The final book in the seminal sword and sorcery series featuring
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from the Grand Master of Science Fiction and
Fantasy.
After their adventures in Swords and Ice Magic, Fafhrd the barbarian
and Gray Mouser the thief remain on Rime Isle with their loves, seeking
lives of respectability and peace. Fafhrd works to regain his archery
skills after losing his left hand to Odin in battle. Meanwhile, the Gray
Mouser embarks on a trading expedition aboard the ship Seahawk. But
their respite will soon come to an end-for on the world of Nehwon, a
brother and sister plot to regain the treasures stolen from them by the
pirates of Rime Isle.
Soon Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, alone and together, are plagued by
dreams and curses that will force them to confront the vengeful
siblings, destructive temptations, sea demons, and ancient obsessions as
"one of the great works of fantasy in this century" comes to its
climactic end (Publishers Weekly).
The highly regarded British horror author Ramsey Campbell called Fritz
Leiber "the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction."
Drawing many of his own themes from the works of Shakespeare, Edgar
Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a
worldwide legend within the fantasy genre, actually having coined the
term sword and sorcery that would describe the subgenre he would more
than help create.
While The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber's
fantastic but thoroughly flawed antiheroes, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser,
adventured and stumbled deep within the caves of Inner Earth as well,
albeit a different one than Tolkien's. 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 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.
