The Knight and Knave of Swords by Fritz Leiber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars When Heroes (and Authors) Age Past Heroic Feats For decades I’d put off reading The Knight and Knave of Swords (1988), the last of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser collections, not wanting to finish them. After finally reading Leiber’s farewell to his “humorous darkside heroes,” I feel glad, sad, and disappointed because although the first three stories are mostly fine, the fourth is muchly repugnant. The stories begin a few months after the last events in Swords and Ice Magic (1977), in which Fafhrd--at the cost of his left hand--and the Gray Mouser try to save legendary Rime Isle, if not all Newhon, from a sea Mingol horde and Loki and Odin and then start living with their lovers Afreyt and Cif on the island. Audiobook reader Jonathan Davis enhances the tales, doing his usual American Fafhrd and Australian/cockney Mouser voices and going to town with wizards and gods. But why does he pronounce Loki as Lo-kai? Anyway, here is an annotated list of the stories: “Sea Magic” (1977) Missing the Mouser (absent on a trading mission) and “the sleazy grandeurs” of Lankhmar, the one-handed Fafhrd practices shooting arrows around corners and falls into a violet dream of adventure and a bone-white silver woman who may be a ghost or a princess or a fish, while the five gold Ikons of Reason go missing from the treasury. The short story is marked by Leiber’s cynical view (e.g., “A crooked Arrow of Truth and a rounded-off Cube of Square Dealing strike me as about right for this world”), alliteration (e.g., “No sign of a sail or hint of a hull”), and vivid, evocative descriptions (e.g., “Gale rolled it off ahead of her. The target-bag was smoky red with dye from the snowberry root, and the last rays of the sun setting behind them gave it an angry glare. Afreyt and Fafhrd each had the thought that Gale was rolling away the sun.”) “The Mer-She” (1978) The Mouser is feeling smugly pleased captaining the goods-laden galley Seahawk back home to Rime Isle when he is tempted by an appeal to his egotistical love of power and nubile waifs. Featuring a timber-laden galley, a chest of colorful fabrics, a sea demon fish girl, a Mouser doll, and a black leviathan, the climax is suspenseful and comical. This short story, too, is full of Leiber’s wit (e.g., “You could trust folk when they were trussed”) and rich descriptions (e.g., “she responded in a lisping whisper that was like the ghosts of wavelets kissing the hull”). “The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars” (1983) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are settling into unadventurous lives on Rime Isle with permanent mates, responsibilities, and homes, when their wizardly masters Ningauble and Sheelba, needing Fafhrd’s romantic credulity and the Mouser’s brooding malignancy in Lankhmar to make magic work, get the duo’s three gods (devious Mog, surly Kos, and limp-wristed Issek) to curse the men into returning to the city. The gods smite the pair with old age obsessions, setting the Mouser to collect mundane objects and Fafhrd to counting the stars. Meanwhile, two elite assassins nicknamed the Death of Fafhrd and the Death of the Gray Mouser head for Rime Isle. This suspenseful, amusing, well-plotted, and richly-written novella depicts gutter gleaning, star gazing, backgammon playing, and gender transmogrifying as it pokes funs at aging and plays with the two heroes being halves of a single ur-demon-warrior and their lovers halves of an ur-witch-queen. Leiber writes nice lines, like “Their existence was rather like that of industrious lotus eaters” and “the lovely litter, as though each scrap were sequined and bore hieroglyphs.” “The Mouser Goes Below” (1988) Middle-aging on Rime Isle, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are blithely enjoying sporting events like picnicking when life gets interesting: the Mouser’s lieutenant Pshawri dives after the Maelstrom-quelling gold Cube of Square Dealing (which is melded to a cinder of Loki), a mysterious “child ship whore” called Fingers appears with Cif and Afreyt’s nieces, and then during a Moon Goddess ritual the Mouser vanishes into the earth. The rest of the novella depicts the efforts of Fafhrd and company to exhume the Mouser by digging and dowsing, while the Mouser tries to breathe and Loki and Death’s sister Pain get involved and a former lover of Fafhrd’s comes calling in the sky. I like that the friends must face some of the consequences of their past womanizing. And that women like Cif and Afreyt are “women of power.” And I was impressed by Leiber’s still vivid imagination in detailing the Mouser’s descent into the earth and Fafhrd’s ascent into the clouds. And by his still fine language (e.g., “things went most grievously agley”) and philosophy (e.g., “Why does a memory wink off, whenever you try to watch it closely? Is it because we cannot live forever?”). But unfortunately the novella is deformed by excrescent BDSM sex. We hear about Fingers’ work pleasuring sailors with her moist hands, officers with her mouth, and the captain with her nether orifices; Fafhrd remembers erotic escapades with multiple long-limbed amazons, though Leiber mercifully doesn’t depict his seven-woman and two-girl orgy in the sky; and in by far the longest chapter in the book the entombed Mouser watches depilated, pert-breasted maids called Threesie and Foursie being degraded, punished, and pleasured by their mistress until Pain excruciates him with a drop by drop orgasm. None of this creepy kinkiness is vital to the plot. Some readers have complained that there is little exciting heroic violent action in the collection, but Leiber’s importance to sword and sorcery (epic fantasy) is largely due to his freedom from genre conventions. At their best, the stories here reveal an original, sardonic, and vivid vision. At their worst, they reveal a lecherous imagination. And readers new to the series should begin with the classic older collections Swords and Deviltry (1970), Swords Against Death (1970), and Swords in the Mist (1968). View all my reviews
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