I surprised myself by enjoying a lot of this book, because of the
lackluster start to the series in the last book, and because it was a
bunch of short stories barely connected (I’m not a fan of short story
collections because I often read through one after another in a long
session, where they deserve to be paused and thought over at the end,
much like I enjoy doing after a longer book). The common theme of one of
the pair running off and doing something stupid while the other had to
rescue him was predictable, but the author’s writing style and the use
of so many thematic words made the stories seem much more entertaining,
maybe, than they should have been. The first stories were definitely a
lot weaker, resembling the first book in this series more, but it grew
stronger as it went on. My favorite was by far the Claws from the Night,
where they went hunting for jewels at the same time as the trained
crows, where it was more of a collaborative effort.
Spoiler review:
I stopped reading short story collections many years ago, because I like
to digest a story, and it’s hard to do that when I’m sitting down to
read for an hour, and go through two or three stories at a time. I was
also worried to continue this series, because I didn’t find the
opening
book to be good at all. But I’ve heard good things about this pair of
characters, and while there’s no magic per se, there is a bit of behind
the scenes sorcery, making this an actual Sword and Sorcery book.
There is a common theme running through most of the stories, and
that is one character going off and doing something stupid or being put
under a spell, and the other has to bail him out. It didn’t alternate in
the stories, and I think Fafhrd did more stupid things than the Grey
Mouser, but for a lumbering lout I guess that makes sense. I also liked
the way that even though the stories were distinct, they followed a
continuous thread, in that the duo leave Lankhmar, return, get sent
overseas, make their way back through the northern mountains, and return
to Lankhmar after a long absence.
The first story, The Circle
Curse, doesn’t do much at all. It’s a very high level account of the
fact that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser traveled all over the world.
Eventually, they get tired and Fafhrd feels the itch to return to the
city.
The Jewels in the Forest gives us more of a story, as the
pair go on a quest to find riches hidden in a sealed tower. It turns out
that several maps were made to that tower, trying to lure people to
their deaths. After Fafhrd is through with it, the tower has collapsed,
but I’m not sure what happened to all the jewels. There was a big fight
between the two and their rival, and while they do get inside, there is
a ghost of some sort that brought the whole tower alive, a fluid filled
with jewels that were like its mind. I wasn’t too impressed with this
story, as it didn’t do much with the characters.
We get back to
Lankhmar and the boring Thieves’ Guild in Thieves’ House, where Fafhrd
and the Grey Mouser have teamed up with a thief to steal back the
remains of a centuries-old thief, whose bones were covered in jewels.
The head thief tries to take the jewels off the bones, but is strangled
by his business partner, a witch who hides herself as the two swordsmen
see her. The Mouser goes on a search of the city, and find her home,
while Fafhrd gets lost in the old crypts of the Thieves’ Guild, and
is hunted by the ghosts of those who await the return of the missing
bones. They all come together and narrowly escape the revenge of the
bones as the new head thief refuses to give them up.
The stories
finally start to get interesting with The Bleak Store, which is told
almost entirely from an outsider’s point of view. The witnesses tell of
how Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are put under a spell and travel by boat
across the endless expanse of sea to an unknown land, losing their crew
one by one. It reminded me of Ulysses. When they get to the island, they
have no crew left, so we return to their main perspective as they fight
off strange creatures, until the Mouser realizes that one is controlling
them all. He smashes the egg holding the controller, killing the old man
within. It’s a lazy way of ending the threat, but something that’s been
used often since, even to The Phantom Menace, all of which also seemed
lazy.
It was nice that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser didn’t return
to Lankhmar immediately. In The Howling Tower, they are crossing the
desert, when Fafhrd gets the idea into his head that he has to go
investigate the tower that is howling like the wolves in his old
northern home. Despite the Mouser’s caution, Fafhrd is gone in the
morning, so the Mouser hunts him down to the tower. It turns out that
another man is luring people to his tower to satiate the dark spirits of
the souls he has killed. This story is much better told than Jewels in
the Forest, and the resolution is much more satisfying, with the Mouser
forcing the poison down the throat of the man, who really was sorry,
while he enters the dream realm to rescue Fafhrd.
It seems that
they reached the water again by the time of The Sunken Land, which finds
Fafhrd leaping from their small boat onto a longboat of his northern
homeland, which has been caught in a spell as they search for a lost
land that sank below the sea decades ago. Killing one of the slaves,
Fafhrd is forced to take the place of the missing rower. He plans a
mutiny, but they find the lost land, and Fafhrd reluctantly follows the
pirates on land. The land is cursed, though, and Fafhrd barely escapes
in time, awakened from the spell of following their leader, just in time
to be rescued by the Mouser. The land sinks as they leave.
Back
on the main continent, and not far from the northern wastes, Fafhrd and
the Grey Mouser come upon The Seven Black Priests when the Mouser
recognises a light coming from the only mountain that is not
snow-capped, and they climb it to steal the diamond. But the diamond and
the priests were protecting the land from a demon residing within, the
heat of which kept the mountain free of snow. As they escape, they kill
the priests one by one, even to a silly snow-slide, and a cool cave set.
Fafhrd takes possession of the diamond, falling under its spell, and
returning it to the hot mountain, where he tries to awaken the demon.
Fortunately, the Mouser manages to destroy the diamond just in time,
waking Fafhrd from its spell and containing the demon (though I’m not
sure how that last part works, as I thought the diamond was protecting
the land against the demon).
The return to Lankhmar comes as
birds are terrorizing the city in Claws from the Night, my favorite of
the stories in this collection. It was written in such a way that the
frame of the story was just as entertaining as the story itself. I loved
the description of women’s heads encased in bird cages while the birds
roamed free, because they wanted to protect their eyes from being gauged
out by the jewel-seeking birds. The Mouser tries to steal a giant jewel
that one rich money lender was going to give to his wife. Stolen from
under him by the birds, Fafhrd sends an eagle out to hunt the bird. It
returns successful, but is poisoned at the same time. The jewel is
restolen from Fafhrd’s hand, and he gives chase. Once again, the Mouser
has to rescue him, but for once, he’s not trapped or ensorcelled. He
does get locked in away from the bird-men, but fights his way out
side-by-side with the Mouser, who recognizes the woman who was to
receive the jewel as one who could communicate with the birds and leads
them.
The Prince of Pain-ease has Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
stealing a garden house on stilts to make their own, but they are still
haunted by the women they loved in the last book. So each goes on his
own to seek the help of a sorcerer (each a different one), and are sent
on a mission to steal the mask of Death, to fight anybody who gets in
their way, which of course is their best friends –each other. The battle
with Death’s minion slices the mask in two, so they each get half, and
to which their respective masters are not thrilled, and set them harder
and harder tasks. It’s not much of a story, but it’s fun to read mostly
because of the writing style.
They each get the same mission
again in Bazaar of the Bizarre, but this time they were to defeat an
inter-dimensional merchant together. But the Mouser arrives first, and
enters the magical bazaar, finding such rare items that he would buy the
entire shop, from books on sword mastery to beautiful young women.
Fafhrd, on the other hand, meets the two sorcerers who give him gifts, a
cloak of invisibility and a filament for his eyes that show him the
truth of what he sees. He finds that the bazaar is full of junk, and
that they are majicked to look like magnificent specimens. Fafhrd fights
the merchant, while the Mouser looks on enjoying what he thinks is a
spectacle. When Fafhrd gets hit and starts bleeding, the Mouser is
half-awakened, and helps Fafhrd defeat the merchant, who disappears back
into his realm. It’s funny to see the Mouser cling to his
hellucinations, especialy of the spider as a beautiful woman, while
Fafhrd drags him out. It turns out that the merchant could have
destroyed the world by selling his junk, which is why the two sorcerers
joined forces to get rid of him.
I can take more like this, if
the stories keep being as interesting as the later ones. From being a
reluctant reader, I’m now looking forward to the next set of stories.
