Jewel of Tharn

Richard Blade #3

by Jeffrey Lord

Savage Women...

the trumpet blasted and the women stormed into the arena like a tidal wave. Teeth glinted white and feral in contorted faces; breasts of every size and type bobbled and jounced as female struggled against female to claim her quarry.

It was one vast mass of flesh, naked and unshielded, muscles tensed, faces contorted. Some of the women cried, some howled like lost demons, some laughed wildly, working away in deadly, writhing silence. All of them placed the men in the subordinate position and mounted them brutally, cuffing and kicking their victims into total submission.

All of the men were down and conquered. But this was only the start. The sacrificial fire was lit and Sutha proclaimed: "Let the sacred slaying begin!" It was nearly time for Blade to make his move...

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Sword and Planet, Fiction, Pulp, Science Fiction

221 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1973

About the author

A house pseudonym used by multiple authors including:
Manning Lee Stokes
Roland Green
Lyle Kenyon Engel
Ray Faraday Nelson
Richard D. Nolane
Christian Mantey
Arnaud Dalrune
Yves Chéraqui
Gerald Moreau
Paul Couturiau
Amelina Defontaine
Didier Le Gais
Yves Bulteau
Raymond Audemard
Nadine Monfils
Patrick Eris
Nemo Sandman

Reviews

[K.T. Katzmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listen to the story of THE DICK FORETOLD IN PROPHECY.



So this book is all about dicks. It stars Richard Blade, kind of a dick who is randomly sent to other dimensions by England to find cool stuff. Arriving naked in another dimension, a man with no genitalia sees Richard's dick and knows that it is The One Dick To Rule Them All.

They both go to a smarter neuter, who realizes that Blade could pass as THE DICK FORETOLD IN PROPHECY. Herein begins their machinations to have Richard crowned the Dick King. His Dick is called into question and demanded to be presented time and time again.

The smart neuter manipulates Blade by capturing his slave girl lover. Halfway through sex with her, the she turns out to just be a sex hologram. I hate when that happens. That's why I don't go to Tijuana anymore. To free the real slave, Blade must do as the neuter says.

I'm not over-exaggerating the preponderance of phalluses, by the way. The kingdom to conquer is the KINGDOM OF THE DICKS. Dick-shaped towers stand with "gargoyles . . . in the shape of sharp, thrusting phalli." I have no idea how the stone gives the impression of thrusting. Maybe it has anime speed lines.

Inside the city lives 929 women, women who wear dick jewelry and probably have dick tattoos. Blade pretends to be THE DICK FORETOLD IN PROPHECY, he who will come and Give The Dick to The Twin Queens. After a ritual raping of the small-dicked inbreed submen by the city's women, Blade gets down to business.

Blade must participate in the Ritual of Ravishment. With the whole city watching, both queens wait inside a giant glass dick chamber with a artistic dick scultped on the dick-shaped door. Inside, the queens will recline on couches with dick-swords in hand, waiting for THE DICK FORETOLD IN PROPHECY to fight them with bare hands, disarm them, and rape them in order to become their Dick King.

The first queen dies as soon as she's penetrated due to a poison by the other queen, because OF COURSE THERE ARE POISONS THAT DO THAT, RIGHT? Blade's combat with the other queen . . . basically goes just as I've said, and she really enjoys it halfway through because this entire novel is someone's weird sexual fantasy they had while falling asleep in a pile of to Zardoz.

Subsequently, Blade sleeps with all 927 remaining women, but makes sure he doesn't spend too much time with any one woman in order to not get the queen jealous. A Dick King has to do what a Dick King has to do.

It's . . . good to be the Dick King?

Yet the barbarians gather, because the crafty neuter from earlier has a plan. He will take the Dick Kingdom so that he can use its resources to locate a rare surgeon and get him a dick! It's now on, and Blade trains the women to fight, finding their sexual-starved desire for dick makes them bloodthirsty maniacs.

There is a scene where a woman plays hooky from combat training in order to get drunk and get as much subman dick as she can, and is punished by decapitation and having her head mounted on a giant stone dick as a warning to others. You can teach an entire semester of gender studies from the gender politics of this novel.

We get a Quantum Leap ending. After all the war and rape and corpse rape and threatened beastmen gang rapes, Richard Blade manipulates the parts of Dick Kingdom society into dying en masse so that he can build a new, strong Dick Kingdom.

He's kind of a dick.

But, just as our Dick King learns that, yes, dicks get women pregnant and he can expect a new heir to the Dick Throne, he is dragged away back to Earth, for debriefing and another presumably dick-filled adventure across the cosmos!

I read this on a lark, having heard it described online. I read the first one in the series I could get my hands on, having assumed a 1969 men's adventure novel would not have the meticulously built continuity of a George R. R. Martin book. Having learned that there are thirty-seven novels in the series, I started to wonder. Is this the one Blade fans call "the dick one?" Is #3 an outlier, or is the sexual politics just as overtly 60's weird in Slave of Sarma or Liberator of Jedd? Did I read the Highlander 2 of the franchise, or is it just getting started? Do we learn what happens to Dick Kingdom in Richard Blade #19, Looters of Tharn?

And do I have the courage to find out? Between the ankle breakers (good and bad) and White Squaw: Sioux Wildfire, is K.T. Katzmann sick of trashy books?

I'm going to take a Their Eyes Were Watching God break, but I'm probably going to dive back in at some point. I love these novels, even as trashy and misogynist as they are, as long as there is something absurd to make fun of for someone else's enjoyment.

I'm doing this for you. I blame Joel Hodson. He made it look cool.

In the end, Jewels of Tharn (written by Manning Lee Stokes, because who wouldn't publish this under a pseudonym?) is a standard sword-and-sorcery tale in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs with so much of the author's kinks shoved in it bulges. It's uncomfortable and ridiculous, and it will be gobbled up by those who love a certain type of bad book.

Oh, and this has an official audiobooks, if you want to drive cross-country while listening to the tales of high adventure. And dicks.

[Leila Anani · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the third out of some 37 pulp fiction adventures of the hero Richard Blade.

Zoe breaks up with Blade because he is absent for great lengths of time and refuses to tell her anything, being sworn to silence by the official secrets act. Besides he could hardly tell her he was shagging everything female with a pulse in a variety of barbarian universes could he?

He's saved from brooding when J and Leighton command him into the X-Dimension once more to explore for his country. I'm not convinced by the purpose of this. Leighton has created a computer than can transport a mind into various parallel dimensions (all so far primitive and barbaric) he has no control over the destination. He fears invasion of Earth so he sends in their top agent to explore. Ummmm since none of these worlds have such a device its unclear how/why they'd invade, but hey-ho. Just treat it like the stargate and on with the plot!

Blade enters the savage land of Tharn. Years ago the women overthrew the men so we have THEY - an elite force of stunningly beautiful amazon women (through eugenics) who keep a group of male captives Lordsmen for breeding purposes. The exiled men Pethcines live in a gorge and await the time when they can invade and overthrow THEY. The women are served by artificially bred neuters who in turn oversee primitive cephoids who are monkey like cave men with little intelligence.

The neuters have technology - they use holograms 'simuli' for no apparent reason I can fathom. They also have an expiry date like something out of Logan's Run and can be terminated by stepping onto a platform and vaporised. They farm a substance called Mani which can be both eaten as food, woven into cloth and armour, or made into the equivalent of plastic. This whole sc-fi arc and the bit about the bizarre power source feel like they are from a completely different novel and don't fit with the main drive of the story.

Blade is discovered by the evil Honcho a neuter with the mind of a man and obsessed with sex. His master plan is to rule Tharn, find a surgeon to make him a man and then presumably throw himself on some of the women. He makes Blade pretend to be Mazda messiah of They and sweetens the deal with Zulekia, a Maiduke (hand maiden) whom he's got hold of after she was kicked out for engaging in sex with the Lordsman.

Blade after seeing no "indication of mutantcy" is taken with her "pneumatic" flesh, "delicate effluvium" and nipples like "infinitesimal buttons" jumps into bed with her, completely aware that Honcho is watching and getting off on the whole thing.

Honcho then sends Blade out to the Pethcines where he becomes the sex slave of evil king Org's insatiable daughter Totha. They then send him as a spy into Urcit - City of They.

After a public gang rape and massacre of the Lordsman. Blade is sent unarmed into the Arena to face the twin rulers Isma and Astar.

- told "your phallus! that is your weapon. I warned you. you must disarm them and ravish them separately." Isma however has poisoned her sister so that she dies as soon as Blade ravishes her. He then moves on to rape Isma who falls for his manly charms and makes him her consort.

The rest of the novel charts the varying factions as they align for one almighty hack and slash battle at the end with severed heads galore, scythe chariots and look out platforms comprised of corpses.

Blade is of course triumphant, gets the girl (Zulekia, the only one that isn't evil, insane or pissed at him) finds he's knocked her up but then gets transported back to our world where he gets on with his life and finds a new girlfriend in Ann Watkins an "eminently sensible girl with no nonsense about love or marriage"

WOW if that is the most convoluted, overcomplicated plot ever, I don't know what is - you can tell its penned by multiple authors. the one who swallowed a dictionary stepping in for the hilarious meeting with Zulekia.

There's a bizarrely high level of sex in this one - Blade gets six women as opposed to the usual three or four! It's not particularly explicitly written, but adult themes are there at every turn - females gang raping men, male sex slaves, rape, voyeurism and lots of linkage between sex and death.

There's also quite a high level of gore particularly at the end. You want sexy barbaric splendour look no further.

This is pure pulp fiction escapism. Story wise its a complete mess throwing everything at us: spy fiction, science fiction, erotica, ancient historical fiction, fantasy... (there's a magic sword with special jewels that makes an appearance but its importance never explored) The pace is exhausting and the parade of characters seemingly endless. Blade is not a particularly sympathetic character, he's oversexed, misogynistic, and somewhat cruel here as we see him start to begin to lose his humanity as his trips to the X-Dimension become more frequent.

The writing is in places hilariously bad and there are a few mistakes with the names, but that along with the stupid names (the main villains are called Honcho and Org!) is all part of its charm. I have a bit of a soft spot for the series though I really can't pinpoint exactly why. If you want babes, blades and rollicking fast paced adventure, with lashings of sex and violence the Richard Blade series are the books to get.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just picked up a handful of this series, and I'm glad to see that they've got an interesting blend of Sword and Sorcery alongside some other pulpy genres. Our hero, Richard Blade, is sort of a spy mixed with a Time Machine/Pellucidar dimensional traveler. He's beamed from our world to a selection of "ages undreamed of" to scout them for colonial exploitation.

In this particular adventure we get Blade's antics on a world ruled by a sort-of Amazonian matriarchy alongside a gender neutral species that are nevertheless fascinated by gender. This sort of gender-politics tale was a staple of the classic science fiction milieu, but it was becoming less of a fixture of the genre by the early 70s. This particular example has the advantage of a more modern prose style, which makes it more readable than the 1950s versions of this type of story. This later publication also gives it the freedom to be substantially more lurid, which it eagerly avails itself of.

This would all make for a middle-of-the-road Star Trek TOS episode, and this story is by no means a classic, but I had a decent time with this. I don't think there are too many books in the Sword and Planet and Espionage subgenre, so if that sounds like an interesting time, I think it's worth a try. (I also have to give this book props for teaching me the SAT-level vocab words "glacis" and "mulct".)

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author(s) hit on a curious and useful formula that justifies the episodic adventure of sword and planet stories, and then uses it to splat out power fantasy men's adventure with a side of sadism and sociopathy.

I suppose that the original John Carter adventures were their own brand of men's adventure and power fantasy. But still...like the Gor novels, this is on another level.

And in terms of 'power fantasy', this goes all out. Richard Blade and his dingus are objects of literal worship, both from fertility-hungry women and jealous biological neuters. And this here 'real man'--not the depleted males of the society--takes control and gets things done in a crisis.

It is all thoroughly adolescent and silly until you realize that Blade is entirely willing to destroy 90% of the population to save one woman that he became attached to only because he went out of his way to get laid that one afternoon. And unlike John Carter, he was not exactly loyal.

Other than that? Meh. The entire story is so bent towards prurient topics that it gets in the way of everything else.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blade finds himself in a decadent world in which sex is ritualistic and not necessary for procreation. There are genetically altered beast-men, sexless servants, and men are kept in a cage. The technology is of a very advanced variety but the people are static and dwindling in number, intelligence, and drive. Like cream, Blade manages to rise to the top in this dire mess. Of course the women he is forced to sleep with are of the most beautiful variety and he is always virile and readily able to satiate their every whim.

I do not recall ever reading of any kind of Jewel to give this title it's name. Additionally the cover seems to be stock artwork and doesn't appear to be relevant to any scene in the story. In a couple of instances it compares the armaments to Roman gear but...meh.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I had hoped. I don't really recommend this title. Well, there are 34 more to go, they cannot all be like this one...

[Arminion · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never considered books about Richard Blade masterpieces, but they were good for what they were. They were trashy, but also short and entertaining. Well, this one IS trash... literally.

I always thought that these stories were about Blade fixing some problem in a remote dimension with sex thrown in as a good measure. With this one it seems it's opposite. It seems like a book about sex with everything else thrown in as an afterthought. I mean, there was plenty of sex in the previous books too, but at least it was somehow.... subtle. Blade was restraining himself most of the time. Here, not so much. Every encounter Blade has with a woman ends in sex after just a couple of minutes, like in a porno. This obsession with sex goes so far that we even have an entire city dedicated to human penis ruled by... you guessed it... beautiful women. It is here where I closed the book.
Not to mention there was a lot of same stuff as in previous books. Blade is captured, he is held prisoner of some foreign power, meets some nobility, kills some champions, has sex with the nobility etc etc. It was nothing new and it made the entire book boring, even with all the ridiculous sex scenes thrown in. And I kept asking myself: is it gonna be like this for the next 20 books?!

In conclusion: this was bad... really bad. I actually felt ashamed reading this. I wasn't entertained, I didn't feel like I learned anything and the porn didn't turn me on, it just made me roll my eyes. I won't be reading any of the next books (to be frank, I don't know why I even started).

[Paschalis]

elibrary

[Jonathan Stevens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cheesier than #2.

[Rev. J. Arthur Rank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, not as good as I remember from when I was a horny teenager...

[Simon Gelling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Blade travels to new worlds and never fails to find danger and love. Good quick men's adventure read. Recommended