Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

1. This 1970 novella tells of the meeting of Leiber’s two characters, Gray Mouser and Fafhrd. These characters had already been around since 1939, but this is their origin story—not the origin of either, but the origin of their camaraderie. From this fact comes my main complaint with the story: it’s simply there to tell the story of their meeting and why they became such fast friends at first. This is fan service. Maybe it’s full of inside jokes and references to the rest of the tales about these two that would delight a fan, but I wouldn’t get them if it was. I like Leiber. I haven’t read any of his other sword and sorcery Gray Mouser and Fafhrd tales, but his novel The Big Time impressed me immensely. Yet I am bored by Ill Met because it doesn’t do enough outside of introducing and linking these two already linked characters. However, it’s a novella, so it’s short and wasn’t hard to read, despite my boredom.

2. The pacing is good: it starts with two thieves exiting a heist and being ambushed by Gray Mouser and Fafhrd, who then link up and introduce each other to their girlfriends, they then party and decide to invade the Thieves Guild to search for a way to assassinate Thief leader Krovas, then they invade and things go bad, on their return to the women they realize how bad, so they run back to the Thieves, get some revenge, and leave town. The pacing speeds up for the action, making it seem frantic but still giving enough details to make it legible. It then slows for the party and the sneaking parts, allowing the characters to take center stage and forcing my realization that this is fan service. Despite my complaint, I feel that the pacing is appropriate to the story—not going overlong into any one scene, and not breezing over any interesting bit. It’s a three scene story, essentially: ambush, party, invasion/revenge. This is an effective tactic for a novella.

3. The theme here is that true friends can be soulmates: they will fight against and for each other like siblings, and there is an intrinsic understanding between well-matched friends. Words are often unnecessary between them, yet the words that do come are important. Said another way, friends are the family we choose.

4. The writing annoys me at times. It adopts this fake nostalgia, trying to sound aristocratic and gutter simultaneously and coming off just awkward and unbelievable. For instance, some dialogue in a bar:

Ho, there, you back of the counter! Where are my jugs? Rats eaten the boy who went for them days ago? Or he simply starved to death on his cellar quest? Well, tell him to get a swifter move on and meanwhile brim us again!

This is awkward writing that I don’t enjoy. Which is strange because I like Leiber’s other writing, at least what I’ve read so far.

5. In short, as a stand-alone novella, this doesn’t work. I am now less interested to read the other stories with these two characters than I was before reading this. If it’s fan service, it doesn’t apply to somebody who isn’t already a fan and familiar. If it isn’t, it’s just a boring, pointless novella. It is fine pulp fiction: exciting and well paced, legible and simple. But it’s also lacking import and applicability because Leiber trusts the readers are already familiar with these characters and skates around actually building them here. It’s probably a testament to the popularity of these two characters that this won both the Hugo and Nebula for novella in 1971.