Jirel of Joiry

by C.L. Moore

C. L. Moore created Jirel, ruler of Joiry, in reaction to the beefy total-testosterone blood-and-thunder tales of '30s pulp magazines, but Jirel is no anti-Conan. She's a good Catholic girl, stubbornly purposeful, relentless in pursuit of enemies or vengeance, hard-boiled and a little stupid, and cannot be distracted by mere physical attractiveness. Indeed, in Jirel's world, beauty = decadence = corruption. Were these stories written today, inevitably Jirel would have a lot of hot sex, but as they were first published in Weird Tales between 1934-1939, sexual attraction is mostly only vividly implied. No loss. Jirel's journeys through unnatural landscapes and her battles with supernatural opponents are still wonderful to read, and though newcomers Red Sonja and Xena are more famous now, Jirel rules as the archetypal, indomitable redheaded swordswoman in chain mail and greaves, swinging her "great two-edged sword."

Contents:

· Jirel Meets Magic · nv Weird Tales Jul ’35
· Black God’s Kiss · nv Weird Tales Oct ’34
· Black God’s Shadow · nv Weird Tales Dec ’34
· The Dark Land · nv Weird Tales Jan ’36
· Hellsgarde · nv Weird Tales Apr ’39

Genres: Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Pulp, Classics

175 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
Catherine Lucille Moore was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, as C. L. Moore. She was one of the first women to write in the genre, and paved the way for many other female writers in speculative fiction.

Moore met Henry Kuttner, also a science fiction writer, in 1936 when he wrote her a fan letter (mistakenly thinking that "C. L. Moore" was a man), and they married in 1940.
Afterwards, almost all of their stories were written in collaboration under various pseudonyms, most commonly Lewis Padgett (another pseudonym, one Moore often employed for works that involved little or no collaboration, was Lawrence O'Donnell).

Reviews

[Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note, Feb. 26, 2015: While skimming over the stories again, as part of adapting and expanding this review for another site, and with the benefit of a number of years of further reflection, I decided that this collection fully merits an additional star, raising it to five!

Originally published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in the late 1930s, Moore's five stories ("Black God's Kiss," "Black God's Shadow," "Jirel Meets Magic," "The Dark Land," and "Hellsgarde") featuring beautiful swordswoman Jirel, lady ruler of a feudal fiefdom in Dark Ages France, were as germinal in the development of sword-and-sorcery fantasy as the work of her contemporary, Robert E. Howard. Jirel is a strong and complex character, the first in prose fantasy's long and honorable list of butt-kicking heroines (Marion Zimmer Bradley dedicated her first Sword and Sorceress anthology to "every girl who grew up wanting to be Jirel)," tough but not brutal, proud and hot-tempered, but possessing a gentle side, too. The above description calls her "a good Catholic girl," and it's true that, like most people in her time, she's a loyal daughter of the Church --but she's not especially religious and wouldn't make any claims to sainthood! (And I wouldn't characterize her as even "a little stupid," either.) Though she's a veteran fighter of conventional battles, these stories involve her mostly in adventures of another sort, confrontations with dark sorcery, usually in otherworldly, extra-dimensional realms.

Moore's prose style here was influenced by Poe and Lovecraft (and she's fully their equal); her plotting and her creation of vivid fantasy worlds, all significantly different from the others, are highly original, and she excels at evoking a mood of strangeness and menace --Jirel's approach to Hellsgarde castle is a masterpiece of this sort. Some critics have found fault with Jirel's having romantic feelings toward her enemy in the first story, Guillaume, considering this a betrayal of feminist orthodoxy; but I think her complex feelings are quite plausible psychologically, and lend the story a depth and tension that it wouldn't have otherwise.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

She was a creature of the wildest paradox, this warrior lady of Joiry, hot as a red coal, chill as steel, satiny of body and iron of soul. The set of her chin was firm, but her mouth betrayed a tenderness she would have died before admitting. But she was raging now.

Before Red Sonja and before Xena inflamed the imagination of teenage boys with their skimpy outfits and their curvaceous bodies, there was a true mail-clad, sword swinging warrior maid that should have taken the sword & sorcery genre by storm... and she did made quite a splash, with some very good novellas published in the pulp magazines of the 1930s. Jirel of Joiry is mostly forgotten today, which is a pity because I believe C. L. Moore is just as good as her contemporaries Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, with whom she shares some sensibilities to violent, dark and weird themes.

So, who is this lady Jirel? She controls a castle and a mercenary band in medieval France / Burgundy in the year 1500. She leads the battle from the front and refuses to be a modest and obedient servant to the powerful men of her age.
Something her neighbour Guillaume will learn to his own sorrow when he tries to kiss a captive Jirel without asking for her permission first.

Guillaume scarcely heard her. He was still staring, as most men stared when they first set eyes upon Jirel of Joiry. She was tall as most men, and as savage as the wildest of them, and the fall of Joiry was bitter enough to break her heart as she stood snarling curses up at her tall conqueror. The face above her mail might not have been fair in a woman’s head-dress, but in the steel setting of her armor it had a biting, sword-edged beauty as keen as a flash of blades. The red hair was short upon her high, defiant head, and the yellow blaze of her eyes held fury as a crucible holds fire.

And so we start on our journey on this collection that gathers in one volume all the separate stories featuring Jirel that were published in the pulps:

Black God’s Kiss [1934]

Jirel descends into Hell in search of a weapon against Guillaume, the handsome bastard who defeated her in battle and now thinks he can claim her body as his prize: ... she had wanted him to understand what it cost to take Jirel’s kiss unbidden.
Jirel’s passage alone into the underworld is filled with both real and imaginary nightmares, her only strength against them being the white hot anger against the abuser and her steel determination not to go down without a fight.

Black God’s Shadow [1934]

After exacting her revenge, Jirel is haunted by the ghost of the man she sent down into Hell. So she descends once again the secret stairs to the dark world beneath her castle, to fight once again the Black God, this time for the soul of her former tormentor.

She sobbed on, knowing herself in hopeless conflict with the vastness of death and oblivion, a tiny spark of warmth and life fighting vainly against the dark engulfing it; the perishable spark, struggling against inevitable extinction. For the black god was all death and nothingness, and the powers he drew upon were without limit – and all she had to fight him with was the flicker within her called life.

Jirel Meets Magic [1935]

Jirel might be a force to be reckoned with when in full armour and riding a war horse through the broken gates of a besieged castle, but she can do little against wizardry as she is tricked into jumping through a magic portal and into a world controlled by sorcerers Giraud and Jarisme.

She saw jagged black mountains with purple dawns rising behind them and stars in unknown figures across the dark skies; she saw gray seas flat and motionless beneath gray clouds; she saw smooth meadows rolling horizonward under the glare of double suns. All these and many more awoke to the magic of Jarisme’s flute, and melted away to others.

Once again, only Jirel’s fiery heart and steel resolution will carry her through this shape-shifting reality.

The Dark Land [1936]

Jirel lies dying in her castle after receiving a grievous wound in battle, when she is pulled by a vortex of fire before a giant statue sitting on a black throne in yet another land of darkness. Then the statue starts speaking. It seems that her previous exploits in the underworld have brought her to the attention of Pav, king of Romne, who wants to make Jirel his wife.

“Strong you may be, but not as strong as I, Jirel of Joiry, and when I command, henceforth obey!”
“Never touch me again, you black hell-dweller! Before God, you’d never have dared if you’d left me a knife to defend myself with! I swear I’ll tear the eyes out of your head if I feel the weight of your hand on me again! Yours, you filthy wizard? You’ll never have me – never, if I must die to escape you! By my name I swear it!”

This Pav should have paid better attention to those previous adventures: no man can ‘command’ this early feminist icon to obedience, no amount of magic can break Jirel’s determination to be the sole master of her body and soul.

Quest of the Starstone [1937]

Jirel of Joiry joins forces with the other signature pulp hero of C. L. Moore: Northwest Smith, gunslinger and vagabond among the stars. Together, they must fight a powerful wizard in his own realm for possession of a magic talisman.

Jirel, the warrior-maid of Joiry, leaped through the splintered ruins, dashing the red hair from her eyes, grinning with exertion, gripping her two-edged sword.

A more straightforward sword & sorcery fare, with a dash of early planetary romance, than the previous supernatural horror stories.

Hellsgarde [1939]

Jirel goes alone to a haunted castle, searching for a cursed treasure that she needs to exchange for the life of some of her mercenaries captured in battle: It was not unfitting – dead men guarding a dead castle in the barren deadlands of the swamp.

An example of saving the best story for last, although I liked the rest of the collection well enough.
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The stories are maybe not the most original I’ve read in the genre, and the prose does shift towards the colour purple, but Jirel is a truly memorable character. In almost all her adventures, Jirel is alone and has to rely only on her wits and on her will. Rarely her problems can be solved by the double-edge of her sword, especially when they are of a magical nature or crushing her with existential dread.
Her independence, her self-reliance and her refusal to use her beauty as an argument single Jirel out from the subsequent crop of pin-up ‘bad’ girls that pose in the comic books in particular.
The closest scion of Jirel, a warrior-maid leading a mercenary band and fighting against supernatural forces I encountered in a book that I’ve read many years ago: Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

I may bump this up a star (because GR lacks half stars). The first story (a novella), "Black God's Kiss," is a classic that I highly recommend. It has a kind of weirdness that reminds me of Dante and Machen. The second story, "Black God's Shadow," is basically the first story rewritten, but not nearly as good. I increasingly lost interest as the collection went on. I kept feeling like I was reading the story, or parts of the same story, over and over. Moore is first rate when it comes to descriptions of strange landscapes, but characters -- at least the main one, Jirel, are flat. Moore gets so wrapped up in descriptions that the character of Jirel becomes static, a placeholder, until Moore realizes that story movement needs to proceed. Moorcock claims that Moore was better at this knd of story than Howard. I don't think so. The canny Cimmerian knew when to smash someone's skull, and I would rate the descriptive powers of Howard as equal, and better employed. Less can be more when you're telling a story. Jirel tends to drift along going nowhere in particular and not getting there very fast. Historically, as a pulp writer with a female hero, I would say Moore is definitely important, but you could probably get by with "Black God's Kiss," and move on to a Milla Jovovich movie to see where we are now.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just recently, I had some words to say regarding the stories that Golden Age sci-fi/fantasy author C.L. Moore placed in "Weird Tales" magazine, during the 1930s, that dealt with the futuristic smuggler/spaceman Northwest Smith. But as most fans of Catherine Lucille Moore will readily tell you, Smith was not the only character from this beloved writer who made semiregular appearances in the legendary pulp that decade. From October '34 until April '39, Moore also regaled readers with a wholly different character: Jirel of Joiry. Whereas the Smith series runs to a total of 11 stories, starting in November '33 and winding up with a belated coda in June '57, the Jirel series consists of a mere half dozen tales. The Smith series is an amalgam of sci-fi, fantasy and horror, set in a futuristic, space-age setting, whereas the Jirel stories must be deemed hard-core fantasy, with a generous dollop of Lovecraftian terror thrown in, and set in what seems to be medieval France...or earlier (in one of the tales, the author tells us that the Roman empire had recently fallen, putting things at around A. D. 476, although that strikes the reader as being a good 800 years too early). And most significantly, whereas Smith is something of a man's man, Jirel is all woman; a redheaded, yellow-eyed hellcat, quick to anger but ever loyal to the men she leads in battle. It is inferred in the stories that Jirel is something of a master swordswoman, too, although the menaces that she confronts in her adventures here are ones that a mere blade would have very little effectiveness against.

Gathering all but one of the Jirel stories in a single volume is Ace Books' "Jirel of Joiry" (1982), a collection so very fine that it was chosen for inclusion in James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock's "Fantasy: The 100 Best Books" (as Ace's "Northwest Smith" collection was, too, by the way). In that excellent overview volume, the authors tell us that "C.L. Moore excels in the evocation of a pervasive, miasmic atmosphere of evil," and the menaces that poor Jirel faces here are a stunning bunch of fantasy creations, indeed. In all five stories, the sovereign lady of Castle Joiry somehow finds herself in otherworldly or otherdimensional settings where she must fight for not only her life, but her eternal soul as well. A superstitious woman, and yet one who clings to her crucifix as to a life preserver, Jirel is yet remarkably cool and, if not fearless, then still willing to (literally) go through hell for those she loves and leads. A refreshingly distaff complement to the Conan tales that Robert E. Howard was then placing in "Weird Tales," the Jirel stories are mysterious, atmospheric, beautifully written, emotionally complex and altogether winning. Whereas Howard's barbarian was more apt to cut and hew his way to victory in his bloody and violent adventures, Jirel usually wins through by dint of sheer spunk and an indomitable drive to keep going and just stay alive. She is quite a gal, to put it mildly, and it is to be regretted that Moore didn’t write additional stories concerning the first lady of Joiry, after her marriage to Henry Kuttner in 1940. Still, the half dozen tales that she did give the world concerning her most famous female protagonist live on, almost 80 years now since their initial release.

As to the stories themselves, the first Jirel tale, "Black God's Kiss," from the October '34 issue (for which it copped the front cover illustration, by the great Margaret Brundage, with the blurb "the weirdest story ever told"!), finds Jirel in desperate straits. Castle Joiry has fallen to the army of the handsome conqueror Guillaume, who takes a hot-blooded interest in its liege lady. Desperate for a weapon with which she might take a suitable vengeance on her conqueror, Jirel descends a corkscrew stairway beneath her castle's lowest dungeon and enters an otherdimensional, nighttime realm that, it is very strongly suggested, just might be hell itself. Here, a blind woman leapfrogs through a marsh, a herd of blind, white horses gallop eternally (a most haunting image, let me tell you), and squishy, slavering things nip at Jirel's feet as she glides, dreamlike, over the forbidding landscape. Ultimately, she does find the weapon she seeks, in the form of an osculation from the titular black god of this domain. But, as Jirel learns upon her return, revenge is sometimes not quite as satisfying a thing as one expects. A marvelously atmospheric and haunting tale, thus, to kick off this collection.

And next up we have the story's direct sequel, "Black God's Shadow," from the December '34 issue. Here, Jirel, grieving over the late Guillaume after belatedly realizing her love for her former foe, receives a dream message from him. His soul is in torment in that hellish domain of the Black God, and so down goes Jirel again, this time not on a mission of vengeance, but of mercy. Over the infernal, nighttime landscape, weirdly illuminated by strange constellations and the mottled light of a greenish moon ("…the moon-clouds parted again and the dead green face looked blankly down once more, the cloud-masses crawling across it like corruption across a corpse's face…"), Jirel follows Guillaume's tortured cries, as well as his flitting shadow. She does battle with a clutching tree (one of the few foes in this book susceptible to her sword's edge) and, most fearfully, with the Black God itself. If anything, this sequel is even more steeped in uncanny atmosphere than the first story had been, and the reader will have no way to anticipate what can possibly happen next, in this truly fantastic wonderhell...or, as Moore refers to it, a setting "more baffling and unreal than a dream...."

And, if anything, the third Jirel outing, "Jirel Meets Magic" (July '35), is even more of a fantasy kaleidoscope than the others! After she and her men capture the castle of Guischard, it is noticed that the pile's evil wizard, Giraud, has somehow made his escape. But upon entering a mysterious, hidden window in an upper chamber, Jirel is somehow thrust into a fantastic landscape ruled over by the sorceress Jarisme, with Giraud a mere accomplice at Jarisme's side. Here, female dryads expire upon the death of their tree, transparent snakes slide through oneiric floral arbors, and the high tower of the sorceress has an uncanny knack of jumping around the landscape! In the story's most memorable scene, Jirel is locked in a chamber with many doors, each one of which, when opened, offering the dazed swordswoman a vista of a different alien landscape. And later on, the denizens of some of those planets--an outrageous-looking lot that Lovecraft himself might have smiled upon with approbation--are magically teleported to Jarisme's tower in the quivering flesh, to witness the torture that the sorceress has devised for Jirel. Yes, between the two evil magicians and these otherworldly monstrosities, the first lady of Joiry surely does have her hands full in this truly mind-boggling adventure.

And matters only grow worse for Jirel in her next outing, "The Dark Land" (January '36). While lying on her deathbed after suffering a pike wound in battle, Jirel is suddenly snatched away and miraculously healed by a being only known as Pav, ruler of the dark domain of the story's title. It seems that Jirel's exploits in those other fantastic realms have somehow come to Pav's attention ("...You have traveled too often in forbidden lands," he tells Jirel, "to be ignored by us who live in them...."). Pav, it appears, wants nothing less than to make Jirel his queen, in a land where spatial perspectives are not as on Earth, and where instantaneous travel is achieved merely by looking at one's goal. Rebellious as always, even against the all-powerful being who has rescued her from her own deathbed, Jirel enters into an uneasy alliance with Pav's rival, a skull-faced witch who seems to be the only other inhabitant in this Dark Land. And before Jirel is able to make her return to the land she knows, she comes to realize the secret motivations of the corpse-visaged witch, and ultimately discovers the exact nature of Pav himself...or should I say, "itself"?

Closing out this collection is Moore's final tale of Jirel of Joiry, "Hellsgarde" (April '39). In this one, a score of Jirel's men have been captured by the weaselly Guy of Garlot, who will return them to Joiry only if Jirel successfully goes to the abandoned, quicksand-surrounded castle of Hellsgarde and finds the treasure that has reputedly been hidden there for over 200 years. Thus, Jirel makes the attempt, and upon entering the supposedly haunted pile, discovers that it is occupied by a very odd, borderline deformed group of people who eye her with a secret and amused knowledge. The reader automatically assumes this odd lot to be vampires of a sort, which is a surmise not too far off the mark, as it turns out, although it is hardly blood that these very strange folks feed upon. And besides these oddballs, Jirel must also here contend with that ravening castle ghost, who, in one memorable scene, vortexes the poor lass into still another otherdimensional realm. Dripping with atmosphere and weird menace, replete with mysteriously motivated characters and capped with one doozy of a closing sentence, "Hellsgarde" brings this classic fantasy collection to a close in a most effective manner, indeed.

But wait! As I mentioned earlier, there were six tales of Jirel of Joiry, and that missing tale was also conspicuously absent from the Northwest Smith collection, as well. For somehow, "Quest of the Starstone," from the November '37 "Weird Tales," and which marked the first collaboration between Moore and her future husband, somehow conflates both the medieval swordswoman and the futuristic spaceman in one adventure! Up until recently, this tale had not exactly been easy to find, but I have finally done so, and greatly look forward now to finally perusing this lost story, featuring both of Moore's most famous characters. Stay tuned....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of C. L. Moore....)

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jirel rimase seduta sul bordo, per un momento, con i piedi sull'apertura, raccogliendo tutto il proprio coraggio per lanciarsi nel buio piủ profondo. Quando infine non osò piu attendere, per timore che un altro istante di esitazione non le avrebbe più permesso di discendere, respirò profondamente, strinse forte la spada, e si calò nel buio.

Prima che Red Sonja infiammasse insieme ad altre eroine fantasy l'immaginazione dei giovani adolescenti con abiti succinti e corpi sinuosi, c'era una guerriera in cotta di maglia che brandiva una spada, pronta a dominare il genere sword & sorcery dei racconti pubblicati nelle riviste pulp degli anni '30.
Jirel di Joiry è oggi per lo più dimenticata. Signora di un castello e comandante di una banda di mercenari in un reame fantastico vagamente reminiscente della Francia medievale, Jirel è un'intrepida, orgogliosa e indomita amazzone pronta a battersi con la sua spada contro qualsiasi invasore e ad avventurarsi in pericolosi mondi arcani o infernali.

Con l'impeto e l'ardore portò la battaglia attraverso i difensori asserragliati sotto l`arcata, che indietreggiarono davanti al possente destriero e alla guerriera urlante. La spada turbinosa di Jirel e le zampe dello stallone aprirono una breccia agli uomini di Joiry, e finalmente nel cortile di Guischard si riversarono le orde dei vincitori.

Il bacio del Dio nero
Il castello di Jirel è stato preso, ma lei è risoluta. Per riconquistarlo e vendicarsi del signorotto nemico che ha osato baciarla senza permesso, la regina di Joiry è disposta a viaggiare fino all'inferno in cerca di un'arma con cui vendicarsi.

L’ombra del Dio nero
Jirel ritorna all'inferno per affrontare le conseguenze della sua precedente avventura.

Jirel e la magia
Jirel lascia le sue truppe per attraversare un portale magico e dare la caccia al mago diabolico Giraud, in un altro mondo dove farà la conoscenza di una driade morente e della terribile strega Jarisme.

La cerca della pietra stellare
Sul letto di morte, Jirel riceve una strana proposta da un Potere Esterno e dalla strega che lo serve. Racconto scritto a quattro mani dalla Moore e dal marito, Henry Kuttner, in cui compare, a fianco della regina guerriera, il terrestre Northwest Smith, avventuriero stellare protagonista a sua volta di un’altra celebre saga pulp della stessa autrice.

Hellsgarde
Jirel viaggia verso un castello infestato per ottenere un tesoro che intende scambiare come riscatto per la vita dei suoi venti soldati catturati.

Paralizzata dallo sbalordimento, guardò in basso, e vide, non già le pietre insanguinate del cortile, ma un tappeto di muschio al livello del pavimento. E su quel muschio scorse le tracce dei piedi insanguinati. Quella finestra era magica, e si apriva su terre sconosciute: ma di lì era passato l'uomo che aveva giurato di uccidere, e lei doveva seguirlo.

In quasi tutte le suddette avventure contenute in questa raccolta integrale, Jirel è sola e deve fare affidamento solo sulla sua intelligenza e la sua volontà, risolvendo raramente i problemi con il filo della spada, soprattutto quando sono di natura magica o la schiacciano in un tripudio di temi violenti, oscuri e bizzarri, e angoscia esistenziale. Purtroppo, le storie non sono tra le più originali che abbia letto nel genere, e la prosa prolissa insieme ad una protagonista sottile come carta velina e priva di profondità, hanno fatto sì che perdessi interesse arrivato neanche a metà libro, trascinandomi svogliatamente nella lettura. Peccato perché "Il bacio del Dio nero" ed “Hellsgarde” mi sono piaciuti molto ma, nonostante alcuni momenti intriganti ed una premessa interessante, l'esperienza complessiva si è rivelata essere, almeno per me, tutt'altro che memorabile.

-- Tu non mi conosci -- disse la donna, con voce gentile. -- Io sono la maga Jarisme, sovrana di questa terra. Credi di potermi comprare, donna della Terra?
Jirel sfoggiò il suo sorriso piú dolce e velenoso.
-- Perdonami -- mormorò soavemente. -- A prima vista non credevo che il tuo prezzo potesse essere elevato...

Menzione d’onore per la splendida illustrazione di copertina ad opera di Boris Vallejo, uno dei miei illustratori fantasy preferiti di sempre: totalmente fuori contesto rispetto al contenuto del libro e candidata al titolo di “Copertina più fuorviante di sempre” insieme a quella de “La svastica sul sole” pubblicata nel 1983 sempre dalla recidiva Editrice Nord.

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a fan. I read this as fantasy horror, and it seems very over-descriptive, yet flat and repetitive. Jirel is interesting purely for existing (a warrior lady written in the 1930s!), but there is zero depth to her as a person. Very little seems to happen in each story as well.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before there was Wonder Woman and before there was Supergirl...there was Jirel of Joiry. She was a warrior woman in a mythical medieval France and her enemies included gods, demons, and sorcerers. To me, what is most interesting about these stories is that they were written by C.L. Moore (1911-1987). C. L. stood for Catherine Lucille, and, although the readers of the 30s didn't know it, she was a woman, one of the first woman writers in science fiction and fantasy. Her early work was fantasy, similar to that of A. Merritt and Lovecraft. Later, she married Henry Kuttner and they collaborated on some of the best SF being written at the time.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of C.L. Moore or her stories until a friend lent me this book, which is a bit sad, since she seems to have been quite a figure. Specifically, she was one of the earliest women writers to enter into the sword-and-sorcery genre, publishing stories in the same magazines as Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.

Jirel of Joiry collects some of those stories, specifically the ones that deal with...Jirel of Joiry. Jirel, the ruler of a fictional kingdom located somewhere in medieval France, is very much what you might expect from a female version of a pulp protagonist. That is to say, she's a bit like Conan, if Conan were a woman. She is skilled, strong, attractive, and angry. Oh man, is Jirel angry. A number of the stories revolve around Jirel's quests to take revenge on someone for slighting her, and in several cases, it is her rage that allows her to prevail against supernatural odds.

Which is good, because the supernatural is what Jirel spends a lot of her time dealing with. With one exception, all of these stories feature Jirel journeying to another reality or plane of existence, where she does battle with the supernatural forces that live there. Those force are often powerful, terrifying, and largely incomprehensible to Jirel. Lou Anders points out that there is something almost Lovecraftian about the realms that Jirel visits, but philistine that I am, I have not read Lovecraft, and so cannot compare. They definitely are strange places, however.

The first two stories in this collection, "Black God's Kiss" and "Black God's Shadow"are very short on human (or even non-human) interaction, dealing mostly with Jirel's wanderings through strange, alien lands on her quests. Moore's descriptions of these strange dimensions are exquisite, but by the second story, I was starting to wonder if all Jirel stories were mostly tourist narratives. Of the two, I found the first one to be much more compelling, in part because I found Jirel's motivations for the quest much more convincing than I did in the second one.

In "Jirel Meets Magic", however, we finally get to see Jirel in a confrontation with forces that, if she cannot comprehend them, she can at least interact with them. This is about as classic sword-and-sorcery as you can get, with Jirel out on a quest to kill a wizard, something which is never easy, especially in these stories. Very fun stuff.

"The Dark Land" sets up an interesting confrontation, wherein Jirel's world-hopping comes back to haunt her. Of all of these stories, this one is the most "high fantasy" of them all, featuring a very new and very weird dimension that gives Jirel no end of grief, and may give the reader a headache as well.

The last story, "Hellsgarde", is interesting in that it takes place more or less on Earth (though the castle known as Hellsgarde is hardly a normal place). It's basically a haunted house story, with a bunch of weird characters for Jirel to interact with, a ghost, and a lot of creepy weirdness.

While Conan has made his mark far beyond the sword-and-sorcery genre, I get the impression that neither C.L. Moore nor her creation are nearly as well known. Which is a shame. Jirel of Joiry is every much a sword-and-sorcery protagonist equal to Conan, and ought to be remembered better. If you enjoy this type and style of writing, go pick this one up.

[Adam]

Famous as a woman's answer to the overwhelming and unquestioned masculinity fantasy of Howard's Conan, I was surprised to see that Jirel of Joiry was published within two years of the first Conan story. My experiences with Sword and Sorcery have been pretty dismal so far. Conan was inept and loathsome; Fafhrd was competent but loathsome; Imaro was briefly interesting in its cultural setting and racial politics but derivative of Conan's failures in the execution. Joanna Russ' Adventures of Alyx is a much later iteration of what Moore was doing--S&S with a female protagonist and a uh, woman's angle? But that book is sunk by its wild time- and genre-hopping and a frustratingly vague narrative voice. I didn't have super high hopes that Jirel would be much better, but I paid $3 for the ebook to check and make sure. (The one classic S&S book I genuinely enjoyed, Delany's Neveryon, basically guts the genre and uses it as a vehicle for postmodern musings and anthropology.)

I was not wrong. This is not a very good book by contemporary standards. It suffers from a classic early-fantasy novel problem: it's a portal fantasy, and the secondary world is described more than interacted with, as if the author is looking at a series of landscape images and trying to get across what they look like rather than telling a real story. That problem is compounded by its weird horror ambitions. Moore takes Conan's Lovecraft-lite space aliens and snake gods and explodes them to occupy most of the story. In the execution, she relies heavily on the classic Weird Horror boilerplate language. Everything is "strange" or "inhuman" or otherwise beyond description. Between the ineffective landscape depictions and these non-descriptions, there's not much to go on.

The opening of the first story makes it quite clear that, for all Moore's representational goals, feminism meant something different when she was writing. Jirel trades masculine bluster for feminine emotional wrangling almost completely. Let me just sketch out this first arc: Jirel is the warrior knight Lady in charge of Joiry, a castle that has been successfully attacked and taken by Guillame the conqueror. Guillame is Jirel's nemesis, and now that he's won he's an insufferable prick. In the first scene, he forces a kiss on her; she bites him on the neck, and her loathing for him burns hotter than ever. Then she escapes from the dungeon and enters a tunnel to a place worse than hell, looking for a weapon strong enough to destroy Guillame.

A bit clumsy, but I was on board when it seemed like Moore was interested in this scene only as a quick excuse to jump right into the demonic nightmare stuff. The tunnel does have an air of Berserk, Dore, and Dante about it, which maybe inflates expectations of what lies beyond. It's not a well-written tunnel sequence--just compare it to the shaft sequence in Annihilation and you'll see how much difference being a good writer and doing proper research makes. But it seemed like she had somewhere interesting to go with it. She didn't. Jirel gets a kiss from a black statue god (with an extremely racist illustration on the original cover, especially given the weird coercion element in the story as well) that makes her the bearer of a special alien curse I guess. Then she comes back up the tunnel and Guillame is like "hey where'd you go we were worried about you" and she gives him the kiss and he DIES in weird horror anguish. That would be bad but also kinda weird and neat if it weren't framed by the following revelation: Jirel realizes that the intense feeling she had for Guillame was not hatred but love! So she regrets killing him and reenters the demon tunnel in order to save his soul from the alien demon curse she laid on him to death.

So the first female-protagonist Sword and Sorcery novel is about a woman who is defeated by a stronger male warrior, is sexually assaulted by him, murders him with a poisoned kiss, realizes she was in love with him, and dedicates her life to saving his soul. It's definitely what you might have once conceived of as Woman's fantasy, but certainly the opposite of Feminist. Ooof. It's also just really quite badly written.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five novelettes(ish), rather different from each other in style. 'Black God's Kiss' is the first and famous, but I thought its sequel 'Black God's Shadow' went above and beyond into a profound experience for me: psychological sword & sorcery in a way the other pulp-era classics don't do, symbolist-surrealist in ways that are truly weird but resonant. It begins in Jirel's responses to a (coded) sexual assault and continues on into the evils inside/outside people. There are depths to this story and it is on my ace S&S list. Terrific writing. My next standout was 'The Dark Land', lush and with a kind of dark romance drive. A story painted in stark, impressionist emotions. She gets a lot out of repetition of language. The most surface-level, I felt, was 'Jirel Meets Magic'. 'Hellsgarde', written somewhat later, had a more conventional story structure and was strong for it, but a little less original/idiosyncratic than the first two 'Black God' stories.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Van Wizard energy galore.

Look, if you can get past the purple prose (and there's a lot of it, honestly just look at how often things are described as violet in Jirel Meets Magic) then this is worth your time. The comparison to Robert E Howard isn't quite apt. Yes, it's pulp about a medieval woman warrior but she almost never draws her sword. If the stories had come along two decades later we'd think of them as psychedelic, as she's always drawing on an internal power to overcome obstacles that are strangely uhh geometric and emotional. I know that sounds weird but give this one a chance.

1. Jirel Meets Magic – Jirel leaves her troops behind to hunt down her wizard foe and his sorceress master in a strange world. A dying dryad gives her a powerful weapon. **
2. Black God's Kiss – Jirel's castle is taken from her but she's willing to travel to Hell itself for a weapon to win it back and take revenge on the enemy lord who kissed her unbidden. *****
3. Black God's Shadow – Jirel returns to Hell to deal with the fall out from her previous adventure. ***
4. Dark Land – on her deathbed, Jirel receives a strange proposition from an Outside Power and the witch who serves it. *****
5. Hellsgarde – Jirel travels to a haunted castle to win a strange treasure which she intends to trade as ransom for the lives of her twenty captured troops. *****

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jirel is one of the very first, if not the first, swordswomen adventurer. This is heroic fantasy with Moore's deft touch on the imagery.

[Sydney S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to say it's closer to a 3.5 stars. The first story in this collection is 4.5 stars, only missing 5 because the writing style is really not my thing, but the rest of the stories in this collection weren't as special. Considering this was written in the 1930s, I have to give it credit for the awesome weirdness and girl power. The first story, "The Black God's Kiss", was terrifying. I'm not religious but I was raised Catholic, which is Jirel's religion and kind of the vibe throughout. The hell described in this story was just the right kind of unsettling for me. It reminded me of how I felt while reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I search for that unsettled feeling in books and usually don't find it in fantasy. I'd read "The Black God's Kiss" again, for sure, but unfortunately I don't think the rest of the stories will stay with me. The horror element wasn't as strong in them, and the plots didn't interest me as much. (Also, the second story is like a continuation of the first, and it spent a long time rehashing details I'd just read. Then the plot felt like an eye-roll after what happened in the first story. It just didn't make sense. Be prepared to suspend your disbelief and just roll with it if you want to enjoy it fully, because there is merit in there if you can).

If you're looking for a weird sword and sorcery book with a strong female lead (although she doesn't feel super dimensional honestly), check it out. I wanted to read one of the first fantasy books written by a woman/featuring a female hero, and I think I chose the right one. I love the weirdness and the strange worlds. I just don't think I can rate it higher because most of the stories here ended up being 3 stars. Definitely read "The Black God's Kiss" and then see how you feel.

Overall, love the world building, weirdness, and unsettling horror elements; not as crazy about the characters, writing style, and plots.

[♥Xeni♥ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read the first story of this collection, and I was loving the weird, strange hellscape and odd creatures Jirel was encountering. It was really cool. And then... what was written to be a feminist work, something that was described as "going against the he-man brawn of the 1930's pulp stories" turned into sexual assault apologizing. So, I'm not finishing this series of short stories.

[dathomira · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh joirey joirey lady of joirey!

there is really nothing that quite compares to early twentieth century pulp science fantasy and among the greats, in my opinion, catherine l moore reigns supreme. its a rare author--across time--that takes her craft and discipline seriously without being overburdened with a fear of being perceived as unsophisticated or wanting to protect her characters from being laughed at.

it feels blasphemous to say that i don't love jirel as much as i love northwest, but that's really because jirel is always in orbit to Some Guy and northwest is tit deep in broads, so as far as pov goes, you know where my attention and adoration lies. but god, she's a fierce character and her strength and ferocity draws all kinds of figures toward her. if guillame or pav had been women? jirel would reign supreme in my heart. jirel's stories are less varied than northwest's, too, but that has much more to do with the setting (14th century france) than the author or jirel herself. she can only go through so many portals to other dimensions, and you can only conjure so many ghosts into joirey.

i read a review that said many people hated black god's kiss because her revelation at the end is a betrayal of feminist orthodoxy. (the story begins with her going through a portal to hell to seek a weapon to get revenge on guillame, who has conquered joirey and her fortress. but when she manages to kill him, its only in his last moments that she realizes the ferocity of her anger is born out of love and that she might have been happy with him) this i think, frankly, is insane, unless it is unfeminist to love which i suppose some people might say. there is a bitter sweetness to the ending of the story, and the way guillame haunts her into the next! and its a lovely way of balancing a kind of interiority that i think most straight women lack--once a woman finds love she forgets that she likes to wear pants, if you know what i mean.

the second to last story brings jirel and northwest together in 'the quest to the starstone', one of the first short stories moore co-wrote with her husband kuttner. i liked it immensely, but mostly because i had missed yarol the venusian and northwest's melancholy, and wished moore had written a recurring female character in the smith universe. where is his femme fatale who routinely gets him in to trouble? but i digress.

5 out of 5 as always. moore remains queen of pulp.

[Yannis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good old heroic fantasy with a dark edge! Essential reading for those that like or are interested in this genre, standing right next to the works of Robert Howard etc.
It's fun to read, with a cool *female* warrior back then, quite ahead of its time. With a lot of action and some cool ideas. Why the relatively low mark then? Perhaps because it's old and it's basically some short stories with her adventures but we don't get to see much character development, cool dialogue, world building and the writing though pleasant isn't amazing. Jirel is a beautiful strong lady warrior, she faces some dark evil but with her strength, passion and anger(?) she overcomes everything in this world or some other worlds. That's just about it. You like this stuff? Go for it!

[Alexander Páez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sabiendas de que son relatos escritos en la década de los años 30, que son relatos pulp, y que están gestados en una época concreta, no he podido quitarme de encima la sensación de que las aventuras se hacían algo repetitivas y que me faltaba contexto y visión de conjunto. Da la sensación de meterte en un capítulo cualquiera de una novela, y no en una historia por primera vez. Pasado ese bautismo de fuego inicial son relatos muy disfrutables e interesantes a nivel histórico. Voy a repetir con Moore, seguramente con Judgement Night.

[Austin Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The complete collection of the Jirel stories originally published in the Weird Tales magazine back in the 30s.
Rating for each story:

Black God's Kiss - 3.5⭐

Black God's Shadow - 3⭐

Jirel Meets Magic - 3⭐

The Dark Land - 3.25⭐

Hellsgarde - 3.5⭐

Overall I didn't quite enjoy this as much as I hoped, but it was still pretty good and I'd recommend it for fans of classic pulp fiction and dark fantasy.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Criticisms of this book seem to revolve around a degree of repetativeness and of being too slowly-paced for the Sword and Sorcery genre of the classic Conan era of Robert E. Howard. I certainly did notice a reuse of themes and plot-elements between the stories:
• Interdimensional travel
• Sexually aggressive male antagonists intent on rape (which, ickily, there is some suggestion from the author that despite her protestations, Jirel is not always averse to)

Actually, that's all I can really think of, because other reused devices feel more like genre conventions and authorial style. Certainly, the first two stories repeat but then they are really two episodes in a story arc, and either one read in isolation diminishes the stength of the two together.

"Black Gods Kiss" ends with one of those icky moments in which Jirel's anger at a would-be rapist turns to passion for him, but "Black God's Shadow" goes some way to explaining the rather different emotions Jirel is feeling. Together, the two stories have Jungian anima/animus/ hero's- quest flavour, which I enjoyed, and which feels like it might have influenced Moorcock's Elric stories.

"Jirel Meets Magic" is more typical fantasy fare, similar device of travel to an Otherworld, but the tone and antagonist are different.

"The Dark Land" has another of those sexually aggressive males, but of an altogether different order, and the otherworldly landscape here is decidedly surreal rather than simply alien.

These four stories have less of the hack-and-slay about them than might commonly be expected of a Conan tale (though, actually, I think Howard does more than that with Conan, anyway), but they are closer to Howard's more reflective King Kull tales. In her rich descriptions of landscape, which does slow the action, I think a better comparison for Moore's style would be with her contemporary pulp author, Clark Ashton Smith, though without his abstruse vocabulary.

The final story, "Hellsgarde", seems to me a solid weird Sword and Sorcery story, and I thought had a good twist to it.

So, High Literature? No. Fun, atmospheric Weird storytelling? Yes.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of five stories featuring a red-haired sword and sorcery woman warrior named Jirel of Joiry. I wanted to like this collection. I really did. I like the 1970s Red Sonja novels. But these stories are from the 1930s. Run of the mill pulp writing of the time was too much description, too little action or worthwhile dialogue. And that's exactly what this collection suffers from. It is frankly unreadable in my opinion to any modern reader. It's getting higher ratings than it should because people think, "Red-haired sword and sorcery warrior who is a woman too, how cool is that?" But they're not truly reading this drivel. I promise you.

[Martin Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Block God's Kiss and Hellsgarde are pretty interesting stories. The other three are just really bad. There's not much worth calling plot in any of the stories, if there's anything at all; and Jirel doesn't do anything at all except to switch her emotional state between defiant and angry. Whatever made Moore famous, these stories certain weren't it.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long, long ago, I wrote a master's paper about women in fantasy fiction. This book was one of the 40 I analyzed. Would it hold up to my memories? The answer is a resounding "Yes!"

Written for the classic pulp magazine "Weird Tales" during the 1930s, these stories were groundbreaking in some ways and a product of their times in others. The lush prose certainly is reminiscent of the fantasy of the time and hints at Lovecraftian horror. The descriptions are evocative of the places Jirel travels.

Jirel is amazing for the time. A true sword-and-sorcery character, she is a formidable warrior in what seems to be a fantasy France, holds her own keep and leads her warriors in battle, and is no man's play toy. Yet she is sensitive enough to realize that she makes mistakes and will work, even risking her life, to correct those errors. She is truly unique.

This collection contains Moore's stories: Black God’s Kiss, Black God's Shadow, Jirel meets magic, The dark land, and Hellsgarde.

This book is highly recommended for its historical significance. Sword and sorcery fans should give it a whirl as long as they don't mind that many of Jirel's adventures are more of a swordswoman facing sorcery. If you like sword and sorcery and Lovecraft, then this is a "must read" collection.

[Arina · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit conflicted about this book.

While the writing is lush and beautifully scripted, the main character reads like the same personality trait over and over again. She's steel. She's a redhead. She's a sword prone to shouting and violence. Every other eye she meets is a clashing of blades.

Although I sometimes enjoyed reading this (from what I gathered) edifying character of Moore's prowess for writing, it was more due to the quality and awe of the narrative and worldbuilding than the characters.

Moore skirts the thin lines between scince-fiction and fantasy constantly and seamlessly, but spends little time fleshing out the realness of her characters.

Reading this, I wonder if Moore rose to prominence at a time women in SFF were few because she writes female characters like a man abidding to the female character conventions of the time. Joiry's descriptions, and the way she spends her adventures getting coveted and/or assaulted by men, certainly fit the stereotype.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic swords and sorcery, as if Red Sonja ended up stuck in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands.

[aja · Rating 5 out of 5]

a delight from start to finish. devastated to learn that this collection contains the entire body of moore's jirel of joiry work; i could live in this world with her forever & never feel an ounce of regret

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catherine Lucille Moore's five story adventures are collected in this book featuring the red haired female warrior Jirel of Joiry. In "Black God's Kiss" Jirel takes revenge on usurper Guillaume by seeking
out the means to accomplish this plumbing the very depths of a hell essentially. My favorite line was "the soul can be lost but once".
In "Black God's Shadow" Jirel decides to undo the torment on Guillaume delivered to him from her revenge in the last story by once again entering the lower realms in order to free him.
In "Jirel Meets Magic" she seeks vengeance on the wizard Giraud and ends up facing Jarisme, an evil sorceress in another realm as well.
In "The Dark Land" Jirel is plucked from her bed as she lays dying from a major wound ending up the captive of King Pav who wants to make her his bride.
The last story "Hellsgarde" finds Jirel on a quest to find a centuries old treasure in a remote castle in order to free 20 of her men from the clutches of Guy of Garlot. Jirel meets an odd "family" of people in the castle who are not at all what they seem.
All five tales are very dark and to me they had more in common with the later tales of Elric by Moorcock than they did of Howard's Conan. Jirel has much more in common with the much later Roy Thomas created Red Sonja the Hyrkanian She-devil being a red head who knows how to fight.
Decent enough stories.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moore's descriptions tend to the excessive, and this may not be to any particular reader's taste.

I was struck by the similarities of the stories: each seemed to represent a journey into an alien otherworld where the laws of physics and possibly the laws of morality are different. In particular, "Black God's Kiss" and "Black God's Shadow" take place in a plane or realm that makes very little sense to us, but it still abides by some strange rules. With these stories as well as "Jirel Meets Magic" and "The Dark Land", Moore seems to be playing with a system of alternate worlds whose laws are not comprehensible to Jirel and thus are not explained to the reader. This is very effective.

The alien wizardry and implied organization of alien wizards shown in "Jirel Meets Magic" was about perfect, I think. The magic tower of Jarisme is everything that one would imagine in such a structure.

[frando · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
I found Jirel fascinating as a heroine of 1930s pulp fantasy. Throughout her adventures, Jirel's opponents constantly seek to victimize her, use her as bait, lure her in, or overpower her. Often she can't escape witnessing or even being part of horrific things, but she takes these impossible situations and confronts them on her own terms. I thought this was a nice alternative to always evading danger or using feminine wiles to get out of tight corners. Jirel is physically and emotionally capable without being a know-it-all or preternaturally lucky.

Moore paints incredibly vivid pictures of fantastical realms and creatures. I think this collection would translate well into a graphic novel. However, some of the descriptions got a little clunky and repetitive. This seems like it might be a byproduct of being published originally as pulp scifi/fantasy, and if they were published today an editor would have smoothed out some of the problems in the prose.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first story is often reprinted in other collections, and for good reason; the second story continues it. The others are not quite as evocative but still very good; and Moore rightly chooses to start each in the midst of the weirdness, with only the barest explanation of how Jirel arrived at that point. For example, the first story begins with her army defeated, not with the battle; the final story begins with her arriving at a haunted castle to save her men from imprisonment, not with their capture.

The latter story especially is a weird one, taking a simple haunting and turning it into a very new, I suspect, idea that would later be revisited by Tim Powers.

This is very good weird horror.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual fantasy -- early 20th century sword-and-sorcery stories by a woman, with a woman protagonist. I'm sorry to say she still sometimes came off as a caricature, but there is plenty of remarkably original material as well; her descent into what the medieval French-ish heroine assumes is "hell" but is clearly some very alien, very other, dimension; or her encounter with a more than a little unsettling ghost "hunters." (And no, I will not clarify that.)

All in all, I came away liking Howard's "Dark Agnes" character better (from the "Sword Woman" collection), but liking Catherine Moore's writing more. She does weird way better -- way more three-dimensionally -- than Howard.