/lit/ - Literature

I read Leigh Brackett's 1948 novella The Beast-Jewel Of Mars, in an exotic Martian setting of ancient cities, dead seas, crumbling wharves, bandit kingdoms and bare-breasted princesses.

The tough Earthman protag seeks the secret of 'Shanga,' a process by which men revert back to the primitive state, back to ape and lizard, a process his girlfriend had begun before disappearing.

Brackett is an entertainer and crowd pleaser who writes in a hard boiled style from the likes of Dash Hammett. An iron-willed hero, spear toting Martian heavies, femme fatales and fisticuffs. The reverting properties of the Beast-Jewel allows some primordial Lovecraft and Howard-like spectacles and barbaric/civilised dichotomy. This gets 4/5 dinos, those who liked Bradbury's Martian Chronicles should look up Brackett.

I read Leigh Brackett's 1948 novella The Beast-Jewel Of Mars, in an exotic Martian setting of ancient cities, dead seas, crumbling wharves, bandit kingdoms and bare-breasted princesses.

The tough Earthman protag seeks the secret of 'Shanga,' a process by which men revert back to the primitive state, back to ape and lizard, a process his girlfriend had begun before disappearing.

Brackett is an entertainer and crowd pleaser who writes in a hard boiled style from the likes of Dash Hammett. An iron-willed hero, spear toting Martian heavies, femme fatales and fisticuffs. The reverting properties of the Beast-Jewel allows some primordial Lovecraft and Howard-like spectacles and barbaric/civilised dichotomy. This gets 4/5 dinos, those who liked Bradbury's Martian Chronicles should look up Brackett.