Swords of Lankhmar Mass market paperback - 1983

"Fritz Leiber has a wicked imagination. Wicked enough to make us laugh at an impossible future containing nightmarish aspects of our own times." Edmond Cooper, Sunday Times"Fritz Leiber is universally acknowledged to be among its (science fiction and fantasy) three or four all-time titans. If you are already familiar with Fritz Leiber, you know you have a treat in store. If it will be your first encounter with him, I envy you." Poul Anderson, in The Wizard of NehwonDrawing many of his own themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the fantasy genre, actually coining the term "Sword and Sorcery" that describes the sub-genre he would help create. Before Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber's fantastic but thoroughly flawed anti-heroes, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, adventured and stumbled deep within the caves of Inner Earth as well, albeit a different one. They wondered and wandered to the edges of the Outer Sea, across the Land of Nehwon and throughout every nook and cranny of gothic Lankhmar, Nehwon's grandest and most mystically corrupt city. Lankhmar is Leiber's fully realized vivid incarnation of urban decay and civilization's corroding effect on the human psyche. Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are not innocents; their world is no land of honor and righteousness. It is a world of human complexities and violent action, of discovery and mystery, of swords and sorcery.The Swords of Lankhmar finds the city of characteristically plagued by rats. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are in the employ of Glipkerio, the overlord, to guard a grain ship on its journey. Along the way the rats on board stage a rebellion and threaten to take the ship until a two-headed sea monster saves the day. If only there were two-headed sea monsters everywhere Lankhmar would be safe too. Alas, upon returning to the city, Lankhmar is controlled by rats. It is a city known for its thieves and swine, but even the city's muddiest bottom feeders had never seen pillaging and plundering like this. And only the sorcerers Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes can scare this scourge. Mouser must shrink into the rat's world and Fafhrd must unleash the feared feline War Cats. Then the fun really begins.