A review by luana420
Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber
4.0
The short stories Lieber wrote in the 30s-40s-50s are all imaginative, witty and exciting. I laughed out loud several times with the wacky situations Fafhrd and the Mouser found themselves in: an ensorcelled Mouser sitting in an actual coffin laughing at Fafhrd fighting a statue which he sees as a jester? Wonderful! The dungeon they're in has an unseen guardian... and it's the structure itself? Delightful! A wave of magpies is terrorizing the city's nobles? Far out!
But that's all the original stories, and whenever we have to remind ourselves that he came up with an origin and a shared tragedy for his two heroes (which he added in decades later) it's total cringe. Leiber's almost Tarantino where I kinda love his genre pastiche and his wit, but you add a woman into it? Uh oh this is gonna suck! You see women are vain and incomprehensible and oh ho ho abort abort!
Shame, cuz they didn't really need a dead wives origin -- we meet Sheelba and Ningauble here, their archmage patrons who are respectively curt and verbose to a comical degree. That's what binds them together, that's funny and awesome!
But that's all the original stories, and whenever we have to remind ourselves that he came up with an origin and a shared tragedy for his two heroes (which he added in decades later) it's total cringe. Leiber's almost Tarantino where I kinda love his genre pastiche and his wit, but you add a woman into it? Uh oh this is gonna suck! You see women are vain and incomprehensible and oh ho ho abort abort!
Shame, cuz they didn't really need a dead wives origin -- we meet Sheelba and Ningauble here, their archmage patrons who are respectively curt and verbose to a comical degree. That's what binds them together, that's funny and awesome!