Just Finished Reading: Shambleau by C L Moore (FP: 1953)

This is rather a strange one. This short book (a mere 173 pages – no wonder I could read 100 books a year back when this was a standard length for a SF/Fantasy novel) consisted of 6 short stories, 2 of which were directly linked with the rest having the same main character: Northwest Smith.

The two linked stories Black God’s Kiss and Black God’s Shadow were the best of the bunch and revolved around the main character Jirel, a defeated female warrior, who escapes her own dungeon to make her way to a pretty disturbing version of Hell to retrieve a weapon to dispose of her captor which, after much adventure she does. The second part of the tale revolved around her visiting a slightly different Hell to release the soul of her adversary through guilt. Both tales were very well described – hauntingly so – but neither of them had a strong enough narrative to make them anything more than interesting.

The other four stories starring Northwest Smith – including Shambleau – followed essentially the same narrative path. Smith would arrive in town. For various reasons he would become involved with a beautiful and mysterious woman. The woman would then (for a host of different reasons depending on the story) lead him into danger and would either introduce him to the main baddie or be that baddie herself. Some sort of fight would occur and Smith, given his natural talents, would resolve the issue usually by pulling and firing his laser gun and the appropriate moment. That’s pretty much it – all four times.

As you might expect I was less than impressed by this ‘classic’ of Horror-Fantasy. I really could fault the imagery throughout – the whole book was nicely ‘visual’ – but the plots left a great deal to be desired. Definitely not recommended. (R)