“Swords and Deviltry” tells how Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser began, in old-school sword and sorcery that moves fast. Some readers relish the two rogues, the setting and the deliberately archaic language. They also find the stories uneven, with a laborious first half to Fafhrd’s tale, and the figures around the heroes thin.

The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.

About the book

Swords and Deviltry is a fantasy short story collection, first published 1970, by American writer Fritz Leiber, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the first volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. The book was first published in paperback form during 1970 by Ace Books company, which reprinted the title numerous times through November 1985; later paperback editions were issued by ibooks (2003) and Dark Horse (2006). It has been published in the United Kingdom by New English Library (1971), Mayflower Books (1979) and Grafton. The first hardcover edition was issued by Gregg Press during December 1977. The book has also been gathered together with others in the series into various omnibus editions; The Three of Swords (1989), Ill Met in Lankhmar (1995), The First Book of Lankhmar (2001), and Lankhmar (2008).

Description: Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Reading order · Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Full order & progress →

Where the score comes from

The sources average 7.3 across 112 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 43% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Short stories average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.