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Swords Against Wizardry
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser search for treasure in book four of the genre-defining sword and sorcery series.
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.
With Swords Against Wizardry , the story unfolds behind the curtain in the Witch’s Tent. Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are there to consult a sorceress who holds the secret to their escape, but when would they ever need to escape? Would they need this knowledge when they journey to Stardock? Where is there to escape up there? No doubt the icy seduction of “the cruel one,” with her greed for both gore and graciousness, could offer them several ways out. Their luck has been good so far; one way out should work. Their luck continues as thieves. They are the best thieves in Lankhmar until better positions the Lords of Quarmall. Gray Mouser and Fafhrd steal a kingdom within a hill and declare themselves lords.
Before The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber’s fantastic but thoroughly flawed antiheroes, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, adventured deep within the caves of Inner Earth, 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.
Drawing on themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the fantasy genre and actually coined the term Sword and Sorcery that describes the subgenre he helped create.
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.
With Swords Against Wizardry , the story unfolds behind the curtain in the Witch’s Tent. Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are there to consult a sorceress who holds the secret to their escape, but when would they ever need to escape? Would they need this knowledge when they journey to Stardock? Where is there to escape up there? No doubt the icy seduction of “the cruel one,” with her greed for both gore and graciousness, could offer them several ways out. Their luck has been good so far; one way out should work. Their luck continues as thieves. They are the best thieves in Lankhmar until better positions the Lords of Quarmall. Gray Mouser and Fafhrd steal a kingdom within a hill and declare themselves lords.
Before The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber’s fantastic but thoroughly flawed antiheroes, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, adventured deep within the caves of Inner Earth, 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.
Drawing on themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the fantasy genre and actually coined the term Sword and Sorcery that describes the subgenre he helped create.
180 pages, Paperback
Published September 28, 2021
About the author
Fritz Leiber
1,127 books956 followersFritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was one of the more interesting of the young writers who came into HP Lovecraft's orbit, and some of his best early short fiction is horror rather than sf or fantasy. He found his mature voice early in the first of the sword-and-sorcery adventures featuring the large sensitive barbarian Fafhrd and the small street-smart-ish Gray Mouser; he returned to this series at various points in his career, using it sometimes for farce and sometimes for gloomy mood pieces--The Swords of Lankhmar is perhaps the best single volume of their adventures. Leiber's science fiction includes the planet-smashing The Wanderer in which a large cast mostly survive flood, fire, and the sexual attentions of feline aliens, and the satirical A Spectre is Haunting Texas in which a gangling, exo-skeleton-clad actor from the Moon leads a revolution and finds his true love. Leiber's late short fiction, and the fine horror novel Our Lady of Darkness, combine autobiographical issues like his struggle with depression and alcoholism with meditations on the emotional content of the fantastic genres. Leiber's capacity for endless self-reinvention and productive self-examination kept him, until his death, one of the most modern of his sf generation.
Used These Alternate Names: Maurice Breçon, Fric Lajber, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Fritz R. Leiber, Fritz Leiber Jun., Фриц Лейбер, F. Lieber, フリッツ・ライバー
Used These Alternate Names: Maurice Breçon, Fric Lajber, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Fritz R. Leiber, Fritz Leiber Jun., Фриц Лейбер, F. Lieber, フリッツ・ライバー
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 12, 2022
A series that continues to be strange, fantastical and well written. You can see the roots of fantasy books by other authors to come on display here. Anyone seeking to read the fantasy classics must include this series. Solid.
July 27, 2023
Fantasy series - Lieber seems to be finding his style in this one. Not as florid as his previous books. The villains are incredibly villainous, the rescued damsels quite rescueable and the fight scenes quite gory. During a temporary breakup Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are employed by two brothers bent on destroying each other and becoming the ruler of Quarmall. The only think in the brothers' way is that their father might or might not be dead and our two heroes.
No Canadian or pharmacy references.
No Canadian or pharmacy references.
March 19, 2023
My favorite of their adventures so far. A gripping mountain-climbing adventure, and a fun situation where our heroes are unwittingly serving two magical rivals.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews