Lankhmar: Swords Against Wizardry

Book four has four stories in them, which shows the books are settling down to longer tales.

The first one is basically a small prologue to the second story. And the second story is the pair climbing a mountain… and that’s largely about it. There is a minor point where they get to have sex with two beautiful women (of course), but mostly it’s the climb.

The third story is largely a filler, but does fit nicely. While the payoff isn’t entirely out of nowhere, being a shorter story it doesn’t hang around long enough to be annoying. And shows that Fritz is perfectly happy with strong female characters, which you wouldn’t expect in this setting.

But then there’s the fourth story. Which is a political tale that incidentally happens to have Fafhrd and Grey Mouser in it. They are kept apart for a long time, although Fritz does avoid the “oh, they just missed each other, and one went out that door as the other was coming in this”, but it does mean they have a lesser role in what’s going on. Again the final moment can be seen coming from a while away, so this story isn’t rated high for me.

Three books to go!

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