Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
8 primary works • 10 total works
Book 1
Here is the beginning of the legendary epic that has become a classic of fantasy adventure. At first, they seemed an unlikely pair: Fafhrd, the white-robed princeling of the barbaric cold waste; the Gray Mouser, a wizardling suspended between magic white and black.
Little did they realize, as they suspiciously eyed each other thatn night in murky Lankhmar, that they were two long-sundered, matching halves of a greater hero - that they would be comrades through a thousand quests and a hundred lifetimes of adventures, with their SWORDS AND DEVILTRY.
Book 2
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?
Book 3
Swords in the Mist, book three in the Lankhmar series, thrusts our indentured, sword-swinging servants into the question of hate, its power, and its purpose. Times are lean in Lankhmar, illuminating the link between money and love. Luckily, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser don't always believe in love. When Lankhmar gets too gritty, our travelers take to their other, less harsh mistress, the sea. But the sea can play tricks on men, and so can the sea king. He can break a man, or worse yet, curse him. But when he is away, it's all play for the formidable swordsmen and the Triple Goddess . . . and two luscious sea queens. But luck may not always be there, as they discover on the way to see Ningauble, their wizard employer. After a long journey in defense of their control over their own fates, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser find themselves pawns in a life-and-death chess game, all of Lankhmar being the pieces. How many pawns will be left on the board before someone wins?
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.
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
Book 7
Book 8
