Dr Hermes Reviews - SWORDS AND SORCERY Back to our Contents Page JIREL OF JOIRY

"Black God's Kiss"
"Jirel Meets Magic"
"Hellsgarde"

"Black God's Kiss" (Feb 21, 2005) From the October 1934 issue of WEIRD TALES, this was the first of the five Jirel stories by C.L. Moore to appear there*. It's pretty intense and harrowing stuff to read. Like the other stories in the series, its heroine is forced to deal with black magic in order to fight her real world enemies and, although she sorta wins in the end, the price demanded is always steep. Jirel is in a slightly hopeless situation in life to begin with. At some point not long after after the Romans had left but before medieval France coalesced into a nation, she is commander of the fortress of Joiry and as much of the surrounding countryside as her army can defend. It's a time of pocket kingdoms trying to swallow each other up in continual skirmishing. Jirel is ferociously proud of her little piece of turf and defends it in one battle after another. As "Black God's Kiss" opens, though, a conqueror named Guillame has won the latest massacre and is occupying the castle of Joiry, still piled with fresh corpses of the soldiers of both sides. Guillame has the captured commander of Joiry brought before him, struggling and cursing, and (when the prisoner's helmet is removed) is understandably startled to find he is not confronting another scarred hooligan like himself. "He was still staring, as most men stared when they first set eyes upon Jirel of Joiry. She was tall as most men, 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-edge beauty as keen as the 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." Pleasantly surprised, Guillame takes a hot kiss from Jirel (her response is to bite him in the throat as close to the jugular as she can manage), then smacks her down with a backhand and orders her taken away for later. Jirel is enraged enough that she's ready to spray blood from her ears. She is so strongly offended by Guillame's presumption and the descriptions of the man are so grudgingly admiring (we get a lot of the ".... she saw Guillame's scornful, laughing face again, the little beard dark along the line of his jaw, the strong teeth white with his laughter...") that a perceptive reader might think at first this is going to be one of those overheated historical romance novels like LOVE'S SAVAGE ITCH or BRIDE OF THE BUCCANEER. With a bit too much ease, Jirel breaks loose, arms herself and seeks out her confessor, Father Gervaise. She has decided not to try to flee the castle and raise an army outside, but to seek revenge by unholy means. As it happens, the fortress is built over a trapdoor leading down a long smooth tunnel to a strange version of Hell. (You know, this could be why Joiry has so many disasters, having its capital built over a Hellmouth.) Jirel knows she's guaranteeing her eternal damnation by doing this, but she nevertheless dares to go down that that chute and enter the underworld in search of a weapon she might bring back to use against Guillame... the weapon which turns out to be "the Black God's Kiss" of the title. But as folkore wisdom tells us, deals with Hell always go sour somehow. Even when you get what you asked for, there's a bitter twist in the outcome somewhere. "Black God's Kiss" is an outstanding story, with no real missteps or weak points. Jirel, of course, makes quite an impression. Strong female characters in pulps were never as rare as some modern commentators seem to think, but Joiry's commander with her amber eyes and bloody sword must have been a sensation in 1934. For the past twenty years, we've had an ongoing barrage of aggressive heroines smashing opponents down, everyone from Xena to Buffy to Lara Croft, and I think audiences have come to take it for granted that a woman can be just as violent as any male hero. But Jirel has a bit more to her than being just a fighting machine in a female body. She makes hard decisions and accepts the consequences, never getting off as lightly as most sword and sorcery heroes. And she never realizes until it's too late what those consequences are (kind of like my own life, come to think of it). Moore's concept of the netherworld is nicely unsettling. For one thing, it's completely dark until Jirel tugs off the small crucifix she wears and a nightime landscape under strange constellations is revealed, "this land so unholy that one who bore a cross might not even see it." Small grotesque goblins swarm up that she has to slaughter, but there are more disturbing things in Hell - like a herd of blind horses galloping in panic, foaming at the mouth and stumbling in exhaustion; one cries out "Julienne!" That image of the damned will haunt me for some time. Jirel also encounters a spirit or demon in her own exact likeness, who first tries to lure her to destruction and then gives her directions to what she seeks. The image of Jirel mocks our heroine's oath that she seeks revenge against a man she hates with all her heart. Its voice has "an undernote of laughter in it that she did not understand... Jirel felt her cheeks burn against some implication in the derision which she could not put a name to." But the Lady of Joiry presses on to confront the cold stone statue of the Black God, its one eye closed and its mouth pursed for a kiss.... At this early point, C.L. Moore was writing on her own; after her partnership and marriage with Henry Kuttner began, it's pretty much guesswork as to which author contributed what in their stories, even when the byline went to one of them. Moore's Jirel and Northwest Smith stories (like "Shambleau" -*ack!*) are disturbing partly because they have such potent sexual tension just under the surface. This wasn't unusual for pulp adventures. (Remember Robert E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn story where his Pictish king was compelled to have sex with a hideous witch and then had to crawl down a long tight slimy tunnel to reach an underground lake.... geez, Bob, it can't be THAT bad.) Moore handles the undertones with more deftness and discernment, but there's still a powerful mixture of attraction and repulsion in her early writing. Seventy years later, when I thought I'd be utterly jaded from the avalanche of internet porn, the Jirel stories still have an quirky erotic punch that makes me sit up and take notice. __________ *"Quest of the Star Stone" was a later story in November 1937 where Jirel and Northwest Smith actually met through magical time travel. Reportedly, it doesn't show Moore and Kuttner's new collaboration or her characters at their best. Although it's not in the collections I have, I still think I need to track this yarn down someday just because I'm a sucker for crossovers.

"Jirel Meets Magic" (March 19, 2003) From the July 1935 issue of WEIRD TALES, this is one of the Jirel of Joiry stories by Catherine L. Moore. While it's not the most well known or best written in the series (that would probably be "Black God`s Kiss"), it's a wild and intense story that stands well on its own. Visually, Jirel is vividly conceived. A tall, slim woman with a mass of wild red hair, she has strange yellow eyes. (Maybe the Savage family had its ancestors in Joiry?) At first, she seems to be a simple warrior who lives by the sword, but there are always hints of something deeper and more subtle. When she looks through a magic window into a lovely sunny meadow instead of a bloodied courtyard she should be seeing, a great longing for peace comes over her and her normal life seems harsh and dismal. But she is sworn to her duty and there is no rest for her. Moore was a woman, concealing her sex from readers at first behind the C.L. initials, and there is undeniably something intangibly female in the writing*. Not that it's the stereotyped over-emotional angst and lack of action of much of today's fantasy adventure. Nor is Jirel just a modern American woman placed in a barbaric situation with her 21st century values intact. No, the Lady of Joiry is both very medieval in her directness and simplicity and at the same time has undertones of the 1930s, when the stories were written. So there is more to her than the standard heroines of today`s 600 page, seven part wristbreakers that fill the shelves at Barnes & Nobel. (There is a startling moment when we're told that Jirel knows all about using torture. "Her dungeons were as bloodstained as those of any of her neighbors." ) A simple summary: In Medieval France, there is a tiny kingdom called Joiry, and the commander of its largest fortress is a dangerous redhead named Jirel. Sworn to kill an evil sorceror who has been getting on her nerves, she storms his castle and finds out he has fled to some sort of nearby fairyland ruled by a magical diva named Jarisme. There is an oddly hesitant conflict between the purple-eyed sorceress and the blunt-speaking armored Valkyrie, as both Jarisme and her companion warlock seem apprehensive about Jirel for some inexplicable reason. It seems there's this prophecy... But, after some very pretty prose poetry about bowers of hypnotic flowers and a beautiful golden sabretooth, inevitably there has to come the moment of truth. Moore is in very good form here, the only weakness being a slight tendency to idle in gorgeous imagery. When Jarisme summons a conclave of sorcerors from various dimensions, the narrative bogs down a bit in all the lush colors and vague descriptions. But the toughminded Jirel anchors the plot to her singleminded determination, and she is believable throughout. Probably in 1934, the concept of a swordswoman was novel enough to get readers all worked up one way or another. By this time, however, we've seen a lengthy succession of tough, aggressive women beating up thugs twice their weight (Xena, Buffy, La Femme Nikita, Tomb Raider, all their two-fisted sisterhood) and the story has to stand more on its own merits. "Jirel Meets Magic" does just that. It's well worth reading, and if you see a copy of JIREL OF JOIRY or Moore's other series NORTHWEST SMITH stories in any of their many reprints, by all means jump on that book and give it a good home. _____________ *The catty exchange when Jirel first meets the arrogant Jarisme is priceless, and one of the touches that makes Jirel come to life on the page.

"Hellsgarde" (April 16, 2006) Just let me pick up this book from where I dropped it when I got to the ending. Phew. I've run into surprise plot twists before but this one is like smacking your head against a lamp post because you weren't looking where you were going. It's not unfair -- everything fits what was hinted at before in the story -- but it really caught me offguard and made me grin in appreciation. "Hellsgarde" appeared in the November 1939 issue of WEIRD TALES and was the last Jirel story that Catherine L Moore gave us. It sure ended the series on a high note. The preceding two stories were beginning to sag a bit, following the formula without adding much new but this one is a jolt. It is the scariest sword-and-sorcery tale I can recall; in fact, it's basically a horror story with none of the heavily-detailed swashbuckling bouts usual in the genre. We're back one final time in the intense, unsettling world of Jirel of Joiry, where there are no easy answers or clean victories. Warlord (warlady? that doesn't sound right) of her tiny realm in medieval France, the ferocious redhead again is on a desperate mission with little hope of success. Twenty of her finest men-at-arms are imprisoned in a rival's dungeon, where they will be cruelly tortured to death unless she retrieves a mysterious treasure. Her men follow her because they know she would dare anything for them, so on goes the mail shirt and cloak, the sword is buckled at her waist and off she rides to Hellsgarde, which is so sinister that you can only find it at sunset. It's worth noting that the rival who sends her on this task is another handsome rogue who seems to arouse Jirel a little even as she hates his guts. "Black Guy with his thinly smiling lips and his slanted dark eyes and his unnatural comeliness..." Jirel seems to clash with a lot of good-looking guys that she wants to kill. ("...she let herself sink for a moment into a luxury of picturing that comely smile smashed in by the handle of her sword.") Sounds like some issues to be resolved there, Red. Jirel does have a wicked present for Guy at the end that gives the story one final stinger. Anyway, the backstory of Hellsgarde is that its master, a big ruffian named Andred, was cruelly murdered two hundred years earlier by people trying to get the secret of his treasure's location out of him. He died without singing the secret and his castle has been abandoned and haunted ever since by his vindictive ghost. The land around Hellsgarde is unnaturally silent and stifling, without even birds or insects stirring and Jirel's horse is trembling with fear as she approaches. Guarding the front gate seem to be two rows of armed men, but as our heroine rides up, she sees they are all fresh corpses held up by their own spears. Wait, it gets much worse. Jirel is admitted and brought before a mob of excessively spooky and most unnerving people. There's nothing obviously wrong with them, but they all stare at her with obscenely mocking smiles and knowing comments. (Girls, you know what's it like.) Moore adds the neat idea that these creeps seem as if they're physically deformed, even though they're not. The weirdos tease her and detain her for an awfully distasteful feast, while they're waiting for the spectre of Andred to appear... and when it does, things get really bad really fast. Jirel really goes through the wringer this time. These stories were written before Moore started collaborating with Henry Kuttner; after the two married, they worked and kibitzed together so much it's nearly impossible to figure who wrote what in their output. The Jirel yarns, though, are all Moore and they're passionate, overheated, filled with vivid imagery and a sensual attention to detail. They also fall apart at least once each story into a sequence where everything gets vague and chaotic and hard to describe (and hard for me to follow what's going on), but that's their only weakness. The best Jirel stories rank up there with the best in the field, matching anything by Robert E Howard or Fritz Leiber. Jirel herself is an amazing creation. She is foremost a warrior queen, lopping off heads and arms in one battle after another. She also has no problem with having her own prisoners tortured for information, or with coldly stabbing a guard in the back to escape. At the same time, Jirel is not a heartless fighting machine. She's had her share of love affairs, is devoted to her followers and her territory (she describes herself AS "Joiry") and she feels plenty of raw terror at some of the nightmares she faces. Catherine Moore really makes Jirel jump off the page (if only). It's a shame there were only five stories in the series (and one written with Kuttner where Jirel meets Northwest Smith, of all people) but then Moore did go on to give us much more fine reading in other directions. I notice we get much the same loving descriptions of our gal that we would if a male writer were behind the typewriter. "His eyes slid very quickly, yet very comprehensively, from her tanned and red-lipped face downward over the lifting curves of her under the molding chain-mail, over her bare brown knees and slim, steel-greaved legs. Yep, Jirel works it, too. "...She knew she was a figure on which a man's eyes must linger." Of course, we also read detailed surveys of the male heroes in these sort of stories, all those broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped marvelous specimens with their every muscle standing out as if on the judging platform for Mr Universe. It's all just part of the flamboyant pulp style. You know, if I were a producer looking for a property to start a new film franchise, I would definitely give a thought to ordering a screenplay titled JIREL OF JOIRY. Then, start casting an unknown who should be tall, athletic, with red hair and amber eyes...