Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams

A very cool combination here. The Sword and Sorcery warrior stories of Jirel of Joiry and the down and out weatherbeaten heroism of Northwest Smith.

This isn't the stuff of Burroughs, Kline, Nowlan's Buck Rogers or that doyen of polo players, Flash Gordon, as far as Moore's Smith goes. He finds himself wandering into things that a lot more resemble bits of Clark Ashton Smith's stories than of Barsoom. Plenty of that weird atmosphere to be found, as he can barely have a drink without babes, gods and monsters interrupting, and sometimes in combination.

Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Jirel Meets Magic - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Black God's Kiss [short story] - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Black God's Shadow - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : The Dark Land - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Hellsgarde - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Scarlet Dreams · co Donald M. Grant, 1981
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Shambleau - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Black Thirst - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : The Tree of Life - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Scarlet Dream - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Dust of Gods - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Lost Paradise - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Julhi - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : The Cold Gray God - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Yvala - C. L. Moore
Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams : Song in a Minor Key - C. L. Moore

Having to rid herself of a wizard that has killed some or her men, Jirel finds worse, his own ruler, a sorceress.

4 out of 5

An escape from a captor leads Jirel basically into a Clark Ashton Smith story, and a passionate revenge.

4 out of 5

Jirel looks for a way to undone some of what she has done when she decides that the Black God's Kiss was rather an extreme solution to her earlier hatred.

3.5 out of 5

Jirel is snatched from lying severely wounded by a wizard who is a lot more than he seems.

4 out of 5

Jirel finds your strange mysterious castle that only appears occasionally, and an occupant that has a bit of the undead thing going on.

3 out of 5

----

Shoot vampire gorgon women, don't ask them in for dinner.

4.5 out of 5

"Not even the lowest class of Venusian street-walker dared come along the waterfronts of Ednes on the nights when the space-liners were not in. Yet across the pavement came clearly now the light tapping of a woman's feet."

This leads him to monstrous vampiric alien, and to the aid of one his thralls, above.

""The-Guardians-still rove the halls, and unleashed now -so keep your ray-gun ready, Earthman. . , .

4 out of 5

Women who commune with trees and others in ruined temples are best avoided. Failing that, there is the trusty raygun solution.

3.5 out of 5

Northwest's fondness for markets leads him to a purchase trapping him in a dream world.

3 out of 5

Investigations leads to what just may be the remains of one of the three elder gods of mars.

4 out of 5

Northwest comes across evidence of an ancient Moon race.

3 out of 5

Other-planar sorceresses and their attractive victims to be found this time.

4 out of 5

A gorgeous famous singer suddenly reappears, and she gives Northwest the creeps despite her Venusian milky magnificence.

Ol' leather's instincts are still good, as there is a bit of body snatching going on.

4 out of 5

Its Circe and Beast-men time when the desperados go in for a spot of exotic escort hunting.

3.5 out of 5

A bit of reminiscing about the first use of a ray gun in anger.

3 out of 5

http://superprose.blogspot.com/2008/01/jirel-and-northwest-smith-black-gods.html ( )

The two parts of this fun book are each a suite of short stories centered on one of Moore's characters in a different fictional world: the swords and sorcery of Jirel of Joiry (Black Gods) and the space opera of Northwest Smith (Scarlet Dreams). The entire book is full of evocatively hallucinatory fantasy and outre eroticism.

Jirel of Joiry is interesting as being a scarlet-haired "woman girt with a sword," formulated independently from Howard's Red Sonya (let alone the Red Sonja later created by Roy Thomas). It is almost as if the fictioneers of the pulp era were tuning in to some Platonic Idea of the Scarlet Woman. In this connection, see also the April Bell of Williamson's Darker Than You Think.

The book is an attractive but cheaply-bound trade paperback issued in 2002 by Gollancz under their "Fantasy Masterworks" imprint. The cover shows a detail of the head of Medusa from a painting by Caravaggio, which is in allusion to the seminal Northwest Smith story (and Moore's first-ever-published--and much re-published--fiction) "Shambleau." Although "Shambleau" is indeed the story of encountering on Mars the creature which is the basis of the Medusa legend, Moore doesn't describe her as looking like Caravaggio's portrait at all.