Reading these stories feels a little like sitting at the feet of an old, old storyteller while he reminisces about childhood heroes. Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fiction, and it shows. This makes for a romantic, wordly-wise, cosmopolitan, theatrical fantasy-a world I find much more comfortable and compelling than the good professor's esteemed-but rather dull-Middle-Earth. Tolkien's debt is to Beowulf and the old Viking sagas (plus more than a dash of Merrie Olde England), but Leiber is a direct descendant of Dumas and Sabatini, with liberal doses of "If I Were King" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" thrown in for good measure. Leiber does not choose to construct an alternate world-or an elaborate multi-volume quest, for that matter-with the painstaking care of Tolkien, but he writes just as well (perhaps better) and creates a marvelously expansive world filled with good food, good wine, good sex and good fellowship, with a little roguery and thievery thrown in for good measure. We meet the young Fafhrd-a barbarian of the northern wastes dominated by his mother, the great Snow Witch-who longs for the excitement and variety of civilization that arrives in the form of a theatrical caravan, and we meet Mouse-the apprentice of a poor hedge wizard-who revenges his master's death, becoming in the process "The Grey Mouser." The book ends with what is perhaps its best tale, an account of the two heroes' first adventure together, in which they join their wits and swordsmanship to defeat the Thieve's Guild of Lankhmar, the City of a Thousand Smokes.
The volumes are ordered chronologically by their position in the saga, not the date of their composition, and this volume features some of Leiber's most mature works. This is the first volume in Fritz Leiber's classic fantasy saga, the adventures of Fafhrd and his friend and partner, The Grey Mouser, composed from the 40's through the 70's.
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