My foray into the vintage fantasy of Fritz Leiber continues with Swords In The Mist. And while I’ve enjoyed my time with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, I found Swords In The Mist to be the weakest of the first three books in the series.
Like the first two books, Swords In The Mist is a collection of short stories first published between 1947 and 1968, but the final story, “Adept’s Gambit,” is the length of a novella.
The book begins well enough with “The Cloud of Hate,” where the priests of the Temple of Hate summon their malicious god to wreak havoc across Lankhmar. Even better is the second story, “Lean Times in Lankhmar.” That tale was the most amusing and my favorite in the book.
In “Lean Times in Lankhmar,” the pair of rogues go their separate ways after a falling out. The Mouser becomes an enforcer to a racketeer of small religions, shaking down the priests of the myriad of lesser gods whose temples crowd the city. Fafhrd, meanwhile, becomes a disciple of a minor godling named Issek of the Jug. The story is more humorous than suspenseful, with Leiber constantly emphasizing the difference between the Gods in Lankhmar, like Issek, and the Gods of Lankhmar. The latter are terrifying beings who dwell in the city’s darkest depths and have had it with all these puny little gods.
The book’s middle story, “When the Sea-King’s Away,” is the strangest, involving an improbable adventure at the bottom of the ocean. But it’s the final entry, “Adepts Gambit,” that I found the most exasperating.
According to my online research, “Adept’s Gambit” was the first Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story Leiber ever wrote, but it was far from the first published. Some believe Leiber’s first effort was, perhaps, his weakest. While I have not read enough of his stories to make that judgment, it doesn’t seem far off. That said, apparently, Leiber’s friend and fellow writer, H.P. Lovecraft, was fond of the tale and encouraged Leiber to publish it. Not surprisingly, “Adept’s Gambit” contains plenty of references to the Elder Gods of Lovecraftian mythology.
The oddest thing about “Adept’s Gambit” is that it is not set in Nehwon, the world where the rest of his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories take place. Rather, Leiber set this story in our own world during the reign of Alexander the Great. It was hard to imagine Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, whom I’ve always envisioned as medieval rogues, living in fourth-century B.C. I wonder if that’s where Leiber originally planned to set his stories or if he simply wanted to draw upon the Old Persian myths that underlie the tale.
To tie this novella into the rest of the book, Leiber had to create another short story, “The Wrong Branch,” where Fafhrd and the Mouser accidentally end up in our world after taking a wrong turn in the maze-like layer of Fafhrd’s alien wizard patron, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. Once the heroes’ arrive in our historical world with no memory of Nehwon, “Adept’s Gambit” begins with a bizarre curse affecting the duo. Basically, any woman Fafhrd or the Mouser touch turns into either a sow or a snail (I’m not making this up). The rest of the story involves their mighty efforts to break this curse.
While the story has its moments, I found it overly long and plagued by plot holes. Also, “Adept’s Gambit” seemed disconnected from the rest of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, and its ending was too similar to “The Jewels in The Forest,” the first story Lieber had published in 1939. Suffice it to say, the best stories in Swords In The Mists do not hold a candle to the better stories in Swords Against Death.
Liber wrote seven books involving Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and I plan to read them all eventually. But if you want to read a sampling of his short stories, I’d focus on the first two books: Swords And Deviltry and Swords Against Death. None of the stories are pieces of an over-arching plot, so one could easily skip Swords In The Mist and still have plenty of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales to go around.