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Loading... Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Book 2) (original 1970; edition 1986)by Fritz Leiber
Work InformationSwords Against Death by Fritz Leiber (1970)
   Books Read in 2019 (3,215) No current Talk conversations about this book.  stubooks | Apr 4, 2024 |   This is perhaps one of my most favorite books, for several reasons. First, it is well written, without a lot of plot errors like a majority of modern fiction. Second, it is a collection of shorter tales, so you can enjoy one or more tales according to the amount of time you have to read. Third, they are not just entertaining tales of adventure, but contain just the right amount of wry humor, but not silly in plot or execution. Lastly, they're eminently re-readable, a rare thing in my experience (  ) acb13adm | Sep 13, 2023 | So robust has this specific one-two dynamic proved, that it remains a staple axis of countless more recent games both tabletop & video, be they ever so different in theme or scope. Several of the stories themselves, however, are a slightly ponderous read now, both in prose & content. (  ) SkjaldOfBorea | Nov 12, 2022 | The Circle Curse The Jewels in the Forest Thieves’ House The Bleak Shore The Howling Tower The Sunken Land The Seven Black Priests Claws From the Night The Prince of Pain-Ease Bazaar of the Bizarre ( ) kevn57 | Dec 8, 2021 | Ho, Fafhrd tall! Hist, Mouser small! Why leave you the city Of marvelous parts? It were a great pity To wear out your hearts And wear out the soles of your feet, Treading all earth, Foregoing all mirth, Before you once more Lankhmar greet. Now return, now return, now! Swords Against Death is the second collection of stories about Fafhrd, the big northern barbarian, and The Gray Mouser, the small thief from the slums. For the past three years, the two have grown so close that they are now (as Neil Gaiman suggests in his introduction to the audio version) like two halves of the same person. They’ve been traveling the world together in an effort to forget their lost loves. During their travels “they acquired new scars and skills, comprehensions and compassions, cynicisms and secrecies — a laughter that lightly mocked, and a cool poise that tightly crusted all inner miseries,” but they haven’t been able to assuage their guilt or lessen their feelings of loss outside of Lankhmar, the city which they swore never to return to. But as Sheelba of the Eyeless Face prophesied (“Never and forever are neither for men. You’ll be returning again and again.”), Fafhrd and the Mouser are persuaded to return to Lankhmar where, it turns out, they have not been forgotten, and soon the duo is back to their old tricks and dealing with their former enemies in these stories: “The Circle Curse,” “The Jewels in the Forest,” “Thieves’ House,” “The Bleak Shore,” “The Howling Tower,” “The Sunken Land,” “The Seven Black Priests,” “Claws from the Night,” “The Price of Pain-Ease,” and “Bazaar of the Bizarre.” ( ) Karen74Leigh | Oct 29, 2020 | no reviews | add a review
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Join the renowned barbarian and thief in this sword-and-sorcery adventure from a Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy. While The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Fritz Leiber's fantastic but thoroughly flawed antiheroes, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, adventured and stumbled deep within the caves of Inner Earth as well. They wondered and wandered to the edges of the Outer Sea, across the Land of Nehwon, and throughout every nook and cranny of gothic Lankhmar, Nehwon's grandest and most mystically corrupt city. Lankhmar, is Leiber's fully realized, vivid incarnation of urban decay and civilization's corroding effect on the human psyche. Fafhrd and Mouse are not innocents; their world is no land of honor and righteousness. It is a world of human complexities and violent action, of discovery and mystery, of swords and sorcery. Swords Against Death, the second volume in the Lankhmar series, finds Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser beginning their real journey. Their hearts altered by the loss of first true love, they embark on a long and winding path of drunken debauchery and womanizing until crossing paths with two cross wizards, Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. A most violent of clashes ensues. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser descend into Thieves House to discover the exacting skill of the united backstabbing Thieves of Lankhmar and their rival guild, the Slayer's Brotherhood, the city's unionized killers. They would wander along the Bleak Shore to a howling tower to show how fear is not the product of murder but the cause. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser must resume their plundering and drunken debauchery until once again darkness had taken the balance for its favor and then a change would come. These are just a few of the encounters our swindling swordsmen will willingly endure in ridding their hearts of their first true loves. But did they know it would make them indentured swordsman servants to their former foes, the formidable Sheelba and Ningauble? No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.91)
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Wikipedia in English
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Obviously the history behind them counts for a lot, and if they were read one by one in the magazines they originally appeared in then it wouldn't matter so much that there's not a lot of difference between any of the stories. (