was written mostly in the 1980s and had more liberal sex scenes, but I don't think that's why I was less interested.

[Jorge Fernández · Rating 2 out of 5]

Se nota mucho desgaste en los personajes y las historias que nos dejan en este último volumen son bastante pobres. El viaje ha llegado a su fin y ha sido una aventura fantástica.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a pretty major drop in quality and an unsatisfying conclusion to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The only reason I finished this book is because I've read everything before and hoped to find something good. There are three major stories in this collection which I can summarize as: Simorgya messes with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, two assassins come after the pair, and the final 30 chapter arc is Fafhrd literally digging the Mouser out of a hole.

The book starts with promise: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are coming to terms with the events of the previous story on Rime Island. They are beginning to settle down from lives of adventure. Fafhrd deals with losing his hand. Are we seeing character growth and development as the duo get older? Then the stories meander. The jokes fall flat. And the pacing slows to a crawl.

Leiber put out some quality short stories featuring the adventuring pair, and memorable novellas. These last stories have no charm, and I'm trying to understand why.

Issue #1: Leiber lost his wife and it had a devastating impact on his life. I think it shows here in his writing quality and the questionable focus of these stories. A good editor wouldn't allow these stories to be published.

Issue #2: No Lankhmar. The vibrant city is as much of a character as the titular pair. Fafhrd and the Mouser live on an island with a small fishing community in this book. The Rime Islanders were entertaining in Swords and Ice Magic, but nothing like Lankhmar with its gods, guilds, and bizarre culture throwing an unpredictable flair into the stories. Ningauble and Sheelba are barely present. This is a farewell to our swashbuckling adventurers that excised every wonderful, memorable feature of the series.

Issue #3: Sexuality. When we are looking at writing from the past, it is not fair to judge it by the mores of the present. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have always had problematic relationships with women, but it was offset by clever, circumspect writing. There is a jarring tone change in these last stories, and a lot of dirty laundry gets aired. It crossed a line for me. The Mouser has a predilection for 14 year old girls, which prior stories have alluded to, but Leiber spends great, uncomfortable detail covering here. There is an entire chapter in The Mouser Goes Below where a young girl recounts her experiences after being forced into sexual slavery. This last book is much more explicit than prior stories.

Now, uncomfortable scenes aren't necessarily bad things. They can be skillfully used to advance a story as well as remind us that these things are all too real in our histories and modern day. Sexual violence and child exploitation come up in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire as well as Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher. I bring those two series up because those series have extremely uncomfortable scenes that are used to make a point. Those series also had major female characters who are well developed (Ciri, Daenerys, Sansa), despite being written by men. Both of these subtleties are things Leiber's final Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories lack. Instead, we seem to be getting explicit scenes for shock value, humor, and/or filler. And I can tell you they don't make thrilling reading, they're not funny, and this book is already too long. I'm not sure how much of this may be related to Issue #1 and a lot of drug abuse during this period in Leiber's life.

Of all the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books, this has the worst writing. It is the most boring. It's a bad book (it gets 2 stars because I was able to finish it). It got nominated for a World Fantasy Award-Collection, and I am dumbfounded. I don't usually put this many words into talking about why a book is bad, but a lot of this stems from disappointment since Leiber's older stories are much better.

There was one thing I liked about this book: the scene where the Mouser is buried alive is horrifying and reached me in a way no other film or book has. I may be slightly claustrophobic now.

There is no compelling reason to read this book if you are not already familiar with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and if you are, skip it.

[Oliver Brackenbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series definitely peaked with book five...and yet, six and seven have a kind of charm to them. It's a nice change for a sword & sorcery series to mature its characters, to really have them reckon with the tension between wanting stability and not wanting to let go of youthful thrills, to cultivate a new main setting, to build a recurring cast...

Mixed in with this charm and intriguing development is Old Man Horny Shit. The final story in particular has two sex farce scenes that, ah, sheesh. There's much bigger tragedy to the death of Leiber's wife, however a minor, adjacent tragedy was the loss of her influence on his work, especially helping him write better women characters. Fafhrd & Grey Mouser's new partners they settle down with are mostly solid, not so much every other woman or girl, and Grey Mouser becomes a lot less likable thanks to his behavior around them.

However, if you've read this far in the series and grown to love the characters as well as Leiber's writing style, you'll have a hard time stopping, especially because there is that charm, that intriguing development. Maybe you're like me and you've learned about Leiber's life as well, which provides added depth to at least one part, in book six, when Fafhrd laments some of the lasting effects of his past loves on his present life, almost speaking words infused with Lieber's own grief over his dead wife.

I'm unsure if the final story was meant as such at the time of writing, however it works as a finale. I felt like I'd been through something when I read to the end of this series, and am ultimately glad I did.

[Jonathan Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wish I could say that I enjoyed this, that it was a fitting send-off for two of the greatest heroes to have graced the literature of sword and sorcery, that it showed Leiber at his best and that it provided as much enjoyment as did such brilliant stories as Ill Met in Lankhmar and Swords of Lankhmar. However, this is not how I want to remember the father of sword and sorcery, and one of the finest writers of weird fiction. There are flashes of Leiber's linguistic brilliance, punchy dialogue that sparkles with Shakespearean wit and descriptions of strange landscapes that have you right there on the page. Despite this, the things that are rather unfortunate about Leiber's fantasy writing rears its ugly head in much too big a way to allow one to continue to enjoy the story. Plainly put, there are too many times when these tales plunge into pornography, and sexual violence is handled very very problematically. This is not how I want to remember one of my favourite writers. Look instead to the earlier Swords stories, or Leiber's brilliant horror stories, or the absolutely brilliant Our Lady of Darkness. This is not where you'll find the finest of Leiber's work, and in the end I couldn't finish it.

[F.J. Sanz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Como tengo por costumbre, comentaré esta saga al completo y no desgranando libro por libro.

Para analizar las aventuras de Fafhrd y el Ratonero Gris es necesario ambientarse en su contexto histórico. Publicada la primera novela (Espadas y demonios) en 1970, la sociedad y valores no eran los mismos que priman en la nuestra hoy en día.

Quizá haya quien se pueda escandalizar ante la visión tan machista que ofrecen sus páginas, donde sus dos héroes no buscan en el sexo opuesto más que la pura satisfacción física y poder alardear a la postre (y al calor del fuego) de sus exóticas conquistas. Aunque quizá no se trate más que la visión propia de un joven travieso que decide aventurarse y comprobar hasta dónde se le permite llegar.
Si atendemos a la épica fantástica, los mundos que Leiber nos ofrece están teñidos de una ingenuidad terrible para unos ojos veteranos como los míos, que ya se han curtido con Martin, Abercrombie o Erikson, pero que contemplados en perspectiva resultan extravagantes, singulares y dotados de una asombrosa originalidad.

En su época, una obra valiente, pícara y excéntrica. Hoy, un tanto inocente y trasnochada.

[Jeffrey Bowen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the end, my only friends Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

[Illusode · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, could not make it through 20 pages of awkward, lewd, overblown BS. And the characters! Misogynist pirates and their slave girls--I was just too disgusted.