THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

The Swords of Lankhmar is the only novel Fritz Leiber wrote detailing the adventures of his heroic duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. As with many of the shorter stories, the two spend quite a bit more time apart in the story than would be expected. The novel also demonstrates why the rest of their adventures were written as short stories. The novel seems both episodic and padded with sequences which seem unrelated to the rest of the story as Leiber tried to cram in visuals which seemed interesting at the time.

The problem with the story can be seen by a synopsis of the plot. Histen and his daughter Hisvet, are human-rat hybrids who are planning on overthrowing the overlord of Lankhmar and take over the city in the name of the rats. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser must stop them. The simplicity of the plot can be summed up that quickly and everything else kind of moves around it.

The novel begins promisingly enough with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser returning to Lankhmar from their adventures elsewhere only to find an enormous crowd of antagonists waiting for them at the gates to the city. The encounter is depicted with Leiber’s sense of humor, which shows up throughout the novel and is one of the book’s saving graces. Once they make their way into the city, past the various citizens seeking vengeance against them, they are sent by the city’s overlord, Glipkerio Kistomerces, to protect a shipment of grain going to the city of Klelg Nar.

Onboard the ship, the duo make the acquaintance of a Demoiselle of Lankhmar, Hisvet, who is traveling with rats and it becomes quickly apparent to the reader that the rats are the cause of the earlier ships not being able to make their delivery. Leiber separates his heroes, with the Mouser returning to Lankhmar by ship, becoming besotted with Hisvet, and eventually, with the aid of a potion from Sheelba, shrinking down to rat size and uncovering their plot of urban domination. Fafhrd takes the long way home around the inner sea, having sexual escapades with a ghoul, in this case a race with transparent skin, before arriving to help save the day.

Fafhrd’s encounter with the ghoul comes into play later in the book, but seems gratuitous at the time as does the pair’s early encounter with a man riding on the back of a two-headed dragon. They come across as neat ideas Leiber had that he tried to shoe-horn into the story. While one eventually proves to be important, the other just seems out of place. A big part of Leiber’s focus in the miniaturized Mouser moving among the intelligent and malevolent rats, in which Leiber and the characters all seem to ignore the differences in physiognomy between humans (even rat-sized humans) and rats (even intelligent rats).

Throughout the stories, Leiber has alluded to the difference between the gods in Lankhmar, who are worshipped by the citizens, and the Gods of Lankhmar, who are mostly feared. He plays them up in The Swords of Lankhmar, with the rats using the people’s fear of them and the gods’ lack of presence to plot their attack on the city. Unfortunately, when the Gods of Lankhmar eventually appear on the scene, it is rather anticlimactic for the reader, even if the citizens ascribe a major victory to the gods.

While the novel has a lot of humor and some interesting ideas, Leiber is not able to maintain the pace of adventure throughout the length. Using some of his ideas, for the sinking lands, the ghouls, the dragon rider, for other stories where they could have been the focus would have made The Swords of Lankhmar a shorter and more engrossing tale and allowed Leiber to more fully explore those other ideas.

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