/lit/ - Literature

C.L. Moore paints an idyllic in her 1934 short story Scarlet Dreams: a place of bronze-green grasses, whispering trees, blue mists, and lapping lake waters clouded with shades of violet and green. The locals spend lives of languorous leisure in these picturesque surroundings, where food is freely provided by a local temple - but a monstrous being overshadows their existence. C.L. Moore's hardboiled protag is whisked away to this dreamland after buying a vibrantly coloured shawl at a Martian market. He falls in love with a local woman and immerses himself in local customs, before getting to the bottom of why his lover's kisses taste like blood. Overall this is a comfy planetary romance done with C.L. Moore's usual flowing prose and sensuosity - as ever, the theme is temptation - Northwest Smith is pulled between a relaxing idyll and an urge to return to the violent hustle of the spaceways. 4/5 dinos, Moore should be regarded as well as any other Weird Tales writer.

After my earlier mention of C.L. Moore I decided to once again pick up a volume of her collected short stories from my dino pile, where also the works of Howard, Vance, Leiber, Dunsany and Lovecraft reside.

Tonight I read the third of Moore's Jirel Of Joiry stories, Black God's Shadow, from long ago 1934. Here, the yellow-eyed and redheaded female warrior protag travels through her dungeon portal to a hell-like landscape on a mercy mission to release the soul of a man she had condemned for eternity in a previous story.

She journeys through a nocturnal landscape of shifting shadows, murmuring brooks, whispering winds and distorted reflections in a mostly travelogue narrative. In common with previous stories, Joiry overcomes antagonist forces not by Conan-esque brute force but by her powers of determined feminine passion. Her ancient Roman legionary armor and two-edged sword figure into things only a little. Overall this is above par pulp-era entertainment. Jirel is a good example of a female warrior being written as a woman and not merely as a man with tits.

I read Jirel Meets Magic, a novelette of swords and sorcery by C.L. Moore, a contemporary of Lovecraft and Robert Howard, and a woman author. Moore wrote about six of these stories for Weird Tales about a yellow eyed, red-headed female warrior. I'll be reading them for the next week or two.

Jirel Meets Magic has the woman protag following a fugitive wizard who has fleed through a portal into a violet-skied otherworldly realm. She encounters an exotic sorceress at her marble tower abode, itself a hub linking numerous realms full of strange beings behind closed doors. Jirel combats both wizard and sorceress in a tale where the hero is characterized by her strength of resolution, rather than by Conan-like physical prowess. 3/5 dinos for pulp lovers.