Return to Lankhmar

Return to Lankhmar is Fritz Leiber's third installment in the Lankhmar series. It consists of two previously published books: The Swords of Lankhmar, a short novel, and Swords and Ice Magic, a collection of short stories.

It was refreshing to read a novel-length adventure of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Leiber excels in the short format, and I was a little unsure whether he could pull off a longer story. But The Swords of Lankhmar is an exciting story from end to end. It starts with the two rogues taking a job as guards on a flotilla taking loads of grain in payment to Movarl of the Eight Cities for removing the sea of pirates. The mission is complicated by a young lady named Hisvet and her dark slave girl Frix. Hisvet is transporting twelve white rats as an additional gift to the foreign ruler. In fact, it soon becomes an issue whether there are eleven rats or twelve in the cages, after one of the ships in the flotilla sinks amid a swarm of rats--one of them white. Both Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fall under the sway of the alluring Hisvet. Hisvet's father Hisven arrives to lead the rats to their takeover of the ship, but the rats are foiled by a traveler from another world.

Even after they see the rest of the grain safely transported to its destination, things continue to go wrong. Hisvet and Hisven have hurried back to Lankhmar's ruler Glipkerio with stories of how they saved the ships from the rats. The Gray Mouser has to play a careful game with Glipkerio and Hisvet and the rats. After taking a potion given to him by his magical mentor, he shrinks to rat size and must navigate the rat underworld to figure out what is going on in Lankhmar. After avoiding trouble over and over, he finally is backed into a corner when Fafhrd returns at the last moment to save him. I enjoyed the trouble that the Gray Mouser gets in and out of, and Fafhrd's long trek from the Eight Cities to help him. It's a great adventure with alluring characters in tough situations.

The stories in Swords and Ice Magic start off short and get longer. One of the memorable ones is "Under the Thumbs of the Gods", which has the adventuresome pair encountering a vision with all of their lost loves, courtesy of the gods who feel miffed. The last two stories form a pair. "The Frost Monstreme" provides two women from the Rime Isle who claim that their island is soon to be attacked by the Mingols. They offer gold to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to each bring twelve barbarians or thieves to the island in three months. As the fateful day approaches, the two men sail their ships through a great fog, not realizing that a powerful spirit is plotting evil and conniving to get them to fight each other.

The final story is a "Rime Isle", about the two adventurers' struggle to protect the island against the invading Mingols. But first they have to deal with a town full of folk wary of them, two wayward gods, a vast whirlpool, and the invisible flyers from Stardock. Fafhrd must deal with the women of Stardock when his past comes to haunt him. The Gray Mouser finds himself in the strange situation of being a leader of men, when he's used to being a loner and somewhat of an outcast at that. But he excels in his role, including in a hilarious scene when he blacks out and can't remember what he said in his speech to rally the villagers.

Leiber is playful in his fun plots. He's not afraid to bring in a strange element from outside the story, or sometimes two or three. Finding Odin on Rime Isle is both a pleasant surprise but also just part of the story. And in many ways Loki and the Gray Mouser are two parts of the same element. I enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second part, though both were fun. B+

Ill Met in Lankhmar

It is rare that I reread a book. I think mostly there are so many good books that I want to read out there that I generally don't make time to read something that I've read before. I suppose there are few books that are so great that they stick in my mind and are interesting enough to warrant a second look. One exception is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I read twice as a teenager and again when the movies were released. Since I started this blog, the only book I've reread is Arthur C. Clarke's The Hammer of God, and that one was so unmemorable that I had totally forgotten I'd read it before until I was half way through it.

I read Fritz Leiber's Ill Met in Lankhmar years ago and immediately loved it. I never got around to getting the next three books in the series, I just added them to my wish list and thought about ordering them every now and then. When my sister gave me the next three books for Christmas (thanks Erin!) I decided I had better reread the first book before reading the rest. It was just as good the second time around.

The world of Lankhmar is a fantastic world full of thieves and sorcerers, adventures and treasures. Leiber's two heroes are Fafhrd, the tall lanky swordsman from the northern Cold Waste, and the Gray Mouser, the wizard's adept turned adventurer. The book is a series of stories about their adventures together, starting with each character's seminal story of how they left their homes and traveled to Lankhmar, the biggest, richest, most decadent city in the world of Nehwon. The action really gets started with the story "Ill Met in Lankhmar", where the two adventurers meet in a dark alley while pursuing the same booty off the same two thieves. They go on to carouse with their girls and several jugs of wine, but the night ends badly when they end up facing down the Theives' Guild and their sorcerer.

There are more fantastic and exciting stories. A fun one is "The Jewels in the Forest", about a scrap of writing that leads the two to an old stone house in a forest which hides an unseen danger. My favorite the first time I read the book was "The Howling Tower", where the two come across the titular tower and the Mouser must face an old wizard and his stories of ghosts in order to save his friend from a ghastly end. This time around I greatly enjoyed "Thieves' House", in which the two adventurers must sneak back into the Thieves' Guild in order to capture a prized treasure. As in many of the stories, they end up with little to show for their troubles.

Leiber's stories are well plotted and they always keep the reader guessing. The situations the characters end up in are exciting, and there's always some twist or surprise that comes along. Often there's a sense of dread or foreboding that fills the characters. This passage, from "The Bleak Shore" sets the tone for the rest of the story. A mysterious stranger in a pub speaks to the two:

'... Now I have heard tell that death sometimes calls to a man in a voice only he can hear. Then he must rise and leave his friends and go to whatever place death shall bid him, and there meet his doom. Has death ever called to you in such a fashion?'

Fafhrd might have laughed, but did not. The Mouser had a witty rejoinder on the tip of his tongue, but instead he heard himself saying: 'In what words might death call?'

'That would depend,' said the small man. 'He might look at two such as you and say the Bleak Shore. Nothing more than that. The Bleak Shore. And when he said it three times you would have to go.'

This time Fafhrd tried to laugh, but the laugh never came.

The two thieves are excellent companions and well drawn characters for such stories. They have their own foibles and at times quarrel with one another. Even when they are driven by others, their own personalities shine through. And the city of Lankhmar and the world it's in have their own personalities. Every story adds to the feeling of Lankhmar's tangibility. This was a book well worth rereading. A