Finally, with The Swords of Lankhmar, I’ve discovered a complete novel about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser instead of a collection of novellas and short stories!
Apparently, this is the only novel Fritz Leiber ever wrote about his famous pair of rascally rogues, which makes this book unique among the series. And fortunately, it’s one of the series’ better reads.
Say what you will about Fritz Leiber, the man had quite the imagination. Unlike more recent fantasy fiction, like A Game of Thrones, which presents a world familiar to our own history except for a few fantasy elements (dragons and White Walkers), Leiber’s tales are much farther out on the fantasy spectrum. The premise of The Swords of Lankhmar is a perfect example: Fafhrd and the Mouser must stop a legion of highly intelligent rats from taking over Lankhmar—and then the world.
Throw in a German space traveler who rides a two-headed dragon and a race of beings called Ghouls with invisible flesh who look like living skeletons, and you quickly get a sense of how far out this novel goes. But somehow, Leiber makes it all work, thanks mainly to his light-hearted and often humorous storytelling. He also excels at writing action scenes, particularly sword fights, and there are plenty of them in The Swords of Lankhmar.
One bonus of a novel-length tale is that Leiber has more room for world-building. Although he sets many of his stories in Lankhmar, this is the first story where I got a good sense of what the city truly was. It appears to me, at least, that Lankhmar is Newhon’s version of Byzantium. The Greek-sounding name of the city’s toga-wearing overlord, Glipkerio Kistomerces (who dwells in the magnificent Rainbow Palace) and others’ names in the ruling family, Radomix Kistomerces and Elakeria, made that fairly clear. Lankhmar as Byzantium also helps explain the frequent references to Mingols (Mongols) and the exotic, Eastern-sounding names of the nearby cities. As a fan of historical fantasy, I enjoyed being able to picture Lankhmar in a more familiar light.
Leiber also packs his world with a host of memorable characters. There is Glipkerio, who he often refers to as the “beanpole overlord,” a child-like man with a torture fetish; Samanda, his enormous palace mistress and chief torture-master; and Hisvet, a femme fatale who has an affinity for white rats and an allure that captivates the Mouser. There are also cameos by the heroes’ patron sorcerers, Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, whose witty banter adds to the story.
Once one suspends enough disbelief to get past the book’s far-fetched premise, the reader is rewarded with a lively, swashbuckling tale that takes the heroes on an adventure across the Inner Sea and then back to Lankhmar, both above-ground and below. The story also returns to the Street of the Gods, the site of the amusing tale “Lean Times in Lankhmar” and the home of the frightening Gods of Lankhmar, who also play a role in the novel.
In short, The Swords of Lankhmar reads like a celebration of the best elements of Leiber’s prior works. It’s like a 30-minute television show finally getting its own feature film. Of course, Leiber’s tales are more comedy than high drama, but the result is a highly entertaining novel that feels like one of the defining stories in the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.