Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, #1) by Fritz Leiber

Aug 26, 2012 Carol rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, male-lead, short-stories

Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fiction, and it shows. Reading these stories feels a little like sitting at the feet of an old, old storyteller while he reminisces about childhood heroes. There's a feel of both age and timelessness about these stories--tall, fur-clad barbarian and short swordsman-thief who can vanish in the shadows--this is like reading the origin myth for characters we've known for decades.

The four stories (three novellas and one vignette) within describe the...more Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fiction, and it shows. Reading these stories feels a little like sitting at the feet of an old, old storyteller while he reminisces about childhood heroes. There's a feel of both age and timelessness about these stories--tall, fur-clad barbarian and short swordsman-thief who can vanish in the shadows--this is like reading the origin myth for characters we've known for decades.

The four stories (three novellas and one vignette) within describe the adventures of Fafhrd, a giant barbarian from the frozen wastes, and the Gray Mouser, a youth who has apprenticed to a hedge-wizard. 'Induction,' covers a meeting between the two in a famous city. 'The Snow Women' is Fafhrd's origin story, and how he came to leave his tribe. 'The Unholy Grail' covers the Grey Mouse's origin, and 'Ill Met in Lankhmar' is when they meet again and become true companions. 'Lankhmar' won a Hugo and Nebula for best novella, and it is plain why.

These are the tales that influenced the greats of fantasy. There's a tone of wry humor, perhaps a little mocking at youth and noble intentions, and early in the stories I wondered if the narrative would remain tongue-in-cheek. Then Leiber would suddenly twist it, and the frustration, the rage, and the fear in his characters would come into play. It's well done.

Leiber does, perhaps, show his age in these stories, both personally and culturally. Woman have no likeable roles, playing controlling mother-witch, junior controlling fiance-witch, Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia. Still, there is something of sophistication in their character as Leiber gets inside their emotional landscape to explain their actions, or lack of. As the stories of Fafhrd and Gray span 50 years, I'm interested to see where they end up.

Learning Leiber was one of the fathers of S&S sent me on an internet hunt, and I find my appreciation for his stories growing. His parents were both Shakespearean actors, and a reoccurring theme through his writing was acting and the life of actors. Late in life, he received royalties from D&D, who used Fafhrd and Gray as characters.

A note for Pratchett fans out there: Lankhmar was apparently an indirect inspiration for Ankh-Morpork and Pratchett has two characters in the first Discworld based on Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

A solid three and a half stars.

Cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/0...(less)

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Sep 10, 2009 Kat Hooper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

I must confess that I had some preconceived notions about Fritz Leiber’s work. Because he’s credited with coining the phrase “Sword & Sorcery,” and because I never hear women talking about his stories, I imagined that they appealed mainly to men who like to read stuff that has covers like these:

But, four factors made me decide to give Fritz Leiber a try:
1. I feel the need to be “educated” in the field of fantasy, which means that I should read novels...more

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May 10, 2012 Jean-marcel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Before I say anything about this book specifically, I must flat-out state that Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are my favourite on-going fantasy series. I don't generally read huge, sprawling multi-volume sagas of anything, just because I can't imagine how a writer could possibly keep up interest or inspiration over thousands and thousands of pages for the same world or set of characters and maintain a consistent enough quality to make the undertaking a worthwhile experience for me....more Before I say anything about this book specifically, I must flat-out state that Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are my favourite on-going fantasy series. I don't generally read huge, sprawling multi-volume sagas of anything, just because I can't imagine how a writer could possibly keep up interest or inspiration over thousands and thousands of pages for the same world or set of characters and maintain a consistent enough quality to make the undertaking a worthwhile experience for me. Life's too short, you know, and I am a ponderous, thoughtful raeder who takes his time with everything. This series isn't like that; the seven volumes are slim (or perhaps you bought them in two nice omnibus editions), and they are themselves made up of shorter tales, except for The Swords of Lankhmar, which is the only Nehwon/F&GM novel. I think this is the ideal format for a number of reasons, but mostly because we're never in any doubt that what we're seeing are in fact "snapshots", so to speak, of the lives of this eminently lovable pair, and you bet, they have loads of adventures and complications that we'll never read about. This is a good thing, not for opportunistic fan fiction writers (are there F&GM fan fiction writers?), but for all of our imaginations. We don't mind watching these characters grow, because even if they are sometimes prone to funks, quarrels and can even occasionally be obnoxious people, the glimpses are brief and they'll probably eventually get over whatever crisis has caused them to behave poorly, and do it in a natural way. Finally, I just love reading short stories; it isn't that I haven't the attention span for novels, but I enjoy reading things in a single sitting and I like to take stories with me on trips, or even on my way to work in the mornings as I ride public transit.

SO, since this marks the beginning of my favourite long-running fantasy series, why did I only give this book three stars? A three star rating is still a pretty good book as far as I'm concerned, so I've got nothing much bad to say about Leiber's work here, except that it just gets a hell of a lot better. I really mean that: Start with this book, yes, but if it doesn't rock your world and put a huge grin on your face, persevere, because once the troublesome twosome have really developed a rapport after wandering and adventuring together for years, the stories become marvelous. This is the beginning, though, and the comfortable rhythm doesn't quite seem established yet. Also, the first two stories establish the backgrounds of Fafhrd, the hulking northern barbarian with a lust for travel and a hunger to see the sights of the world and learn as much as he can, and the diminutive Gray Mouser, a wily and cunning rogue who started off as a magician's apprentice but soon turned to thievery and underhand means to get by in the teeming city of Lankhmar. These two stories are certainly worthy, and it's good to have the tale told of where each of the twain originated and why they left their homelands.

However, the first story, "The Snow Women", does not start very auspiciously. Leiber seems to think that he can convey the harsh coldness of this land largely by making adjectives out of "ice" and "snow" and adding them to as many commonplace nouns as possible. The first couple of times, one hardly notices, but especially in the opening pages, it gets pretty excessive and I'm reminded of much poorer fantasies of which I have far less favourable opinions, and I know damn well that Leiber is actually far above this, even though he pulled the same sort of trick in the later story "The Adept's Gambit" (he used it in a much more self-aware/clever way in that tale). I suppose modern readers might, too, have a problem with Leiber's portrayal of women in this story, as all the ladies of Fafhrd's tribe turn out to be witches (a favourite theme of his early work), and the whole establishment seems to be set out to trap him and turn him into another ineffectual man like all the other males in his clan. I think though that it's important to remember that this is, basically, part of a rite of passage for Fafhrd (the second part of this rite takes place in "Ill-Met in Lankhmar(, and that this is relating events taking place in Fafhrd's seventeenth year. he's a young, brash lout, and he's bored. He wants to travel far, but the men in the tribe generally always return home, unless they win the disfavour of the women, in which case they tend to meet unfortunate ends. He's also lain with a girl he doesn't seem to love, thinking it something very casual and meaningless (or so it seems), but she has other ideas. Indeed, Fafhrd is not always too sharp in his interactions with people, but he does his best, and his hungers are pretty understandable, especially in a youth of seventeen. The writing does get a lot better as the story goes on, and Leiber thinks up dozens of ways of telling us of the grimness of this land, and also Fafhrd's reasons for wanting to leave. When a travelling show comes into town and Fafhrd hooks up with one of the carnival girls, the events are set in motion. I loved the way everyone in this land travels around on skis.

The second tale is "The Unholy Grail", and it details the Mouser's fall from grace and employ of dark magics in order to rescue his loved one. This shows a side of the Gray Mouser we don't often get to see, and it's strange to see Leiber put him under so much stress so early on. Nevertheless, it feels a little bit inconsequential compared with Fafhrd's tale, and in a way it is a shame that we hardly get to see Mouser practise any magic later in the stories, though given what he has to go through here, I can well understand why he'd want to turn away from the Arts!

Finally, "Ill-Met in Lankhmar", the meeting of the pair and the birth of their long, fruitful relationship. Right away we're thrust into a fight on the street, and the two meet by helping one another out of sheer instinct and respect based on seeing the other's style. Soon they're having a big party in Mouser's room, but now they've gotten mixed up with the Thieves' Guild, and will have to be careful where they tread in Lankhmar, the thriving, filthy metropolis where anything is possible, from hence forth. It's a good, breezy tale, with a kicker ending, and the first Fafhrd and Mouser story I read, a long time ago on a long bus trip. I enjoyed the story then, but didn't exactly rush out to read the others. I'm not even sure I was aware there were loads more of them. I only really grew to like this a lot more in the context of the other stories, and I suspect the same will be true for many. It's interesting to see references to Thieves Guilds and such here; at the time I first read this I was pretty much in my "contempt of the fantasy genre" phase, and I thought, "ah great, more RPG-inspired crap", but of course, it's the other way around; I'm sure Lankhmar was the model for many games of the future...the taverns, inns, guilds, magicians in strange edifices on the outskirts....all those things would much later become cliché. But once I realise where something originated, I'm pretty good at severing it from its feebler offspring, and I'm always interested in where and how conventions got started. There are a lot of them here, but there's so much more to the stories in general.

SO yes, while this isn't exactly F&GM at their best, I strongly advise reading everything in order, for then you can experience the true growth of the characters and live their stories as they lived them. I could suggest some of what I feel are the best stories in their entire span (most of which come after the second book), but I think that would be cheating. Savour and devour these, and know there's much more yet to come!(less)

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Jan 12, 2009 Keely rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, short-story, reviewed, american, sword-and-sorcery

Though Leiber wasn't the first to write swords and sorcery adventures, the imagination, verve, and whimsy of his writing not only set him above his contemporaries, but have made him one of the most influential authors in epic mythological fiction. He is responsible for Thieves' Guilds and Wizard Scrolls, as well as numerous elements of characterization and tone.

However, he didn't simply pluck these concepts from the waiting air. Like Howard, Leiber enriched his work with details from ancient ta...more Though Leiber wasn't the first to write swords and sorcery adventures, the imagination, verve, and whimsy of his writing not only set him above his contemporaries, but have made him one of the most influential authors in epic mythological fiction. He is responsible for Thieves' Guilds and Wizard Scrolls, as well as numerous elements of characterization and tone.

However, he didn't simply pluck these concepts from the waiting air. Like Howard, Leiber enriched his work with details from ancient tales and histories, thereby adding forgotten traditions of literature back into the modern style. He took Thieves' Guilds from an adventure story of Cervantes (himself the innovator of the modern novel and adventure story), taking hold of a disparate and forgotten thread and weaving it back into the pattern.

As modern offers, we should gratefully accept these gifts, and there is no better way to thank the grandmasters than to reinterpret their ideas for a new readership. However, we should also take a further lesson, and recall that Leiber was not satisfied to simply rewrite Howard's tales, but also looked to change and challenge his own style. Too many authors, particularly in fantasy, seem happy to write the same stories that have already been written, with only the names changed to protect the guilty.

This first collection presents the way in which Leiber's most famous creations, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, met; and also presents stories of their origins before their portentous meeting. They are as imaginative and fast-paced as any of Leiber's stories, but are not Leiber's best work.

These stories were actually written much later, when Leiber began to try codifying and structuring his world more deliberately. Unfortunately, this did not prove to be a fruitful direction for Leiber, often robbing his stories of their characteristic unpredictable energy. The next three collections of earlier stories show greater wit, depth, and willingness to experiment with plot and characterization.

Despite their weaknesses, they are certainly superior to the sad wane of the last two books of the series. So read this book for fun, or for completeness, or because you're tired of the scores of less audacious fantasy writers treading water in his wake.

My Fantasy Book Suggestions (less)

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Jul 13, 2012 Amanda rated it 1 of 5 stars

Read this earlier this year and had forgotten about it until i saw a discussion about it on here today. I figured i should write a review giving my reasoning for such a low rating. First of all, i had heard about these books for years and was excited to finally get an omnibus edition with the first 3 or 4 books in the series.
I found it uninspiring and very stereotypical overall. It is abundantly clear while reading it that it is created by the immature mind of college age boys. Leiber has said t...more

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Apr 21, 2007 Allan rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you like low fantasy (less lofty and more gritty than, say, Tolkien) you'll probably love these classic stories of the two swordsmen and thieves, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Really refreshing while at the same time fundamental.

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Jun 22, 2007 Tim rated it 2 of 5 stars

Not long ago, while I was wandering around the bookstore, I noticed that DH Press had started re-releasing Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar series in paperback. I went ahead and picked up the first one as a lark, thinking as long as I was rereading a few Sci-Fi novels from my teenage years, perhaps I should throw in a fantasy novel or two.

Unfortunately, unlike the Sci-Fi novels I’ve reread, I was far less impressed with this excursion into fantasy. As an adult, I found Leiber’s use of language extremely...more

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May 13, 2010 Bill Kerwin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

This is the first volume in Fritz Leiber's classic fantasy saga, the adventures of Fafhrd and his friend and partner, The Grey Mouser, composed from the 40's through the 70's. The volumes are ordered chronologically by their position in the saga, not the date of their composition, and this volume features some of Leiber's most mature works. We meet the young Fafhrd--a barbarian of the northern wastes dominated by his mother, the great Snow Witch--who longs for the excitement and variety of civil...more

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Oct 03, 2008 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sword-sorcery

This is one of those "classic" series that I've never heard about. Leiber's writing reminds me a lot of the pulp work of Robert E. Howard, where economy and speed take precedence over everything else. The story moves fast, but has enough action and character depth to remain entertaining, although I won't put it up there with true classics like LOTR or Chronicles of Narnia. Still, this short first book was enjoyable enough for me to give the second book in the series a shot. I liked the two leads...more

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Oct 20, 2007 Brian Lane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-and-fantasy-read

My latest and probably third reading of this classic. The stories in this volume are lean - there is no unrequired heft. The prose is clean, the storytelling concise, the characters well-rendered and the action leaps from the page. I am amazed at what depth results from such a slim bit of novella - compared with much of the heavier (and "taking itself way-too seriously") fantasy fiction I've been reading of late. The other aspect of this authors' fiction and in particular these characters is the...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the first in a series of collected Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories. The collection is seven volumes long and is intended to be presented in chronological order by view of the characters (not publication date). The first features three short stories; one detailing Fafhrd's origin, the second the Gray Mousers and the third the multi-award winning "Ill Met in Lankhmar" in which the pair teams up for the first time.

I was kind of disappointed, but that may have to do more with very high expect...more

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Jun 21, 2012 James Erich rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, sword-sorcery

Even though I'd been familiar with the name Fritz Leiber and knew something of his contribution to the fanstasy genre, I'd never actually read anything written by him. This audio version, brilliantly narrated by Jonathan Davis, is a wonderful introduction to the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Leiber's prose is beautiful, if occasionally a bit too purple, and the stories in this first volume are delightful to read or listen to.

The stories suffer from a bit of the sexism so rampant in sword...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Jacey rated it 2 of 5 stars

I missed out on reading Leiber in my youth, and knew nothing about him or his writing. The stories of Fahfrd and Grey Mouser were recommended to me by a friend and I must admit my hopes were high, but this didn't grab me as I'd expected it to. It turns out (upon googling) that the omnibus edition (Gollancz) is in itself a collection of collections and all the Fahfrd and Grey Mouser stories (bar one, I think) were originally short stories or novellas, here collected in internal chronological orde...more

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Sep 05, 2011 Pete rated it 3 of 5 stars

Years ago I'd be delighted when I'd find a Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser story in some fantasy anthology and magazine, but recently the pair came up in conversation and I went looking to see if they'd been collected into books. They have been. I bought book 1 and kind forgot about it, but when I was without power due to Irene and looking for something to read, I found Swords and Deviltry already downloaded on the iPad, so I jumped in (reading from an iPad in the dark is much better than trying to...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Algernon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I picked this up in order to fill one of the gaps in my fantasy education. I kept seeing references to it everytime discussions turned towards sword and sorcery fantasy books. I can now add one more flag on the road mapping the transition from Poe to Howard, to Thieves World to [for example] Riyria.
I'm glad I have finally got to know Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser - two spirited adventurers through highly magical and dangerous world of Newhon. This introductory collection of stories presents the her...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Nate rated it 3 of 5 stars

It pains me to say but it feels like I've read all of this before.
This is mainly because Fritz Leiber more or less invented/popularized/influenced the genre of sword and sorcery fantasy. It's like when you watch "Citizen Kane" you might think "what's the big deal?" The big deal is that it was the *first* time that a film was shot that way, etc.

So this book series is my Citizen Kane: a root of a very prolific family tree of sword and sorcery. In spite of the fact that it feels well-trod (because...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Loren rated it 3 of 5 stars

From ISawLightningFall.com

THREE-AND-A-HALF STARS

Fantasy usually concerns itself with sweeping subjects. The rise and decline of ancient empires. Fell magics as old as the cosmos. The terrible tolls mighty armies extract on the field of battle. You get the idea: It's a Texas-sized genre. Small doings and personal struggles generally need not apply unless they somehow factor into the grander picture. That's why Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories (which have largely fallen out of the...more From ISawLightningFall.com

THREE-AND-A-HALF STARS

Fantasy usually concerns itself with sweeping subjects. The rise and decline of ancient empires. Fell magics as old as the cosmos. The terrible tolls mighty armies extract on the field of battle. You get the idea: It's a Texas-sized genre. Small doings and personal struggles generally need not apply unless they somehow factor into the grander picture. That's why Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories (which have largely fallen out of the popular consciousness) read so differently than contemporary fantasy. Though they contain all the tropes, such as swords and spells and spectacularly strange beasties, their protagonists are petty criminals preoccupied with petty deeds. In fact, Leiber's first installment in the series, Swords and Deviltry, feels more like crime fiction than anything else.

Grown to near manhood in the Cold Waste north of the Trollstep Mountains, barbarian Fafhrd once stood to inherit a chieftain's life and the hand of a beautiful maiden. But an insatiable longing to see the civilized south bore him away from the land of his birth. In another corner of the land of Nehwon, Mouse had planned to spend his days studying gentle conjurations with a humble hedge wizard. Yet when a local lord's prejudice lead to his mentor's death, he took up the sword and a new name -- the Grey Mouser. When the two meet by chance in smoggy Lankhmar (called City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes), a meeting conducted over the unconscious bodies of professional thieves (their loot hastily divvied up by share), an impromptu agreement is sealed between the northman and the former magician's apprentice. Come peril or danger, fire or blood, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser will face it together.

Time magazine's Lev Grossman named the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories in a list of his favorite fantasy novels, calling their protangists "pure hard-boiled noir." This may be a bit of an overstatement, particularly in Swords and Deviltry's opening novella, "The Snow Women." Intended to explain Fafhrd's origins, it's a slow slog through cold wastes, one alternately serious and silly. Jealous womenfolk weave deadly ice magic and pelt interlopers with frozen snowballs. A village leader plummets to his death attempting to leap a gorge on skis. Flush with jealousy over a comely southern dancer, Fafhrd knocks over the tent of one of her admirers with a sleigh. Only during a climactic battle near the story's end do the kid gloves come off and the hardboiled tone asserts itself with a vengeance. ("His sword came away almost before the gushing blood, black in the moonlight, had wet it, and certainly before Hrey had lifted his great hands in a futile effort to stop the great choking flow. It all happened very easily.")

The other two tales fare better. "The Unholy Grail," which details the Gray Mouser's background, is a classic revenge story, showing how the unjust killing of mild-mannered Mouse's mentor turned him into a remorseless rogue trapped between light and darkness. A subtle, slightly ambiguous ending only adds to the intrigue. But "Ill Met In Lankhmar" is the best out of all of them, a slow-burning noir that gradually grows more and more dire, culminating in the kind of all-out martial rush that high fantasy does so well. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser's robbing from the Thieves' Guild teaches them that there are higher prices to pay than one's own life. Deviltry provides an intriguing twist on a oft-stale genre.(less)

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Oct 10, 2010 John rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fantasy, swords and sorcery, role players

Thank goodness there are already so many well written reviews on this first book in the Fafrd and Gray Mouser saga. These books are the heart and soul of what Fritz Leiber wrote over a thirty year plus period. So if you want to read what one of the best fantasy writers of all time wrote, these are required.

Further, if you want to read the very best of the great pulp fiction writing of the 30s and 40s, then you must read these books, which contain the stories that in large part made pulps like Un...more Thank goodness there are already so many well written reviews on this first book in the Fafrd and Gray Mouser saga. These books are the heart and soul of what Fritz Leiber wrote over a thirty year plus period. So if you want to read what one of the best fantasy writers of all time wrote, these are required.

Further, if you want to read the very best of the great pulp fiction writing of the 30s and 40s, then you must read these books, which contain the stories that in large part made pulps like Unknown and Astounding among the best in their genre.

If you want to read the books that made for the underpinning of much of "dungeons and dragons", AD&D, and their progeny, then you must read these books. Gary Gygax, the creator of D&D, had Leiber's books high in his mind as he developed the game in the 70s and early 80s.

Imagine how difficult it was in the 50s and 60s to try to read Leiber's characters--aside from perhaps one or two Gnome Press compliations, the only way to find these writings were in the pulps themselves.

I'll freely admit that I came to these stories early on in my life--but late in Leiber's writing career. The Sadness of the Executioner was the first story in this series that I read, and I found it fabulous in 1977 and still find it a delight today. This points out what others have written about the first book, Deviltry, which is that the first 2/3 of the book aren't about Fafrd *and* the Gray Mouser but about how each of them came to be. The last 1/3 of the books concerns how they met. As a result, I would not recommend that a Leiber novice read this book first. The stories are first rate, but it is best to come to these characters as they are fully fleshed out, and then dig back into their histories and origins.

With that said, Ill Met in Lankhmar is one of the pinnacle achievements in fantasy and sword and sorcery writing. Here we are introduced in two pages to Thief's Guild; Streets with names like Cash, Cheap, and Gold; character classes (first class thief; second class thief), the Slayer's Brotherhood, familiars, and so much more that is familiar to the reader of later Fantasy, S&S and role playing.

I'll admit the characters are stock, but these stories aren't meant for particularly deep thinking, but rather for pure fantasy action. Leiber has a way of packing more into a paragraph, let alone a page, than most authors manage in a chapter.

Read these books!(less)

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Oct 07, 2010 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review is for all the books in the Lankhmar series. Fritz Leiber's unforgettable and heroic scoundrels- Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, will always hold a dear place in my heart. When "Sword and Sorcery" fiction was in it's infancy, Leiber's un-characteristic "heroes" prowled the streets of the infamous "city of togas"- Lankhmar, where almost anything could be had... for a price.

Such a city drew two unlikely companions with promises of riches, love, and adventure... what they found there was h...more

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Mar 02, 2010 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Alex by: my good friend, Jeff

I was a huge fan of Lord of the Rings when I was growing up. I really admired Tolkien's world-building, the staggering amount of backstory that bolstered every little bit of his unfolding mythos. It's a world based on history, language and the austerity of myth. It's also very British.

If Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are the British archons of modern swords-and-sorcery, America's answer is probably the tandem of Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan, among many other characters) and the author in question...more I was a huge fan of Lord of the Rings when I was growing up. I really admired Tolkien's world-building, the staggering amount of backstory that bolstered every little bit of his unfolding mythos. It's a world based on history, language and the austerity of myth. It's also very British.

If Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are the British archons of modern swords-and-sorcery, America's answer is probably the tandem of Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan, among many other characters) and the author in question here, Mr. Fritz Leiber.

This is the first volume in the collected travails of Leiber's great duo of characters, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. In it, we get a taste of their lives before they met, and then witness the events that lead to their joining up and becoming the legendary knave-heroes of Lankhmar.

As already mentioned, Tolkien's work was conceived and executed from a god's-eye view. It is a complete and intricate world with details packed in and correlated, from the haze of myth (the Silmarillion) to point of fact (Lord of the Rings). And the posthumous publication of tomes and tomes of the author's notes only adds to this image of an exacting creator with his hand in everything.

Leiber, on the other hand, seems to create history only so far as it confronts his two central characters. Of course, over their long and distinguished career this gave him the opportunity to flesh out the world of Nehwon and the city of Lankhmar. But his focus is always on Fafhrd, the burly northerner, and the Gray Mouser, nimble thief and hobbyist in sorcery.

The relationship between the two protagonists forms the core of this picaresque series. It becomes Leiber's point of interaction with his creation, and the rest of the world rushes in to facilitate the characters' exploits. This is the tradition of 'Don Quixote', 'Huck Finn' and Pynchon's 'Mason & Dixon'.

And because he focuses his considerable literary skill on fully realizing these characters, they become far more fully alive than anybody in Tolkien (and Lewis's characters are, I believe, made from wood and caulk...). They are endearing and they are funny. Legitimately funny too, not in the 1960s sitcom kind of way that a lot of American fantasy seems to emulate. Leiber's humor is subtle without being tongue-in-cheek and, again, always rests in our understandings of the characters, the best friends in a sea of enmity.

This first volume is rollicking enough, and definitely delivers in a couple great action sequences and comedic repartee. The ending (no spoilers here) also boldly sets up the trajectory for the rest of the series. It's definitely the best place to enter the world of Nehwon.

That said, the pacing does flag a couple times, and I was left trying to figure out why a certain paragraph was needed or why this conversation really needed to keep going. But these minor gripes occurred entirely in the beginning of the book, before the two heroes meet. I will take this to support by point above that it is the dynamic of the two characters together that really make these stories go, and as we see them stumbling along before meeting each other, we become all the more thankful for the super-heroic duo they would later become.(less)

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Sep 19, 2009 Cécile Cristofari rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: theatre lovers

Shelves: science-fiction-fantasy

The best way I could describe this book is as a Falstaffian fantasy. That Leiber began his career as an actor is clearly visible here: the novel is written like theatre, with more than the normal amount of dialogue where style and images count more than actual realism, and the characters are, more often than not, drunk in a very productive and dramatic kind of way (ie inventing all kinds of very spectacular blunders and highly visual clowning instead of merely lying around like normal drunks do)...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Cora rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

Swords and Deviltry is the first book in the Fafhrd and the Mouser series. It is a classic fantasy novel that defined the sword and sorcery sub-genre of fantasy (Leiber himeself coined the phrase "Sword and Sorcery"). The series tells of the adventures of Fafhrd, a young man from the cold northern realm who is very good with a sword, and the Gray Mouser, a former wizard apprentice who toes the line between dark and light magic and who is not bad with a sword himself. Sword and Deviltry tells the...more

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Oct 13, 2011 Brant rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

Growing up, I had heard of Fritz Leiber and his Lankhmar series, but I never got around to reading any of his work until recently. I found myself chuckling continuously through this book. I found the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to have superhuman qualities, similar to superheroes, always one step ahead of their antagonists. Their banter between each other struck my funnybone too; they were constantly complimenting each other and agreeing with each other in a superiorly intellectual way, not a way...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Eija rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: x_novellikokoelmat, luettu-käännös

Emmin vähän Lankhmarin varkaiden lukemisen aloittamisen kanssa, koska olin lukenut aikaisemmin Vaikeuksia Lankhmarissa novellin antologiasta Velhojen valtakunta ja tarinan lukeminen ei tuolloin ottanut sujuakseen – koin sen sekavaksi ja siihen ei jaksanut keskittyä. Nyt jälkikäteen Lankhmarin varkaat luettuani tiedän sen johtuneen siitä, että tarina oli irrallinen ja henkilöt olivat vieraita. Minusta kokoelman viimeinen tarina vaatii myös kahden edellisen lukemisen, jotta pääsee tutustumaan henk...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Mohammed rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, sword-and-sorcery, short-story-collections, fantasy

The only story i have read of Lieber before this collection was "Ill Met in Lankmar" in some fantasy masters short story collection.

Reading these three first Fahred and Gray Mouser stories reminded why i like reading so much different fantasy stories. The stories in this collection are so imaginative,picturesque,witty and still have S&S hardcore feel. Made me think it was like reading Vance/Zelazny's Dying Earth/Amber if they were written in S&S subgenre. Leiber seems to have his own sty...more

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Mar 30, 2011 Danns rated it 5 of 5 stars

My introduction to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser was back in my youthful Dungeons and Dragons days. Being a huge role player I picked up the City of Lankhmar boxed set and marveled at the misty city's layout. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser were just bit players in my fantasy world relegated to nothing more than some stats on a sheet, never to be used in my campaigns. Lankhmar equally unused, but the boxed set was cool. Why it did not dawn on me at the time to seek them out I do not know.

The moment I picked...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Erik rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: shortstory, scififantasy

These books are considered by many to be the fathers of "sword and sorcery" so I was rather excited to pick them up.

I'm less excited now. While there wasn't anything glaringly wrong or bad about them, they were thoroughly ho hum. Origin stories for Fafhrd the Barbarian and the Gray Mouser. Nothing about them really stood out. Not the language, not the characters, not the setting, not the suspense, not the thrills. It was even a little strange that the Gray Mouser's origin story casts him as a wi...more

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Apr 29, 2010 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

People keep comparing Leiber and his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which is like comparing hamburger to filet mignon.
If you want a quick meal, you do not expect all the extra frills that a sit down dinner comes with. Leiber was not trying to make a big sweeping epic, he wanted to show what happened in the alley behind the kingdom.
Not everyone can be a dethroned king or a blue blood representative of their esteemed race. Leiber deals with the bastard children of t...more

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May 11, 2013 William P. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: hardcopy

I picked this up in a neat little used bookstore recently. I'd actually already read the third segment of the book, which details the meeting and subsequent teeming up of our heroes, but I didn't mind. The book gets you firmly entrenched in the lives of Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser and is a stunning example of Sword & Sorcery fantasy. If you've enjoyed Conan or his kin, if you've ever read Elric, then you owe it to yourself to explore this corner of the genre. It's an important one if you want...more

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Jan 08, 2011 jeremiah rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of the first three stories following the two classic fantasy characters Fafhrd (FAF-herd) and the Grey Mouser and their adventures in Nehwon. I had never heard of these stories until a few weeks ago, when I heard them described as being extremely influential on what we now consider "Sword & Sorcery" fantasy. The stories were written around the same time that Conan The Barbarian was being published in "Weird Tales" (mid-late 30s) and predate The Lord of the Rings.

Although...more This is a collection of the first three stories following the two classic fantasy characters Fafhrd (FAF-herd) and the Grey Mouser and their adventures in Nehwon. I had never heard of these stories until a few weeks ago, when I heard them described as being extremely influential on what we now consider "Sword & Sorcery" fantasy. The stories were written around the same time that Conan The Barbarian was being published in "Weird Tales" (mid-late 30s) and predate The Lord of the Rings.

Although some of the language and dialog are dated, I was surprised how much I liked these stories. I probably shouldn't have been surprised though, as this is straight up pulp fantasy. Fafhrd is a wise-beyond-his-years barbarian living in an extremely vicious clan and constantly dreaming of one day exploring "civilization". The Grey Mouser is an ex-Wizard's apprentice with one hell of a bone to pick. Each has a story dedicated to their personal history, with the third story describing both the hilarious circumstance of how the two met and the downright dark circumstance of why they're together.

I really liked how the world was setup by Leiber, the descriptions of everyday circumstances totally blew away my perceptions on what I should consider "real" in this world as opposed to just another extremely vivid description. He does an excellent job keeping the reader alert to these circumstances and always double guessing their true meaning.

In Fafrhd's story for example, everything is described as being influenced by magic. At first the reader is led to believe that Fafhrd is just extremely superstitious. He sees "spirits" in the forest, and snow serpent-like heaps of snow resting on top of his clan's tents. But when certain events start taking place, the realization that magic is very "real" in this world hits like a sledgehammer.

Note: the end of the Grey Mouser's story (the shortest by far in the book) was especially awesome and one I'll probably remember for a long time. The descriptions Leiber uses are so far "out there" and the whole situation just so screwed up.... SO glad to have discovered this series.(less)

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Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1)

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