The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber book review

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The rats are the problem. They employ deception and magick at all levels.

The illuminated rats are lying to us.

The illuminated rats are hiding among us.

The illuminated rats must be exterminated.

Enter heroes. One of them a mighty tank type who enjoys the lovely bones of female ghouls, the other a mouser who enjoys the company of shaven chamber maids in the nude.

Mix in a ship, a castle, and underground ratworks, and you have this humdrum replacement story by Fritz Leiber.

Congrats.

Some of my highlights:

Lankhmar Book 5: The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

Book last read: 2023-02-12 20:02:01
Percentage read: 100%

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 5.31%
Highlight: and the great jewels that at night are the stars all orderly afloat on the bubble’s inner surface.
Notes: Lights on dome.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 6.19%
Highlight: No traffic with child-like women?

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 7.52%
Highlight: Alas, sir, the sun mislikes me,” she answered prettily.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 10.18%
Highlight: The Mouser wondered if for men also there was an inner circle of Thirteen.
Notes: Illuminati banking family lizard reference.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 10.62%
Highlight: What world is this,

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 11.06%
Highlight: I believe we live in the jewel-ceilinged skull of a dead god.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 15.93%
Highlight: I’m but a girl, unused to problems of war and rapine,

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 16.37%
Highlight: Thirteen rats with the minds of men rule the whole rat race.
Notes: Illuminati family reference.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 16.37%
Highlight: Let me but strip off that cloaking ermine smock and I’ll show you a white-furred body and ten small black dugs instead of proper maiden breasts!”
Notes: She’s a rat.

Chapter 0: Start
Annotation
Chapter progress: 27.43%
Highlight: I never interfere with another person’s pleasures or pains, since it’s hard to be certain which are which,
Notes: S&M face mask cult.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 29.2%
Highlight: But I tell you I won’t endure it. This time we’re going to do things my way for a change!

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 32.3%
Highlight: At his right a beauteous girl, or more likely two, since there was a sweet strong farm-smell coming to him under the sheets; and what is juicier than a farmer’s (or cattleman’s) redhead daughter?

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 33.19%
Highlight: the women of the Eight Cities are revered by their men and may do what they wish, no matter how licentious. But woe betide the outlander who puts this into words.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 48.23%
Highlight: A shortage of candles developed, while lamps and lanterns were priced almost out of sight.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 53.98%
Highlight: he was not dealing with ordinary or even extraordinary rats, but with an alien and hostile culture of intelligent beings,

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 56.64%
Highlight: Why, oh why, he asked himself, was it only that watching a whipping could soothe him?
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 59.73%
Highlight: He gave her a wink, tossed the bottle aside, and confidently awaited the emergence of his anti-rat powers, whatever they might be.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 64.16%
Highlight: Idiots! Opium-chewers! Nibblers of hemp! Out of my way!

Chapter 0: Start
Annotation
Chapter progress: 69.91%
Highlight: glorious Council Chamber and the other members of the Supreme Thirteen.
Notes: Illuminati ref.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 73.89%
Highlight: I am not your wizard.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 76.11%
Highlight: Putting his horror out of mind, for it is a singularly useless emotion,

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 78.76%
Highlight: The inter-breeding has also resulted in many rats with human-like hands and minds.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 80.09%
Highlight: the conquest of other universes beyond the waters of space!

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 83.19%
Highlight: he watched a double squad of guardsmen cross hurriedly through the moonlight, going south on Whore Street in the direction of the South Barracks.

Chapter 0: Start
Annotation
Chapter progress: 83.19%
Highlight: Had they shut up themselves and their gagged victims in the silent houses for some rite of mass torture in darkness?
Notes: CDC

Chapter 0: Start
Annotation
Chapter progress: 89.38%
Highlight: they have been secretly guiding the interests and growth of man for some time
Notes: Replacement invasion philosophy.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 91.15%
Highlight: Predictably, the folk of Lankhmar were more afraid of their own gods come to their rescue than of their foes.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 92.48%
Highlight: “They’ve come to slay us all! It’s the revolution!” Frix
Notes: glory!

Chapter 0: Start
Annotation
Chapter progress: 92.48%
Highlight: That one”—he pointed at Hisvin—”is in league with the rats. Indeed, he is by blood more rat than man. Under his toga you’ll find a tail. I saw him in the tunnels below, member of the Rat Council of Thirteen, plotting your overthrow.
Notes: U know who.

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 95.13%
Highlight: I’ll be your humblest slave-girl, my only hope that some day I’ll be your most favorite too.”

Chapter 0: Start
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Chapter progress: 97.79%
Highlight: Oh, you dirty-minded puritanical Mud Folk!

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