Swords and Deviltry

The single best entry point into sword and sorcery. Fritz Leiber’s 1970 collection introduces Fafhrd, a towering Northern barbarian, and the Gray Mouser, a small, quick-witted former wizard’s apprentice. Together they form the genre’s greatest duo, and this book shows how they each lost everything before finding each other.

Why Start Here

Leiber invented the term “sword and sorcery,” and Swords and Deviltry is where his vision comes together most clearly. The collection contains three stories, each one building toward the centerpiece: “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. In it, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser meet for the first time in the sprawling, corrupt city of Lankhmar, pull off a heist together, and face consequences that bind them as partners for life.

What makes Leiber special is tone. His heroes are funny, self-aware, and deeply flawed. They drink too much, chase trouble for the thrill of it, and survive on wit as much as skill. The writing has a literary sharpness that separates it from most pulp fantasy. Leiber was influenced by Shakespeare and the Viennese satirists, and it shows in dialogue that crackles with intelligence even when the characters are doing something reckless.

At 254 pages, the book moves quickly. The first two stories give each hero an origin, and “Ill Met in Lankhmar” delivers one of the genre’s most memorable openings. If you want to understand what sword and sorcery can be at its best, this is where you start.

What to Expect

Three interconnected stories with a rising emotional arc. The tone shifts from atmospheric Northern adventure to sinister magical intrigue to a heist gone wrong in a city that feels alive with danger. Leiber’s Lankhmar is one of fantasy’s great fictional cities, a place of narrow alleys, thieves’ guilds, and gods that meddle in mortal affairs. Expect sharp prose, dark humor, genuine tragedy, and two of the most likeable rogues in all of fantasy.