Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser take to the sea in the third installment of
this seminal sword and sorcery series that "has lost none of its
luminous magic" (San Francisco Chronicle).
Swords in the Mist, book three in the Lankhmar series, thrusts our
indentured, sword-swinging servants into the question of hate, its
power, and its purpose. Times are lean in Lankhmar, illuminating the
link between money and love. Luckily, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser don't
always believe in love. When Lankhmar gets too gritty, our travelers
take to their other, less harsh mistress, the sea. But the sea can play
tricks on men, and so can the sea king. He can break a man, or worse
yet, curse him. But when he is away, it's all play for the formidable
swordsmen and the Triple Goddess . . . and two luscious sea queens. But
luck may not always be there, as they discover on the way to see
Ningauble, their wizard employer. After a long journey in defense of
their control over their own fates, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser find
themselves pawns in a life-and-death chess game, all of Lankhmar being
the pieces. How many pawns will be left on the board before someone
wins?
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.
