'Swords And Deviltry' – Fritz Leiber (Grafton)

Looking back at an old blog of mine and not only was it just over eleven years ago that I admitted to never having tried any Fritz Leiber but in all that time since, I never got round to picking any of his books up. Until now that is. To be fair, I spent most of those eleven years reading stories to my girls and that didn't leave me a lot of time for my own reading. And the period between 2015 and 2018... Shit... I was no good for reading anything other than the most comfortable of comfort reading (and reading to my kids of course) Here I am now though and I can finally say that I've done it, I've actually read my first Fritz Leiber book. Go me :o)

Being a bit of a 'Sword and Sorcery' fan, there was only one place that I could start and that was with 'Swords and Deviltry', let me tell you all about it.

Here is the legendary epic of how the greatest heroes in the annals of fantasy met for the first time. Fafhrd, the white furred princeling of the barbaric cold waste; and the Gray Mouser, a wizardling of the whitest magic.

Little did they realise that, as they suspiciously eyed each other one night in murky Lankhmar, that they were two long-sundered halves of a greater hero – that they would be comrades through a thousand quests and a hundred lifetimes of adventures...

‘Swords and Deviltry’ ended up being a lot of fun to read but having said that, it was almost in spite of Leiber rather than because of him. I liked the approach of setting Fafhrd and Mouse up before having them meet in Lankhmar. It feels like a really solid foundation is being laid here and sets the expectation as well. I mean, how cool are these two going to be if they get their own back stories before they even get together? And when their heists finally coincide, it really feels like fate has led them to the same street at the same time (especially when you realise that this isn’t the first time that they’ve actually met). It was the slightly dry language, and how Leiber chose to use it, that almost did for me. It felt like perhaps Leiber was still trying to get a handle on Fafhrd and Mouse so chose to try and get into everything about them at once. I get that and maybe that’s what the story needed but it also felt a bit directionless at the same time, not the plot but the characterisation as we had to wait a little longer than necessary to find out who we were meant to be rooting for. I suspect that this will change in later volumes now we know who we are following.

Once you get past this though, ‘Swords and Deviltry’ is a lot of fun and I mean a lot of fun, especially when you realise that this is what it has been like the whole time (curse that dry tone getting in the way of the actual story). Stuff just keeps happening to our heroes who, refreshingly enough, are still young and liable to make the kind of mistakes that a plot like this just thrives on, the kind of mistakes that send a plot careening into even more fun and dumb mistakes which… you get the idea 😉 And I just loved the way that Leiber has one eye on the long term with absolutely no worries about sending Fafhrd and Mouse into tragedy just as the book as ending. There is very clearly a long game here, as far as characterisation goes and I’m happy to stick around and see what comes next, given the amount of fun I had here. I reckon that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser could really end up growing on me.

‘Swords and Deviltry’ is a bit of a nightmare to get into but is also a book that really rewards perseverance. I suspect that everyone else has already read it but if you haven’t… Give it a shot if you can.