Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser search for treasure in book four of the
genre-defining sword and sorcery series.
Fafhrd and Mouse 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.
With Swords Against Wizardry, the story unfolds behind the curtain in
the Witch's Tent. Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are there to consult a
sorceress who holds the secret to their escape, but when would they ever
need to escape? Would they need this knowledge when they journey to
Stardock? Where is there to escape up there? No doubt the icy seduction
of "the cruel one," with her greed for both gore and graciousness, could
offer them several ways out. Their luck has been good so far; one way
out should work. Their luck continues as thieves. They are the best
thieves in Lankhmar until better positions arise: the Lords of Quarmall.
Gray Mouser and Fafhrd steal a kingdom within a hill and declare
themselves lords.
Before The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber's
fantastic but thoroughly flawed antiheroes, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser,
adventured deep within the caves of Inner Earth, 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.
Drawing on themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P.
Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within
the fantasy genre and actually coined the term Sword and Sorcery that
describes the subgenre he helped create.
