Thoughts on Leiber's Lankhmar Series

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I finished the last of the collected Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series about a week ago, and found them to be quite satisfying on the whole. For those who like wry Sword and Sorcery, the first five collections are easily some of the best of the various short stories, novelettes and novellas. Things start to slow down around "Swords and Ice Magic," and "The Knight and Knave of Swords" is only worth it for the soon-to-be-described "The Mouser Goes Below."

Despite being highly proficient in armed combat and possessing an occasionally uncanny intuition about magical dealings, both heroes fit the oft described "closer to true human stature" aspects that the series is famous for (as opposed to the superhuman Conan and Tarzan of the time). I appreciated Fafhrd and the Mouser's occasional philosophical and practical ruminations on their various love affairs, mining occasional insight on the nature of men and women and providing a nice break from the plot every now and then.

While Fafhrd and the Mouser each frequently have a girl of the week, the encounters are never cheapened by the virtue of their oft occurrence. Leiber wisely has his heroes remember and recall their amorous escapades in each subsequent story (when applicable), often fondly and with new insight in light of their newest adventure.

I got the feeling that Leiber would have liked to delve more into the details of the hero's sexual conquests, both in light of the note on the previously mentioned Wikipedia page mentioning an excised sex scene from the novel "The Swords of Lankhmar" at the editors behest, and at the rather large swerve in Leiber's final Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story, "The Mouser Goes Below."

Throughout nearly all of the stories, the heroes sexual encounters are illustrated briefly and with minimum detail; enough for some lightly thrilling erotic flavor, but never overdone. In "The Mouser Goes Below," for whatever reason Leiber completely pulls out all the stops and gives the readers a number of steamy, highly described erotic scenes, both of the moment and recalled from the past. The scenes in question are titillating, to be sure, but so much out of the blue as to be somewhat shocking. "Awww, he won't go there. Whoa, is he going there? Describing that?... Well, now."

The only other nitpick concerning "The Mouser Goes Below" is this: Throughout the stories our heroes have two wizardly mentors, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. Neither of them are assigned a sex, and if they are even human is a contention challenged by the later described seven tentacular eyestalks that Ningauble possesses. All of the sudden in the last story, Ningauble suddenly becomes a "he" and Sheelba a "she." This is only annoying in that, first, they are always referred to as "wizards," even in this final tale, and secondly, their having sexes was never something that influenced the stories. It feels more than a little tacked on and merely served as an annoyance, and whatever Leibers reason for doing so is beyond me.

In any case, I would still fully recommend the Lankhmar stories to all who enjoy fantasy, as they are well written, entertaining, and fun. Also, like Zelazny, the fight scenes are described in fencing terms, which is always a plus :)


Enough, More Later.
- James