However there is, in fact, no reason why one should do so – these are not epic or high fantasy stories that outline one unfolding narrative. So where to start? Certainly, it’s entirely possible to pick up book one of seven of Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series and just read them all straight through. Whether such an approach is a net good or bad for these respective series is subject to a lengthier debate than the purposes of this article – but in both cases, a new reader being aware of the inherent artificiality of the canonical ‘reading order’ is an important factor in approaching these series in a way that shows them in their best light. In the case of Conan, this was done after Howard’s death, and with the insertion of pastiche ‘filler.’ In the case of the Twain, this was done by Leiber himself, who not only arranged a series chronology but actively wrote pieces to “fill in the blanks” in the lives of his two heroes. Spanning four decades of material, the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales are varied in style, tone, and structure, as one might expect.īoth Howard’s Conan and Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories were assembled into a ‘series order ’ the various tales arranged according to a supposed narrative chronology, rather than in the order they were written. But unlike Howard, whose writing life was brief and whose time spent writing Conan tales comprised just a few years, Leiber spun Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories over his entire career. Leiber’s tales of “an earthier sort of fantasy” are a quintessential pillar of sword-and-sorcery fiction – indeed, it was Leiber that first coined that very phrase to describe the fantasy that emerged from the pulp world.
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