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The Knight and Knave of Swords Introduction of the ebook: The Knight and Knave of Swords
Đánh giá : 3.83 /5 (sao)
Ramsey Campbell, the highly regarded British horror author, called him: “the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction”. Drawing many of his own themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Franz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the Fantasy genre, actually coining the term “Sword and Sorcery”, which would describe the sub- Ramsey Campbell, the highly regarded British horror author, called him: “the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction”. Drawing many of his own themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Franz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the Fantasy genre, actually coining the term “Sword and Sorcery”, which would describe the sub-genre he would more than help create.
While Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber’s fantastic but thoroughly flawed anti-heroes, Fafhrd and Grey 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 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.
“Fritz Leiber’s tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are virtually a genre unto themselves. Urbane, idiosyncratic, comic, erotic and human, spiked with believable action of a master fantasist!” – William Gibson
“After too long a wait, the master story teller of us all returns with a huge, anecdotal adventure in the magic-drenched lives of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Glowing imagination melds with gorgeous language to make this one of Leiber’s very best… which is a better best than this poor world usually has to offer. Leiber’s back: rejoice!” – Harlan Ellison
“It’s all Fritz Leiber’s fault. If he weren’t such a deadly fine fantasist I wouldn’t be stopping everything to read his tales. And if he weren’t such a master I wouldn’t occasionally look out of the window and wish he’d interrupt my routine again, as he doesn’t do it often enough. The Knight and Knave of Swords came into my life and took over an otherwise fully programmed afternoon. I stop everything when a new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story comes into my hands.” – Roger Zelazny
Contents:
9 · Sea Magic · ss The Dragon, December 1977
29 · The Mer She · nv Heroes & Horrors, Whispers Press, 1978
63 · The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars · na Heroic Visions, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Ace, 1983
117 · The Mouser Goes Below · na – portions first printed as “The Mouser Goes Below” (Whispers #23, 1987) and “Slack Lankhmar Afternoon Featuring Hisvet” (Terry’s Universe, ed. Beth Meacham, Tor, 1988) …more
Review ebook The Knight and Knave of Swords
Farewell to Lankhmar–the last volume in the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series–is a strange book, and hard to evaluate. It is an old man’s book with an old man’s preoccupations, and the reader who expects the usual mixture of free-wheeling, picaresque adventures will be disappointed.
His two aging heroes are now grudgingly monogamous men with daily responsibilities, settled in the arctic outpost of Rime Isle, far from the the sultry sexual multifariousness of Lankhmar. The two are literally cursed
Farewell to Lankhmar–the last volume in the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series–is a strange book, and hard to evaluate. It is an old man’s book with an old man’s preoccupations, and the reader who expects the usual mixture of free-wheeling, picaresque adventures will be disappointed.
His two aging heroes are now grudgingly monogamous men with daily responsibilities, settled in the arctic outpost of Rime Isle, far from the the sultry sexual multifariousness of Lankhmar. The two are literally cursed (by some minor gods) with old mens’ hobbies (Fafhrd stargazes, the Mouser collects trash), and literally pursued by their own deaths (two assassins referred to as “The Death of Fafhrd” and “The Death of the Mouser.”) In the course of the narrative, Fafhrd undergoes a mock funeral, the Mouser spends at least half his time buried alive, and Leiber indulges in a dirty old man’s penchant for soft-core porn and yet concludes his raciest scene with an unpleasant surprise guaranteed to discourage prurience and to turn even a young man’s fancy to thoughts of death and pain.
Still, there is something fascinating and admirable about this book: Leiber refused the easy comforts of established formulae and easy fame, and ends the saga by writing the cold final twilight chapter his heart told him he must write. …
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