And somehow another couple of weeks have fallen by the wayside with no updates. On the plus side, I have been reading and have got through a couple of chunky tomes – sheer laziness has been the major obstacle at the moment. Actually, that's probably not being entirely fair on myself, life seems to have been pretty darn busy recently (or it's just taking a lot out of me). But either way, I've come way too far to quit now (I'd like to think I'm not a quitter anyway) and it's now time to correct the silence of the last little while.
Specimen A, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, one of the aforementioned chunky tomes has been waiting to be read for a while now (can you see where I'm going with this one?) and a long return journey to York and back seemed like the perfect opportunity to get stuck into and make a bit of a dent in something lengthy. One of a series of classic fantasy that I've been slowly making my way through, this is pulp of the first class from some of the genres best-loved characters. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are archetypes of the barbarian and the thief and this collection of tales, ranging in length from a few pages to novellas follows them from their first meeting throughout numerous adventures and capers.
It's easy to see why many have tried to emulate this – it rattles along at a fair crack, with plenty of action and a good dose of the supernatural thrown in for good measure. Yet it is the development of the characters, who are well-formed, good but not invincible, and (naturally) emotionally damaged early on that elevates Leiber above so many pretenders to the throne. Small-scale capers rather than epic clashes is the order of the day here, but the combined tales weave together to form something much bigger than the individual scrapes and what would in the city of Lankhmar probably be regarded as a legend.
Book number: 72
Title: Lankhmar
Author: Fritz Leiber
Category: Books that have been sat on my bookshelf for too long
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