Book Review: Black God's Kiss, by C.L. Moore
The complete Jirel of Joiry collection. One of the first fantasy heroines.
1934, 222 pages
Originally published in the legendary magazine Weird Tales in 1934, C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry is fantasy's first true strong female protagonist, as well as one of the most striking and memorable characters to come out of the golden age of science fiction and fantasy. Published alongside landmark stories by H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the six classic stories included in this volume prove that C. L. Moore's Jirel is a rival to Conan the Barbarian and Elric of Melnibone, making Black God's Kiss an essential addition to any fantasy library.
C.L. Moore was Catherine Lucille Moore, but most readers of her stories didn't know this when she began her career in the 1930s. (According to Wikipedia, she didn't adopt "C.L. Moore" as her authornym to hide the fact that she was a woman, but because she didn't want her employers at her day job to know she was moonlighting as a writer.)
One of the first female pulp fantasy authors, Moore wrote prolifically as a contemporary of figures like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, both of whom she corresponded with. Her most famous creation is Jirel of Joiry, one of the first female fantasy protagonists and arguably the first true swords & sorcery heroine.
Jirel of Joiry is a fiery red-haired warrior who lives in a fantasy version of Middle Ages France. While Moore doesn't make up a Hyboria or Middle Earth for Jirel to inhabit, her kingdom of Joiry is as fantastical as the idea of a medieval French girl who can traipse around in full armor carrying a greatsword, outfight a man, and lead a gang of cutthroats. (Jirel is a Church girl - she has a priest advisor in some stories - but from story to story it's not always consistent whether she's the rightful ruler of the kingdom of Joiry or just a warlord who took up residence in a castle and goes looking for wizard towers to plunder, Conan-style.)
This proto-Red Sonja is an unrealistic as the later S&S superheroine, but although some of the covers of C.L. Moore's reprints have insisted on portraying Jirel as a skin-baring hottie, in the stories Jirel is always a fully dressed and properly armored hottie.
Black God's Kiss contains the complete collection, including the title story, the sequel, Black God's Shadow, Jirel Meets Magic, The Dark Land, Hellsgarde, and Quest of the Starstone.
The last one was cowritten with her husband, Henry Kuttner, and had Jirel teaming up with another character of Moore's, N.W. Smith, an outlaw antihero from a series of science fiction stories. I found this the weakest of the stories, as besides the clumsy device of a wizard reaching across time and space to recruit a Martian from 2000 years in the future to get revenge on Jirel, Jirel behaves in a much more hysterical and cowed fashion than in any of the other stories. I couldn't help wondering if this was Kuttner's influence.
All of the stories have pretty much the same plot, and it's very traditional swords & sorcery. As Conan would say, never trust magic. Jirel is fighting a wizard or a rival warlord, either she is captured or she's chasing her adversary, and somehow she winds up getting yanked to an otherworld and has to make her way out. Unlike male swords & sorcery heroes written by male writers, Jirel does not actually pull her sword out and get to slashing very often. She threatens violence often, but a lot of text is spent on her experiences of unearthly terrors, travels to other realms, and creatures and warlocks she usually can't just overcome by hitting them with a sword (not that she doesn't try sometimes). Jirel is hot-tempered, violent, and proud, though not completely immune to fear, or lust, but her stories are not so much action-adventures as travelogues through hell.
The prose is typical of pulp fiction back in the day; full of purple adverbs and repeated references to Jirel's "flashing yellow eyes" and "ineffable countenances" and stilted dialog, but Moore does conjure dreamworlds, hells, and interdimensional travel in vivid, descriptive prose that back then didn't have Hollywood imagery to supplement the imagination.
It's very surprising to me that Jirel of Joiry did not make Gary Gygax's Appendix N reading list, as these stories are very much of the same flavor, some of the other Appendix N authors were fans of Moore, and she was very influential on the genre even if she's lesser known today.
My complete list of book reviews.
1934, 222 pages
Originally published in the legendary magazine Weird Tales in 1934, C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry is fantasy's first true strong female protagonist, as well as one of the most striking and memorable characters to come out of the golden age of science fiction and fantasy. Published alongside landmark stories by H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the six classic stories included in this volume prove that C. L. Moore's Jirel is a rival to Conan the Barbarian and Elric of Melnibone, making Black God's Kiss an essential addition to any fantasy library.
C.L. Moore was Catherine Lucille Moore, but most readers of her stories didn't know this when she began her career in the 1930s. (According to Wikipedia, she didn't adopt "C.L. Moore" as her authornym to hide the fact that she was a woman, but because she didn't want her employers at her day job to know she was moonlighting as a writer.)
One of the first female pulp fantasy authors, Moore wrote prolifically as a contemporary of figures like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, both of whom she corresponded with. Her most famous creation is Jirel of Joiry, one of the first female fantasy protagonists and arguably the first true swords & sorcery heroine.
Jirel of Joiry is a fiery red-haired warrior who lives in a fantasy version of Middle Ages France. While Moore doesn't make up a Hyboria or Middle Earth for Jirel to inhabit, her kingdom of Joiry is as fantastical as the idea of a medieval French girl who can traipse around in full armor carrying a greatsword, outfight a man, and lead a gang of cutthroats. (Jirel is a Church girl - she has a priest advisor in some stories - but from story to story it's not always consistent whether she's the rightful ruler of the kingdom of Joiry or just a warlord who took up residence in a castle and goes looking for wizard towers to plunder, Conan-style.)
This proto-Red Sonja is an unrealistic as the later S&S superheroine, but although some of the covers of C.L. Moore's reprints have insisted on portraying Jirel as a skin-baring hottie, in the stories Jirel is always a fully dressed and properly armored hottie.
Black God's Kiss contains the complete collection, including the title story, the sequel, Black God's Shadow, Jirel Meets Magic, The Dark Land, Hellsgarde, and Quest of the Starstone.
The last one was cowritten with her husband, Henry Kuttner, and had Jirel teaming up with another character of Moore's, N.W. Smith, an outlaw antihero from a series of science fiction stories. I found this the weakest of the stories, as besides the clumsy device of a wizard reaching across time and space to recruit a Martian from 2000 years in the future to get revenge on Jirel, Jirel behaves in a much more hysterical and cowed fashion than in any of the other stories. I couldn't help wondering if this was Kuttner's influence.
All of the stories have pretty much the same plot, and it's very traditional swords & sorcery. As Conan would say, never trust magic. Jirel is fighting a wizard or a rival warlord, either she is captured or she's chasing her adversary, and somehow she winds up getting yanked to an otherworld and has to make her way out. Unlike male swords & sorcery heroes written by male writers, Jirel does not actually pull her sword out and get to slashing very often. She threatens violence often, but a lot of text is spent on her experiences of unearthly terrors, travels to other realms, and creatures and warlocks she usually can't just overcome by hitting them with a sword (not that she doesn't try sometimes). Jirel is hot-tempered, violent, and proud, though not completely immune to fear, or lust, but her stories are not so much action-adventures as travelogues through hell.
The prose is typical of pulp fiction back in the day; full of purple adverbs and repeated references to Jirel's "flashing yellow eyes" and "ineffable countenances" and stilted dialog, but Moore does conjure dreamworlds, hells, and interdimensional travel in vivid, descriptive prose that back then didn't have Hollywood imagery to supplement the imagination.
It's very surprising to me that Jirel of Joiry did not make Gary Gygax's Appendix N reading list, as these stories are very much of the same flavor, some of the other Appendix N authors were fans of Moore, and she was very influential on the genre even if she's lesser known today.
My complete list of book reviews.