Jirel of Joiry

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Jirel of Joiry is one of the most notable creations of writer C. L. Moore, who appeared in a series of sword and sorcery stories published first in the pulp horror/fantasy magazine Weird Tales. Jirel is the proud, tough, arrogant and beautiful ruler of her own domain—apparently somewhere in medieval France. Her adventures continually involve her in dangerous brushes with the supernatural.

These stories are the very first stories to show the influence of Robert E. Howard on the genre sword and sorcery and introduced the heroine protagonist to sword and sorcery.^[1]

Moore's Jirel stories include the following:

• "Black God's Kiss" (October 1934)
• "Black God's Shadow" (December 1934)
• "Jirel Meets Magic" (July 1935)
• "The Dark Land" (January 1936)
• "Quest of the Starstone" (November 1937) (with Henry Kuttner)
• "Hellsgarde" (April 1939)

These stories, except for "Quest of the Starstone", appear in the collection Jirel of Joiry (1969), and in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks compendium Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams (2002). All six appear in a collected edition under Paizo Publishing's "Planet Stories" imprint, compiled under the title Black God's Kiss.

[edit] References

[edit] Books

• Moore, C. L. (1969). Jirel of Joiry. Paperback Library. 
  • Moore, C. L. [1969] (1996). Jirel of Joiry. Ace Books. ISBN 0-441-38570-2. 
• Moore, C. L. (2002). Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams. Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-07417-5.