Among their many talents, they are rogue thieves, amateur wizard (Gray Mouser) and bard (Fafhrd), and, most importantly, accomplished swordsmen. They are, at turns, brilliant and stupid, competent and bungling, all tempered by a good bit of luck. They have complex motivations and reactions to varied circumstances. Rather than giving a blow-by-blow or even focusing on the story arc of these connected short stories and novellas, I'd like to point out the two most compelling reasons for snatching up a copy of this book: character and language.įafhrd and Gray Mouser are some of the most compelling characters in all of sword and sorcery literature. I have just finished the White Wolf edition of Ill Met in Lankhmar, which collects Leiber's original Lankhmar volumes 1 and 2, Swords and Deviltry and Swords Against Death.

And before you shout out 'I don't need your stupid wizards and bare-chested barbarians!' read on!

But if you have one ounce of love for sword and sorcery in your veins, you must read Leiber's work. It doesn't necessarily have to be the edition I'm reviewing here. Whatever sword and sorcery book you happen to be reading at the moment - throw it across the room, sneer at the author's petty attempts at greatness, and go pick up one of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar books. Used These Alternate Names: Maurice Breçon, Fric Lajber, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Fritz R. 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. 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 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.

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. 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.

Ill met in lankhmar