The Sword Of Rhiannon (aka Sea-Kings Of Mars)

The Sword Of Rhiannon, by Leigh Brackett
No date stated (1963?)
(Original Ace edition, 1953)

First published as a “complete novel” under the title “Sea-Kings of Mars” in the June, 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories (which can be found at The Internet Archive), this Leigh Brackett planetary romance came out in paperback as The Sword Of Rhiannon in 1953, as the flipside of an Ace Double, the other side of which was Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Conqueror (aka The Hour Of The Dragon). This edition is a standalone paperback reprint. 

Unlike Brackett’s later expansions of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon Of Mars,” this is a straight-up reprint of the original ’49 pulp version, only with a new title and minus the illustrations (of which there were only a few, anyway, so no big loss). It runs to just a bit over 120 pages in this Ace edition, though with some very small, very dense print. The back cover compares Brackett to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and it isn’t mere hyperbole, as The Sword Of Rhiannon is basically Brackett’s version of Burroughs’s Barsoom novels. (And as for this new title, Brackett stated that Ace made the change, fearing that “Mars” in the title would scare off savvy sci-fi readers who knew there was no life on Mars…)

As for one thing that has been added to this Ace edition – that would be typos. This edition of The Sword Of Rhiannon is littered with typos, more than even the average Leisure Books publication. Indeed, this book has my favorite typo OF ALL TIME. Early in the original Thrilling Wonder Stories edition, there is the line “The women screamed like harpies.” Folks, in this Ace edition, that line appears on page 20, and it’s rendered as: “The women screamed like hairpies.” (Italics mine.) I kid you not! But that’s just the most egregious example. As mentioned, practically every page has a typo of some sort, so the copy editor must’ve really been hitting the sauce that day.

Anyway, this Brackett yarn doesn’t feature her recurring protagonist Eric John Stark; our hero is an archeologist named Matt Carse who is about as cipherlike as you could get. Seriously, we learn hardly a single thing about him, other than that he’s 35, an “Earthman” by birth, and has lived on Mars for 30 years. Apparently he lost his archeologist creds due to some tomb-raiding or somesuch. He’s got blond hair and the rugged good looks expected of a pulp hero; he’s also apparently damn good with a sword, though how he got to be that way is unexplained.

In fact when we meet him Carse is coming out of some tavern on Mars where he presumably took some illegal substances; he’s approached by a native thief, who claims to have found something almost mythical: the Sword of Rhiannon, the “Cursed One” who ran afoul of the old gods of Mars ages upon ages ago. Rhiannon’s tomb has been sought for untold eons, yet this random thief has stumbled upon it, and wants Carse’s help to sell off the priceless artefacts within. As ever Brackett captures a ghostlike, haunted Mars as the two venture to the desolate location of the tomb in the dead of the Martian night.

In the hidden tomb Carse finds a glowing orb of black energy; into this he’s shoved by the turncoat thief, who resents Carse’s unwillingness to give him a fair share of the ensuing profits. This orb turns out to be a sort of captured black hole, and long story short, Carse is shoved across the millennia – and comes out into a Mars of one million years ago. In Brackett’s solar system, Mars has an incalculably ancient history; even the so-called “New” cities, like the New Valkis in which Carse finds himself at story’s beginning (a location featured in “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and other Brackett yarns), are thousands upon thousands of years old.

What’s interesting about The Sword Of Rhiannon is that Brackett basically wrote about a different planet; the Mars of a million years ago is vastly different than the one Carse knows. It is an ocean-filled sort of paradise populated by beings that not only don’t exist in Carse’s time, but aren’t even remembered. Whereas New Valkis in Carse’s time was an ancient city on the outskirts of even-more-ancient Old Valkis, all of it surrounded by vast desert, “Valkis” is just Valkis here and there is ocean everywhere.

As in the incredible Stark novella “Enchantress Of Venus,” Brackett gives this ocean some cool, psychedelic touches – it’s phosphorescent, glowing white, and even has healing powers. However it burns upon initial contact. Anyway, Carse is suitably smackjawed by his trip through the ages, initially disbelieving the reality of the situation, but in true pulp fashion Brackett doesn’t belabor this too much. Within a few pages Carse is accepting of his new reality and enduring the rigors of this strange new world.

Luckily as an archeologist he’s fluent in the High Martian which is spoken here, though his accent makes others think he’s a barbarian – Brackett again paying subtle tribute to her writing hero Robert E. Howard. This different Mars has different peoples, ones Carse has never even heard of – “Halflings,” of which there are Swimmers, who are seal-human hybrids, with fine hair on their faces and bodies; the Sky Folk, who are basically like the Hawkmen of Flash Gordon; and finally the Dhuvians, aka the Serpent Men: these are hated and feared by all Martians, and they’re also the reason why Rhiannon is known as “the Cursed One,” as ages ago he taught the evil Serpent Men the science secrets of his people, Rhiannon being one of the Quiru, “hero gods who were human but superhuman.”

Brackett faithfully follows the “planetary romance” guidelines: before you know it, Carse is shackled up, alongside his new sort-of colleague, the portly thief Boghaz, who serves as the book’s comedic relief. And Brackett’s so good, the stuff with Boghaz is funny, and he isn’t the sort of comedic relief you hope gets gutted before story’s end, like for example the loser in Conan The Destroyer. Tall, brawny, blond Carse is accused of being a Khondor spy by the Jikkharans who live in this city which is part of the Sark Empire – the fact that Carse hasn’t heard of any of these places or people doesn’t much help him.

He’s conscripted into slave-duty on a Sark warship, one that’s bound to carry Ywain, daughter of the emperor, to the capital city of Sark. Ywain is one of those “bad Brackett babes” familiar from previous stories – a mega-beauty with raven hair and a malicious spirit; so evil, in fact, that a “black nimbus” seems to surround her. She wears tight black mail, showing off her incredible curves. Carse, spying her from the veritable dungeons of the rowing pit, instantly sees how cruel and vicious she is – but boy, she sure is hot. “It would be good to tame this woman,” he tells himself, a sentiment that would’ve been par for the course in the world of the pulps but which of course would trigger the overly-sensitive types of today.

Carse gets his chance when he causes a mutiny, he and Boghaz taking Ywain captive – this after Carse, as if his mind were temporarily possessed by another, has killed off the cloaked Dhuvian mentor Ywain keeps in a darkened inner room. Brackett amps the hate-lust that brims between Carse and Ywain, with Carse almost killing Ywain as well, but settling with a sock to the face that leaves her with a permanent facial scar – it pleases him that he has left his mark on her. Ywain leaves her own, later; when Carse impulsivey kisses her in “anger,” she bites his inner lip.

Another interesting difference between Brackett’s day and our own is the utter lack of sentimentalism. Onboard the war galley the Sarks keep a few Halflings, among them a pair of Swimmers and also a birdman whose wings have been broken in a typical display of Sark sadism. After the mutiny Carse and his ship of loyal followers are approached by a formation of Sky Folk; as they leave, the one on the ship with the broken wings despondently watches them fly away. As Carse and the others are busy with other stuff, the maimed birdman tosses himself into the ocean, drowning himself. If this tale had been written today, Carse no doubt would dive right in after him, pull him out, and there would follow a bunch of “Your life is worth it! You’re important!” sappiness. Instead, Carse and his fellows basically shrug and deem that the birdman’s suicide was “for the best!” 

Khondor turns out to be the country of the Sea Kings, a confederation of city-states opposed to the Sark Empire. But even here Carse can’t catch a break; the viking-like warriors of Khondor also distrust Carse, and put him through various trials. This is mostly due to Emer, the pretty, blonde, Cassandra-like sister of King Rold; Emer, who has spent so much time with the Halflings that she has sort of picked up their ESP via osmosis, instantly detects something unusual about Carse. Not only that he is from “another world,” but that he is possessed – by the Cursed One.

I’ll tell you another reason why Brackett was such a great writer: she understood the all-important pulp dictum that the bad girl is always better than the good girl. Initially I feared that Emer was going to be set up as Carse’s lady…after all, she has all the typical prerequisites, from being good-natured to blonde-haired. But she’s barely in the novel. Instead, Brackett wisely puts the focus on Ywain, with Rold’s gruff advisor even accusing Carse of being in “love” with her, due to how Carse keeps insisting that the people of Khondor not immediately put Ywain to death, like they want to.

We learn in another psychedelic-ish sequence that Carse is indeed possessed by Rhiannon, who subtly invaded Carse’s mind when Carse stepped into that black time-tunnel bubble. It was Rhiannon who guided Carse’s hand when he killed the Serpent Man on Ywain’s ship. Rhiannon, speaking through Carse, insists that he has changed his ways in the eons of his imprisonment, and wants to aid the Sea Kings in their battle against Sark, and also he wants to destroy the Dhuvians. But no one will listen to him, least of all Carse, who wants the undead Rhiannon out of his brain, posthaste. There’s some good stuff here with Emer frightened of the Rhiannon in Carse, but Ywain sort of liking it.

The finale sees the united Sea Kings about to be doomed in a battle against Sark, with Rold and his fellows taken captive. Carse pretends to be Rhiannon in the flesh, Boghaz his frightened accomplice; they steal Ywain as barter material and make off on Carse’s war galley. The men aboard are still his loyal followers, even though Khondor has sentenced him to death. More good stuff with Ywain possibly being hip to the fact that Rhiannon is really Carse – even up to admiting to “Rhiannon” that she might not’ve minded it when Carse kissed her, after all.

However, the brevity necessary of pulp sort of harms The Sword Of Rhiannon in the homestretch; Carse succeeds in getting into the Tomb of Rhiannon, finding all sorts of bizarre weapons which he hopes to use against Sark and the Dhuvians (that is, if he can figure out how to operate them!). But he is captured by the Serpent Men, who of course easily figure out that Carse is just pretending. But then Rhiannon really does assume control of Carse, and Brackett doles out the “climactic action” in like two pages, Rhiannon wiping out everyone, destroying all his weaponry (which appears to harness the powers of the sun), and basically dismantling the Sark Empire. It’s so harried that it lacks much dramatic impact, and of course it’s further harmed by the fact that our hero, Matt Carse, is sort of on mental vacation while it’s happening.

But Brackett never loses sight of the characters – the reader is as thrilled as Carse to detect that Ywain seems to have grown concerned for Carse during all this, particularly when it looked like he was about to be killed by the Dhuvians. Turns out Ywain, while she harbors no regrets for ruling her people with an iron hand, never much liked the Serpent Men, and resented her father, the emperor of Sark, for making her be so damn evil all the time. Once Sark has been defeated and the Dhuvians all killed, it’s time for Carse to go – Rhiannon has promised to show him the way. The reader is not surprised when Ywain announces her wish to go along with Carse, to his own era: the Mars she knew is now dead, and she has no desire to rule a now-powerless Sark.

Off the new couple goes to Carse’s future Mars, the desert world so familiar from Brackett’s other yarns, and in a fitting but quick finale we see that Ywain will have no problems adapting. While this is a perfectly self-contained story, I wouldn’t have minded seeing more stories with these two characters (they could’ve even run into Eric John Stark!). As usual Brackett makes you care about her characters – as mentioned, even minor characters like Boghaz, who would be annoying in most other such tales, shine with their own memorable personalities.

Brackett’s writing is as polished as ever, with that word painting she does so well; the phosphorescent sea of Mars in particular makes an impression. In fact Brackett’s writing is so good, and her world so fully realized, that it wasn’t until after I finished that I realized not much really happens in The Sword Of Rhiannon. I mean sure, the main character is thrust a million years into the past and all…but really, he’s thrown on a war galley, mistreated in various ways, and eventually bluffs his way into freedom – not once but a few times. Action stuff, as would be expected in such a tale, isn’t as constant as you might think…in fact, the cover of this Ace edition is very misleading, and likely was done for something else, as there are no bald, elf-eared characters in the entire book!

Little-known fact: This novel actually provided the inspiration for the Fleetwood Mac song “Rhiannon.” Okay, I made that up.

Swordsmistress Of Chaos (Raven #1)

Swordsmistress Of Chaos, by Richard Kirk
February, 1987  Ace Books
(Original UK edition 1978)

First published in the UK in 1978, Raven ultimately ran for five volumes; “Richard Kirk” was in reality two British writers: Robert Holdstock and Angus Wells. In 1987 the series was brought over to these shores, with awesome covers by Royo (and faithful to titular character Raven’s armor, believe it or not!); the original UK covers had been by Chris Achilleos, and I don’t like them as much, though the cover to this first volume clearly inspired British pop singer Kate Bush.

Raven, the heroine of this fantasy saga, is basically Red Sonja without that pesky “no sex” clause. She is in many ways a Hyborian-age Baroness; not only is she as deadly as hell, but she will screw whatever man (or woman!) she wants. And I’m happy to report these British authors aren’t shy about the juicy details – we’re not talking Baroness-level smut, but the sex in Swordsmistress Of Chaos (incidentally, it’s just “Swordmistress” in the novel itself; ie only one “s”) isn’t just fade to black sort of stuff, either. I’m also happy to report these guys consistently use “around” instead of the British-preferred “round” (ie “She wore a belt around her waist,” etc). However, the lazy bastards at Ace didn’t bother to double up the quotation marks, so we get the British-style single quotes, and Ace also didn’t bother to change the British spellings for the American market (ie the letter “u” shows up in words where it shouldn’t – these colors don’t run, baby!).

Speaking of Red Sonja, the Raven books practically take place in Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria. (Technically Red Sonja was a creation of comics writer Roy Thomas, adapting a medieval-era character of REH’s named “Red Sonya,” whose story appears in the Howard collection Lord Of Samarcand, but you get my drift…) The names of the countries are changed, but this is pretty much the same world that the Howard tales occurred in, a sort of quasi-primeval fantasy world with medieval-era armor. There are no dragons (at least not in this one), but there are various monsters and creatures, not to mention dangerous wizards and the like. A prologue and epilogue hint that Raven’s world, same as Hyboria, is a prehistorical version of our world, one that occurred before the Ice Age.

Raven when we meet her is an 18 year-old runaway from “the slavepens” of Lyand, having been abducted into slavery with her mother and father from their home country of Ishkar. Her parents were killed, and Raven was raped by the cruel Karl ir Donwayne, to whom Raven is to be given as a sex slave. Raven – who is not known as such yet – has escaped this existence, and now the slavehounds are chasing her. She’s captured by another guy and put into yet another slave chain – this one too destined for sexual slavery. A message in a dream tells her she is destined for greatness, not to mention freedom, and a raven seems to have become attached to her.

Raven is freed by the appearance of armored men, one of them a slim but muscled guy in all-black armor with a silver helmet. His name is Spellbinder, and it is he who dubs our heroine “Raven,” given the magical raven that has “chosen” her. Raven, Spellbinder says, is to become the harbinger of chaos that will disrupt this world, chaos being part of the natural scheme of things. So this is sort of like a fantasy take on Aleister Crowley's Horus, maybe? Spellbinder, who has put a spell on Raven without her realizing it, leaves her in the care of warlord Argor, who teaches her all the means of fighting and warfare. The spell makes Raven not question this treatment – not to even wonder why she has been receiving such training, nor even wonder why she was so accepting of Spellbinder just up and leaving her – for a full year.

Cover artist Royo clearly read the book, as he faithfully illustrates the armor Raven has been given – the authors describe it exactly as it appears on the cover painting, even down to the “Ishkarian sleeve-shield” on Raven’s left arm and the studded, thigh-high boots. The “slip” she wears beneath the armor is also suitably revealing, again per the cover – and her sword has that giant emerald or whatever it is on the pommel. Raven learns swordfighting, handfighting, the works, even how to use “Xandrone throwing stars,” with which she becomes quite efficient. That’s right, folks, our blonde mega-babe swordmistress also uses throwing stars.

Raven is consumed with vengeance, wanting to kill her rapist, Karl ir Donwayne, whom she learns has become a sort of general for the country of Lyand. When Spellbinder returns, finding Raven an accomplished warrior (we are informed she has fought and killed in the frequent outlaw activities of Argor’s band of fighters), the reader expects that these two will be heading out to handle the sating of said vengeance. Instead, Swordsmistress Of Chaos becomes more of a quest, taking an unexpected (and narrative-consuming) detour before finally getting back to the revenge angle…in the final pages.

But before even the questing, Raven and Spellbinder take care of another little matter – namely, the looks of burnin’ yearnin’ they’ve been throwing each other. The authors don’t get too explicit in the sex scene, along the lines of stuff like, “[Raven] cried out as he entered her,” but at least it’s there. But Spellbinder makes it clear: Raven is not “his” woman; she is free to choose (and take) any man (or woman!) she pleases. Next Raven gets to prove herself in another manner: a trial by fire. Argor and his men raid an Ishkarian merchant ship, and here we see Raven in action, hacking and slashing with her sword, dagger, and throwing stars, even using the bladed edge of her sleeve-shield. The violence isn’t too gory, but it is fairly bloody – again, these two particular British pulp authors aren’t as shy about the juicy details as some others I’ve read.

One thing these authors have in common with their pulp British kin is a tendency to word paint, sometimes to excessive lengths; the novel is rife with locales and settings which the author strive to bring to life, over the course of dense descriptive paragraphs. This unfortunately serves to work as a headwind against the initial rush of the narrative. Raven’s trained and ready for warfare within a few chapters and we’re ready for some awesome fantasy stuff, but instead we hopscotch around this fantasy world with Spellbinder. First up is a trip to a cryptic temple in which a sort of meteor is worshipped; here another disembodied voice tells Raven she has been chosen for greatness. Also here we see flashforwards of what her world will someday become, with more intimations that this is in fact our world, eons ago.

The “Stone” tells Raven that if she is to get vengeance on Karl ir Donwayne, she will first need to make an impression on the Altan of Lyand, as Karl is favored by the Altan and won’t be an easy target. To gain the Altan’s favor, the Stone recommends Raven deliver the mytic Skull of Quez, which turns out to be a magical artefact: the skull of an ages-ago Lyand ruler who ventured to the mysterious Ghostly Isles of Kharwhan (from whence Spellbinder might hail, though he isn’t telling) and died, his skull saved, imbued with magical powers. Its current whereabouts are unknown. Spellbinder grabs a boat and off the two head for Kharwhan, only for the sea to wage “war” upon them as they reach the Ghostly Isles; they are shipwrecked, and are saved by Viking-like raiders who were drawn by the raven that follows Spellbinder and our heroine.

Led by the awesomely-named Gondar Lifebane, these Vikings hail from Kragg. Gondar is a big blond bastard, and Raven thinks he’s one of the best-looking dudes she’s ever met. He wants some hot sex with her asap, claiming her as his “battle right,” having found her – he and his men were waging war on Kharwhan, only to be assailed by that sea-storm, of which Raven and Spellbinder were unwitting casualties. Raven doesn’t give it up so easily, and tells Gondar he’ll have to fight her for the honor…which basically is Red Sonja’s schtick, but so what. Gondar likes her moxie.

The narrative detours from the revenge angle. Instead we head to Kragg, stronghold of Gondar and his vikings, where Spellbinder runs afoul of Gondar’s wizard, Belthis, and where Raven fends off (sort of) Gondar’s demands for sex. They swordfight over it, and though it comes to a draw, Raven decides to do Gondar anyway – more pretty-explicit stuff here, ie “[Gondar’s] manhood filled her, near choking her” as Raven shows off her oral skills for the big lug. Gondar knows that the Skull of Quez is in the jungles of Ishkar, and he and a shipfull of men take Raven and Spellbinder there, having pledged themselves to the quest. This sequence has a Tolkein flavor as the group is attacked by Beastmen, Orc-like creatures descended from various animals. There’s also more gore here in the frequent battles, and it’s all nicely done.

The authors pull some unusual narrative stuff…like when Spellbinder engages the Beastman ruler in magical combat for possession of the Skull, and they render the entire friggin’ sequence off-page. But he gets it, and after bidding goodbye to Gondar and his men our heroes finally go to Lyand, where we get back on-track with the revenge angle that started the book. Spellbinder is imprisoned due to magic courtesy Belthis, the ousted wizard from Kragg; Belthis puts a spell on the Altan (a foppish sort) and the Altana (the Altan’s co-ruling sister, a mega-babe sort) to make them think Spellbinder is evil.

For whatever reason, Belthis leaves Raven alone…and meanwhile Raven can’t help but notice the hot looks the Altan’s sister is throwing her. Her name is Kyra, and she makes her interests known – and Raven decides to take advantage of said interests so as to free Spellbinder, what the hell. The ensuing sex scene is the most explicit of all: “[Raven] lapped with a hunger she had not known she owned at the sweet, thrusting core of Kyra’s being.” The Swordsmistress of Chaos, baby! The two dine at the Y all night long, and into the morning as well, and the fact that Raven’s entire reason for engaging in this sapphic tryst is brushed under the narrative carpet is something we’ll just overlook; for as it is, the Altana doesn’t even do much to help Raven.

Rapist Karl ir Donwayne is finally given his comeuppance, and it’s pretty anticlimactic; Donwayne barely even appears in the novel. Raven guts him and literally emasculates him with her fancy swordfighting and star-throwing skills. The end is pretty damn rushed, in fact; like how we’re informed in passing that Raven screws the guy who guards the gates to the city, so he’ll watch over her horses and armor. Even more oddly, we’re informed that Raven, our heroine, threatens the lives of this guy’s wife and kids if he blabs on her! But this isn’t even the messiest part; when Raven and Spellbinder make their escape, using the powers of the Quez Skull for distraction, the authors already have them in their armor – even though, just a page or so earlier, we’ve been expressly informed that Raven is not wearing armor. So clearly the book suffered from this dual-author writing, as it would appear these guys didn’t check each other’s work.

I wonder if the authors envisaged this as the start of a series; the novel ends with Belthis still at large and the Quez Skull destroyed. Raven’s vengeance has been sated, which leaves the future an open book for her. She and Spellbinder ponder what to do next. Meanwhile, the epilogue takes us back to that post-Ice Age opening, in which the “old cripple,” who appears to be none other than Spellbinder, bemoans again the nightmare which has become of the world, and how the heroes of the past, like Raven, are long gone. Particularly interesting are his comments about the “last armageddic battle,” which he doesn’t believe Raven survived, though he mentions that Gondar did.

Anyway, Swordsmistress Of Chaos detours from where it initially seems to be headed, but like the old saying goes, the journey is more fun than the destination, so I can’t complain. I got the entire series (in the Ace edition) for a pittance and look forward to continuing it.

People Of The Talisman and Black Amazon Of Mars

The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman, by Leigh Brackett

No date stated (November, 1971)  Ace Books

(Original Ace Double edition, 1964)
(Also published as Eric John Stark: Outlaw Of Mars, by Ballantine Books, September 1982)

As mentioned in my review of The Secret Of Sinharat, People Of The Talisman also started life in the pulps, as “Black Amazon Of Mars,” before it too was expanded in 1964 as the flipside of this Ace Double. I’ve reviewed the original novella below.

Whereas The Secret Of Sinharat mostly stayed true to its original incarnation, with only a few changes here and there – though not all of them to the story’s benefit, I’d argue – People Of The Talisman is almost a straight-up rewrite, save for the opening pages. It’s also a little longer; Sinharat came in at a mere 94 pages, whereas Talisman runs to 124.

“Black Amazon Of Mars” was the last Eric John Stark adventure Leigh Brackett published until 1974 (The Ginger Star, being the first volume of the Book Of Skaith trilogy), though it appears to occur before the 1949 Stark novella “Enchantress Of Venus” (review forthcoming), and also before the unpublished-until-2005 novella “Stark And The Star Kings,” which was written in 1973 (review also forthcoming). This is mostly because Stark is still on Mars in the story, which is where we left him at the end of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs”/The Secret Of Sinharat. He’s made his way from the deserts of the Drylands up into the snowy expanses of the Norlands. There’s no pickup from the previous story, but we’re informed that Stark has been carrying on guerrilla warfare with some of the Dryland barbarian tribes featured in the previous story, and a few times he mentions he’s been to Valkis – whereas it was made clear in Sinharat that it was his first time visiting that Martian city. 

When we meet up with Stark this time he’s in the rugged, snowy expanses of north Mars, on his way to the sequestered kingdom of Kushat along with a Martian friend named Camar. But Camar is dying, presumably from wounds in the guerrilla fighting. Camar is from Kushat, and apparently only a few people have ever left the city. Camar actually fled, having stolen the sacred Talisman of Ban Cruach, a Martian who saved Kushat around a million years ago, taking some sort of power from the Gates of Death, ie the unexplored, hellish region which looms beyond Kushat, the titular “Gates” being a pass through the black mountains outside the city. The talisman is a lens in a leather boss that Camar has hidden on his belt; Stark vows to take the talisman on to Kushat, as a favor to his dying friend.

But there’s more to the talisman than meets the eye; when Stark exploringly puts it on his forehead, he sees visions that appear to come from Ban Cruach’s actual experiences, all those millennia ago. The talisman is the fabled protector of Kushat; whatever it was that Ban Cruach found out there, the promise was that if ever Kushat was in trouble, the talisman would provide its people with the means of overcoming it. Given this, Kushat has never been conquered, and the superstitious Martians have given it wide birth. Now, without its protective talisman, the city is unprotected. 

Posthaste Stark is captured by “the riders of Mekh,” a barbarian tribe that roams the wilds outside Kushat. They take his few belongings – a recurring bit is that Stark is basically penniless everytime we meet him – but leave the cheap belt which was once Camar’s, and now rests on Stark’s waist, because it looks so worn and worthless. The barbarians take Stark to their leader, a badass warrior in black armor, who wields a black war axe and wears a black mask that appears to be inspired by samurai armor:

His head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen before only in very old paintings – the ancient war-mask of the inland Kings of Mars. Wrought of black and gleaming steel, it presented an unhuman visage of slitted eyeholes and a barred slot for breathing. Behind, it sprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on in flight.

This is the Lord Ciaran, ruler of the riders of Mekh, on his way to sack Kushat – something that’s never been attempted at this time of year, where it seems to be a gentleman’s agreement that no battles will be waged in the dead of winter. The expansion features a big gaffe of omission – sitting by Ciaran is an old pile of rags named Otar, a crazed old runaway from Kushat, and he is not introduced in the expansion as he is in the novella. Yet Stark abruptly refers to him by name. Clearly Brackett (or was it her husband Edmond Hamilton who did the ghostwriting for the expansion?) overlooked the fact that she’d edited out his intro from the novella. Not that it matters; Otar eventually disappears from both the novel and the novella.

One thing fixed up in the expansion is that here no one promptly assumes Stark has the talisman, as they do in the novella – they just demand to know if Stark knows where it is. He’s strung up on a rack and whipped, but breaks free thanks to his Tarzan-like abilities, getting the jump on some riders who think he’s passed out. He takes up a spear and lays into his captors – “He killed, and was happy.” Stark escapes on one of those lizardlike “mounts” which Brackett has yet to describe, and gradually loses the Mekh riders, ending up in Kushat.

This is another of those fallen Martian cities, though not so depraved as Valkis was in the earlier story. No one believes Stark’s story that barbarian riders are about to storm the wall that surrounds Kushat, and he also soon discovers that the rulers of Kushat are lying to their people that the Talisman of Ban Cruach is still here. A waif-like girl from the Thieves’s Quarter named Thanis argues with young soldier Lugh and company compander Lord Rogain(!) that she be given responsibility for Stark, as they plan to throw him in prison for his “lies.” Thanis takes Stark back to her apartment in the Quarter, which she shares with her brother Balin.

I mentioned in my review of The Secret Of Sinharat that some of Stark’s bad-assery had been whittled out, in the transition from novella to novel. The same thing happens here; to put it plainly, Stark gets laid in “Black Amazon Of Mars,” but he doesn’t in People Of The Talisman. This is due to the character revision Thanis experiences; in the novella she’s a sultry vixen who promptly throws herself on Stark, referring to him lovingly as “animal” afterwards, yet in the novel she is much more naïve and innocent, and has what amounts to a big brother sort of love for Stark.

The novel also features this incredibly goofy bit of coincidence in which Balin announces that he’s discovered Stark has the talisman, because not only did Balin know Camar, but he also recognized Camar’s belt!! We get a lot of insight into Kushat and the myth of Ban Cruach, perhaps a bit too much. There’s a massive statue of him in the city square and Lugh lies to Stark that the talisman is there. Stark’s story of impending invasion is only half-heartedly listened to, so soldiers man the wall. The siege of course happens a few days later, with Ciaran in his black armor marshalling his forces. Stark is crazed with vengeance, and gets in a brief swordfight with Ciaran.

Here comes the big shock – ruined of course by the title of the original novella – Ciaran is actually a she. Stark knocks off that ancient Martian helmet and is surprised when he finds himself looking into the face of a beautiful woman with black hair (she had “red-gold” hair in the novella, by the way). There’s a moment where it looks like her barbarians will abandon her, having discovered they’ve been following a woman, but Ciaran leaps into the fray and thus becomes a “goddess” to them. Stark meanwhile bands together some Kushatians, knowing the city is doomed, and leads them on a long escape through the tunnels beneath Kushat – this novel is very heavy on the atmospherics, lacking much of the action of the source novella.

Determined to help save Kushat, and also get his vengeance on Ciaran, woman or not, Stark leads his group into the Gates of Death, to find whatever power Ban Cruach found there. He ends up cutting off a pursuing Ciaran and capturing her, and succeeds in keeping his group of survivors from killing her – they can use her to barter for their safe passage. Meanwhile they explore the ghostly ruins in the Gates of Death. They are soon confronted by aliens who look much like the one depicted on the cover, and these aliens predate the human-stock “Martians” who now run the planet.

The talisman allows conversation with these stalking aliens, and Stark detects that there is something untrustworthy about them, despite their apparent kindness. They vow to help Kushat, as Ban Cruach made the same promise to them, so long ago – these aliens want to live alone in their own kingdowm, and Kushat was like a barrier between them and the rest of Mars. In a stupid moment they happily hand over all their weapons to the band of survivors, and off they rush to reclaim Kushat from the riders of Mekh – it’s all very rushed and sort of goofy.

But it turns out to be a “game;” the aliens have tricked the Kushatians, and the lights in the eerie city go out so the aliens can now hunt the survivors for sport. The talisman is revealed to be worthless, and one of the aliens smashes it. Eventually Stark runs into Ciaran, and the aliens have contrived it so these two could fight to the death; instead, they take up their swords, stand back to back, and commence to hacking and slashing. They escape, along with Thanis and Balin and a few other survivors, and Ciaran promptly vows to leave Kushat, taking her barbarians with her…as long as Stark helps her fight to reclaim her birth kingdom of Narissa; Ciaran, daughter of the now-dead king, was ridiculed by her people for being a girl who wanted to rule, but now she will return to Narissa and claim it for her own.

And here People Of The Talisman comes to its unsatisfying, rushed end. Having read the novella first, it occurred to me as I read this expansion that what appears to have happened was that Brackett, for whatever reason, toned down the pulpy fun of the source material and attempted to make it all more “straight” and “serious.” Gone is the fast-moving action of the novella, replaced with lots of scene-setting and needless tours of Kushat. It’s my understanding that Brackett’s sci-fi gradually lost this pulpish vibe as the ‘50s went into the ‘60s, so maybe these expansions were just reflections of that.

As with The Secret Of Sinharat, I read the 1971 reprint shown above. Here is the cover of the original 1964 paperback; it’s interesting that ’71 reprint cover artist Enrique “Enrich” Torres basically just redrew it, same as he did for his Sinharat cover:

On to the original pulp version – as with “Queen of the Martian Catacombs,” I found “Black Amazon of Mars” to be vastly superior to the expansion. “Black Amazon Of Mars” appeared in the March 1951 issue of Planet Stories, and you can find a scan of it for free download at The Internet Archive. Not only does the novella move faster – which would be a given as it’s shorter than the expansion – but the character motivations and climax are all superior, and Stark comes off as a stronger character. It’s also in even more of a Robert E. Howard mold than “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs,” filled with warriors in armor battling it out with swords and axes. Here’s the cover:

As with my rundown of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs,” I’ll mostly go over differences here, so spoilers will run rampant. The novella starts off basically identical to People Of The Talisman, up to the point where Stark arrives in Kushat. As mentioned above, Stark gets lucky with Thanis, who is much more sultry here, less the innocent waif. There’s also none of the business of Balin having known Camar and recognizing Camar’s belt. But the novella does suffer from a strange tendency of various characters abruptly assuming, apropos of nothing, that Stark has the talisman of Ban Cruach and is hiding it from them.

But the main thrust of the story proceeds the same; Stark warns of the approaching hordes of Ciaran, and his story is doubted. He gets involved in the fighting during the eventual siege, and unmasks Ciaran as in the novel, but here she has red hair. Also in the novella it’s revealed that Ciaran is really “Ciara,” something not addressed in the novel. Despite her unmasking Ciara still leads her riders to a conquest of Kushat. In panic Balin flees through the Gates of Death, to find whatever power Ban Cruach left there. Alerted to this by a shrieking Thanis, Stark goes off in pursuit – and he himself is chased by Ciara and several of her barbarians.

The Gates of Death are guarded by a mummified figure in armor, holding a massive sword: Ban Cruach himself. Rushing past this figure, Stark encounters “the ice-folk,” the faceless, looming creatures of ice who live in this hellish, frozen area. They scare off Ciara’s men, and she proceeds alone after Stark. The duo fight the creatures but are captured, taken to an ice palace. Speaking telepathically, the ice-folk reveal that they were the original rulers of Mars, but Ban Cruach fought them back a million years ago, segregating them in this frozen section of the north – when they ruled Mars, the entire planet was covered with their ice castles, but Ban Cruach defeated them and gave the world to the current human-like Martians.

Ban Cruach did this, somehow, with his sword, the radioactive properties of which still in some mysterious way prevent the ice-folk from leaving their ghetto. They force Stark to get the sword, figure out how it works, and use it to free them so they can once again take control of Mars. This is the exact opposite of the goal of the aliens in People Of The Talisman. Stark refuses until the ice-folk threaten to freeze Ciara and Balin to death. Stark complies, and puts on the talisman, still hidden in his belt. With it he is granted the knowledge of how to use the sword.

The finale is a weird burst of near-psychedelic action as Stark waves the magical sword around, melting ice-folk and structures alike. The sword has a sort of microwave beam that wipes out anything in its path, and also protects Stark from the black light beams the ice-folk shoot at him. He also uses it to melt the ice that has nearly killed Ciara and Balin, and the three escape after Stark destroys the entire palace. The finale sees them emerging back into normal Mars, and here, unlike the clunky finale of the novel, Ciara does not vow to leave Kushat – indeed, it’s specified that she will remain there as ruler. There’s none of the business of her seeking to reclaim the throne of her father, either. She does though extend the same sort of offer to Stark – she asks him to stay with her, and Stark figures he will, at least for a while.

This was the last Eric John Stark story Brackett published until 1974, with The Ginger Star, being the first volume of the Book of Skaith trilogy – that is, if you aren’t counting the expanded versions of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon Of Mars” from 1964. However it would appear that Brackett, like her inspiration Robert E. Howard, didn’t write her Stark stories in chronological order, so that the second-published Stark yarn, “Enchantress Of Venus” (Planet Stories, Fall 1949), actually would follow after “Black Amazon Of Mars,” which was published two years later. I’ll be reading that one next, as well as the other stories collected in the 2008 Baen eBook Stark And The Star Kings And Other Stories.

The Secret Of Sinharat and Queen Of The Martian Catacombs

The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman, by Leigh Brackett

No date stated (November, 1971)  Ace Books

(Original Ace Double edition, 1964)
(Also published as Eric John Stark: Outlaw Of Mars, by Ballantine Books, September 1982)

Where the hell has Leigh Brackett been all my life?? I grew up reading the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard, but never really got into Edgar Rice Burroughs, though I was aware of his Martian tales and wanted to read them. (Something I still intend to do someday.) 

But I knew a sort of subgenre of “sword and planets” (aka “planetary romances”) existed which sort of took the sword and sorcery of Howard and mixed it with the alien worlds of Burroughs; after a recent hardboiled pulp binge abruptly petered out with no warning, I found myself suddenly interested in this subgenre, discovering a whole slew of books and series that were new to me.

Leigh Brackett’s material jumped out at me more than any other, and I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without reading her. Brackett still has a sizeable following, with info about her all over the web as well as many reviews of her various novels and scripts, so I’ll keep the preamble short. She may be new to me but I’m sure many of you have known about her for years. Sadly it would appear she is most remembered these days either for her Hollywood scripts or for the fact that she wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back, so her name is prominently displayed on posters for that film. She got her start in sci-fi, though, specifically for the pulps, and she was herself a big fan of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Her writing I feel comes very close to REH – certainly more close than any of the Conan pastiche authors I’ve ever read. One gets the impression that L. Sprauge de Camp should’ve hired Brackett instead of Lin Carter when he began anthologizing the Conan books.

Brackett wrote a variety of pulp sci-fi, but her main series character was Earthman Eric John Stark, who is basically a combo of Tarzan and Conan – a big, brawny dude who was raised in the wilds of Mercury, where he was known by the natives as N’Chaka. Now Stark serves as a mercenary around the solar system, violently sworn to protecting the rights of his fellow “barbarians.” The Stark stories are very much in a “Conan the Barbarian of Mars” sort of vein, ie as if Conan had starred in those Burroughsian Martian tales. Brackett’s Mars (and other planets in the solar system) are basically Howard’s Hyperborea, with only occasional mentions of laser pistols or space ships (or even cigarettes!). Otherwise they are very much in the sword and sorcery realm, with combat handled mostly with bladed weaponry, warriors in chain mail, and people speaking in the formal, almost stilted tones of Howard’s Conan work.

Stark appeared in three pulp novellas: “Queen of the Martian Catacombs,” from 1949 (reviewed below); “Enchantress of Venus,” also from 1949; and “Black Amazon of Mars,” from 1951. There was also a novella titled “Stark and the Star Kings,” which Brackett wrote with her husband Edmond Hamilton in 1973; it wasn’t published until 2005, though was originally slated to appear in Harlan Ellison’s never-published Last Dangerous Visions in the mid ‘70s (it is mistakenly copyrighted 1949 in the Baen eBook Stark And The Star Kings And Other Stories; I will be reading/reviewing it soon). In 1964 Brackett expanded two of the Stark novellas into the paperback I’m reviewing: “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” became The Secret Of Sinharat, and “Black Amazon of Mars” became People Of The Talisman, which is the flipside of this Ace Double. “Enchantress Of Venus” was never expanded, but was included in the 1977 anthology The Best of Leigh Brackett; it apparently takes place after the other two Stark novellas Brackett published, but before “Stark and the Star Kings.” Stark would later appear in a trilogy Brackett published in the mid-‘70s (The Book Of Skaith).

Folks with a lot more background on the subject than I claim that Brackett’s husband Edmond Hamilton actually expanded these two novellas in 1964. Having read both the originals and the expansions, I myself am undecided on this. I tend to think this myth is untrue, mainly due to the foreward Brackett and Hamilton wrote for “Stark and the Star Kings,” presumably for Ellison’s anthology, but included with the 2005 publication of the novella. In this foreward, the authors claim that “Stark and the Star Kings” was their first and only collaboration; during the writing of it they found that their styles did not jibe. My argument is that, if Hamilton had done the expansion on these two novellas, why wouldn’t they have mentioned it in the “Stark and the Star Kings” foreward, which was written several years after the Ace Double was published?

Anyway, all that is moot, and is likely a mystery that will never be solved anyway. What matters is the work itself, and folks, it’s pretty damn cool. I mean, I’m 42 now, but reading Brackett’s work made me feel like I was 12 again. Who cares that science has buzzkilled the possibility of her inhabited solar system? This to me is pure sci-fi as it should be, not bogged down with technical jargon or attempts at “realism.” It’s just straight-up fun, featuring a grim but likable protagonist and his colorful adventures on various planets. If you are looking for escapist sci-fantasy that is written with incredible polish, look no further.

Speaking of colorful, let’s get to Eric John Stark himself. His history is only sprinkled here and there throughout The Secret Of Sinharat; interestingly, Brackett doesn’t add anything more to what she’d already hinted at about Stark’s history in the original 1949 novella. Raised by “half human aborigines” in the wilds of Mercury, Stark’s skin was burned so black by the relentless sun that it is almost as black as his hair (dude, it’s called sunscreen!!). This black skin contrasts eerily with his light eyes. Otherwise he is a total Conan/Tarzan type – tall, brawny, but lean, able to move faster than normal men and given to red rages of violence. Sadly, some of this violence is toned down in the 1964 expansion, most notably in the glutting of Stark’s vengeance in one central part of the story; in the original pulp novella, Stark strangles an enemy, but in the ’64 expansion someone takes the kill from him. But more of that anon.

Brackett wastes no time on world-building or scene-setting; another wonderful element of vintage pulp sci-fi, unlike the reams of exposition you’ll encounter in the genre today. The cover painting (on this edition above and the original ’64 edition, below) captures it nicely; Stark, riding a lizardlike beast across the desert wastes of Mars, is vainly trying to escape an Earth Police Control squad. But one of them calls out for “N’Chaka,” which was Stark’s native Mercurian name, and one known only to a few. It is Simon Ashton, of the EPC, Stark’s foster father – apparently Stark’s tribe was killed when he was a child, and Ashton found the boy in a cage and raised him. There is absolutely no maudlin glurge here; the two have not seen one another in sixteen years, and Ashton conscribes Stark’s service in exchange for tossing out Stark’s imprisonment sentence – Stark’s up for life on the prisons of the moon for various illegal activities.

The expansion features one bit of explanation I appreciated; I read the original pulp novella first, and had a hard time understanding what these various “aliens” looked like; they all seemed to be humans. The ’64 expansion explains why this is: “Earth’s sister worlds…[populated by] descendants of some parent human stock that long ago had seeded the whole System.” In Brackett’s solar system, all the planets are habitable, and all apparently have oxygen and native life, as well as human inhabitants, though there are various differences – usually in body size, eye color, and the like. So it would appear there’s no “hatching from eggs” as in the Barsoom novels of Burroughs.

Despite this “parent human stock” which seeded the planets, Stark is still often referred to as “the Earthman,” which again gives the book a Burroughsian (or Flash Gordon) feel – that is, when he isn’t being called a “barbarian” or “wild man” or even “animal.” As mentioned he is drawn to barbarian causes, and was already on his way to ancient Martian city of Valkis to serve as a mercenary for barbarian tribe leader Delgaun. Word has it that all the various tribes are gathering for a war on the “Drylands” of Mars. Simon Ashton says that there may be more to it than that, and the EPC is worried, particularly over rumors of the ancient Ramas cult – basically the ancient Egypt of Brackett’s Mars.

Stark takes the mission, not only so as to get rid of his prison sentence but also out of respect to his father foster – and also so as to prevent the shedding of “barbarian blood” in whatever vain pursuit Delgaun and his colleague, fellow barbarian leader Kynon, have in mind. This brings us to the city of Valkis, which is now a “beautiful corpse” of the glorious city that once was – again, the parallels to ancient Egypt are hard to miss. Stark meets Delgaun, who is “lean and catlike, after the fashion of his race,” and has yellow eyes like “hot gold.” He meets the other mercenaries called in for the war, among them Luhar of Venus, who sold Stark out on a previous job; the two men are determined to kill one another.

Soon fellow barbarian leader Kynon makes his appearance; riding in from the desert amid great pomp, Kynon is younger and brawnier than Stark expected. His is filled with the wonder of the ancient art of the Ramas, which he claims to have rediscovered after many years searching in the endless desert; this art is displayed for the agog masses. The Ramas were known for transferring minds from one body to another, thus granting themselves immortality, their minds living on and on in an endless tide of young bodies. Kynon puts on a show, with an old man and a young boy, using a glowing scepter to transfer the mind from the former into the latter. The barbarian crowd is duly impressed, but Stark sees the con, and calls Kynon on it later. Kynon admits to the deceit, but claims it is all for the good of the rabble, something for the various tribes to gather together under.

With Kynon is a hotstuff babe with red hair named Berild; she seems intrigued by Stark’s impertinence. Serving Berild is the equally pretty – but more young and naïve-seeming – Fianna. Stark notices a strange struggle going on between Delgaun, Berild, and Fianna, but takes care of more pressing issues when he’s ordered that night to go pull a fellow mercenary, Freka, out of a Shanga den on the outskirts of Valkis. One of Brackett’s more novel creations, Shanga is an illegal drug, known also as “the going back.” People sit under quartz lights and regress back to various stages of bestialism, with their faces changing accordingly – the real hardcore users changing almost entirely in form. Interestingly, the original ’49 edition contains a line that was edited out of the ’64 expansion: “[Shanga] was supposed to have been stamped out when the Lady Fand’s dark Shanga ring had been destroyed.” This is a reference to Brackett’s 1948 novella “The Beast-Jewel of Mars,” which was included in the early Brackett anthology The Coming Of The Terrans (Ace Books, 1967).

Fianna has warned Stark that this is going to be a trap, and it is – there follows a cool, Island Of Lost Souls-like scene where Stark is attacked by several bestial-faced Shanga users. Luhar is also there, with a knife ready for Stark; the entire thing has been an assassination attempt, courtesy Luhar and Delgaun, the latter presumably wanting to take out Stark due to his jealousy over how Berild’s been checking out “the wild man.” Stark acquits himself well in the fight, though there’s no Conan-esque moment, as I’d hoped, where he starts to hack and slash. He also doesn’t kill Luhar – who promptly begins plotting, almost in the open, with Freka. Brackett appears to imply that Luhar and Freka are an item, something which is slightly more apparent in this expansion than in the original novella.

The midpoint sees the two hatch their revenge; as the barbarian troop is making its way across the vast desert to Sinharat, ancient “island city” of the Ramas which Kynon has taken as his own base of operations, a sand storm strikes. Freka and Luhar manage to knock Stark from his mount in the vicious pounding waves of sand and leave him for dead. However, Berild is stranded with him, and there follows a harrowing trek across the red wastes of the desert. The two have only one skin of “stinking water,” and they struggle inhumanly as they march for days and days – Sinharat is a seven-day journey, and they don’t have nearly enough water to survive the walk. It becomes even more grueling when the enter “the Belly of Stones,” which is like the Saharra of Mars.

Days later, passed out from dehydration and the heat, Stark wakes to find Berild walking around an ancient well, and it looks as if she is remembering something. After much digging she points out a hidden, ancient well. Two days pass, during which the two apparently have lots of off-page interspecies sex – something Stark practically confirms to Fianna later on. When they arrive in Sinharat, ancient fallen city of the Ramas built on a mountain of coral, no one believes that they were able to survive the trek. Stark makes for Luhar, to sate his vengeance, but Berild denies him this, courtesy a dagger she’s hidden in her dress. I found this unsatisfactory. Berild argues with a raging Delgaun that Luhar and Freka’s treachery almost “ended” her, a strangely-chosen word which she stresses strongly, much to Stark’s suspicion. 

Sinharat is more captured here than in the novella. Millennia ago it was surrounded by an ocean, but now it’s just desert, and when the wind blows through the honeycombs of coral beneath it, strange cries fill the air, freaking out the superstitious barbarians (and Stark himself). The temples and palaces are fallen down, some roofless, with ancient statues all over the place – again, pretty much ancient Egypt. This part is a bit padded, compared to the original version, more so focused on Stark figuring out the truth about Berild. There is a nice part though where he’s attacked one night by Freka, hopped up again on Shanga and in pure beast mode. Stark deals with him with his hands, for which he’s arrested – Delgaun has demanded absolutely no fighting or killing, and Stark has increasingly made himself a nuissance.

The finale is almost like Zardoz – Stark has already figured out that Berild is more than she seems, something Fianna confirms. Skip this paragraph and the next if you don’t want to know. But Fianna reveals that she, Berild, and Delgaun are all Ramas, impossibly ancient, only in new bodies. Berild, tired of her ancient consort Delgaun, secretly plots for power; she is the one who duped Kynon into assembling the barbarian rabble, and she will replace Delgaun with someone else who can rule beside her into eternity – she offers this to Stark, but instead he arms himself with a sword and goes to deliver death. This is where the Zardoz vibe occurred to me.

Brackett isn’t much for gore or overdone violence; when people are hit by swords they just fall down. So in (what little) of her work I’ve read, there’s none of the hacking and slashing Howard did so well. And truth be told, the climax of The Secret Of Sinharat is a bit harried, at least to me – Berild is dispensed with almost casually by Kynon, who has been fatally stabbed by her…and then he goes to the ramparts and informs the throngs that it’s all been a lie, while Stark just stands there. In the end Fianna decides not to smash the globes of mind-transference, saying that she might change her mind and want a new body, after all. She invites Stark back in “thirty years” if he changes his mind and wants to be immortal with her! Stark says no thanks. The end.

Shown above is the cover of the edition I read – this reprint features no publication info, other than the original copyright date of 1964. It does however carry the inscription “cover by Enrich.” This refers to artist Enrique “Enrich” Torres, and according to a listing of Ace Double publication dates, this The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman reprint is from November, 1971. I actually prefer this cover to the original 1964 edition (which itself is nice), mostly because I think it more faithfully captures the vibe of the novel – and also I enjoy Enrich’s sub-Frazetta/Vallejo art. But anyway, here is the cover of that 1964 edition:

Just for the sake of completeness, here’s the cover for the 1982 Ballantine reprint of The Secret Of Sinharat/People Of The Talisman, which was retitled Eric John Stark: Outlaw Of Mars. It retains the Ace text, though it’s not a flipover as that earlier Double was; it is however missing the “cast of characters” which was provided for Sinharat in the Ace edition. This is my least favorite cover of them all:

Now, on to the original pulp edition, which appeared as “Queen of the Martian Catacombs” in the Summer, 1949 issue of Planet Stories. You can find this novella at The Internet Archive for free download; be sure to select the PDF option, as it’s a scan of the original issue, complete with illustration and breathless editorial blurb. All I can say is, the original version is better – like, much better. It’s leaner and more brutal at times, and features a bit more action. It also, unsurprisingly, moves a lot more quickly than the expansion.  Here is the cover:

I’m mostly going to go over the differences here, so spoilers will be heavy – if you want to avoid all this, just skip the next couple paragraphs. The novella is mostly the same as the expansion, for the first half, at least. Only a few changes here and there, as mentioned above. But once Stark and Berild are lost in the Belly of Stones, the novella is much different. Here there is none of Stark spying on Berild as she seeks out the ancient well; she doesn’t bother to hide the fact that she’s apparently recalling her own ancient memory to remember where it is. And also, after their few days of humpin’ and bumpin’ here in the oasis by the well, Stark in the novella promptly accuses Berild of being a Rama – in the expansion this is drawn out much longer. Berild fiercely denies the accusation, even up to the point of threatening Stark’s life.

Once the two get to Sinharat, the novella differs even more greatly. Here occurs the vengeance-glutting I mentioned above, which Brackett denied Stark in the ’64 version; as soon as he sees Luhar, Stark strangles him to death. For this he’s tossed into a dungeon, chained, and it is Freka who wields an axe, waiting for him to waken. Hence the bit from the expansion, with Stark fighting a Shanga-drugged Freka, doesn’t happen here. Fianna appears, as in the novella, and guns down Freka, though her gun apparently shoots flame or something – the expansion makes it seem like a regular gun, but here it’s more of your typical pulp sci-fi raygun deal, which I think is cooler. After this Fianna explains the truth of it all – that she, Berild, and Kynon are all really Ramas. In the expansion, Brackett made Delgaun the Rama, and Kynon the dupe; it’s the other way around in the original.

The climax is much imrpoved in the novella, and one wonders why it was even changed for the expanded version. Here Berild reveals to Stark that she wants him to rule beside her, in Kynon’s body – and Stark accepts. There follows a cool scene in which the “Sending-On of Minds” of the ancient Ramas is employed, and Stark’s mind is placed in another body; he can barely stand to look at his old body, filled with barbarian dread at the sorcery. Turns out though it’s just a con – he declares to the assembled throngs that Berild has tricked them and that he is not really Kynon and etc. This is so much better than in the expansion, where a dying Kynon exposited all this. Now chaos breaks out, and in it Delgaun kills Berild off-page, then comes after Stark (still in Kynon’s body), and fatally stabs him before Stark kills him. The novella ends with Fianna getting Stark’s mind out of Kynon’s body just in time, returning it to his own. She also smashes the globes of mind transference, unlike in the expansion, and tells Stark she needs time to think about her new life. The end. 

End spoilers. Folks, the novella is super cool and I’d recommend it in a hot second over The Secret Of Sinharat. If you’re at all interested in checking out Brackett, I’d recommend going to the link above and downloading the PDF of “Queen of the Martian Catacombs.” It’s a ton of fun, and when I read it I couldn’t wait to read more of Brackett’s work. I’ll be doing a review of People Of The Talisman and its original version, “Black Amazon Of Mars,” next.

Massage Parlor Part II

Massage Parlor Part II, by Jennifer Sills
July, 1974  Ace Books

It took me a few years, but I’ve finally gotten back to the sleazy trilogy begun with Massage Parlor, that Ace Books cash-in on Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker which did so well it actually sold a million or so copies. “Jennfier Sills” once again blithely tells us all about her whoring; this book, which follows the same template as the last (namely, each chapter is basically just a sex scene) has Jennifer moving shop to Los Angeles and opening a massage parlor for the elite.

As mentioned in my review of the previous volume, it seems to have been an open secret that “Jennifer Sills” was really an author named Stephen Lewis. He turned out a plethora of sex books for Ace, as well as a few trashy potboilers; the back of Massage Parlor Part II even has an ad for Lewis’s books right beneath the listing for the two Massage Parlor novels. I’ve found a contemporary interview with Lewis about the Sills books here, carried out while Lewis was writing this book (which we’re told was yet to be titled – looks like Lewis didn’t strain the imagination too hard coming up with it!). According to Hawks’s Authors Pseudonyms, Lewis died very young, the years of his life stated as being 1946-1981. It’s impolite to speculate, but I wonder if he was an early victim of AIDS.

Because there is a sudden focus on kinky sex in Massage Parlor Part II, not to mention lots of stuff about gay or bi guys; I mean, you’ll read these puke-out parts where there’s an explicit sex scene between a man and a woman, and then “Jennifer” will mention that one of the dudes licks up the, uh, effluvia of the men. Per the above link Lewis was a single guy living in Manhattan who was clearly quite familiar with the underground world of sex for sale, so I can’t help but wonder if his own life mirrored his books.

Anyway it’s a couple months after the first volume and Jennifer opens this book with her having sex with some dude she met at Kennedy Airport, right before her flight here to LA. Jennifer reveals that she broke off her relationship with cop boyfriend Tom, who wanted to marry her; she also sold off her Massagarama parlor, mostly due to all the massage parlor busts that were going on in New York. Most importantly, Jennifer reveals that her book, Massage Parlor, sold so well that she has become almost a celebrity – the novel occurs in this almost metafictional realm, in which fictional Jennifer’s real book has made fictional Jennifer famous in her fictional world.

In fact this latest lay is a dude she spotted grabbing Massage Parlor off the spinner rack at Kennedy; Jennifer arranged to sit beside him and kept spying on him during the flight as he read it, to see if he got hot and bothered; Jennifer informs us she received many letters from people claiming that they got so turned on by her first book that they had to masturbate posthaste, etc. This guy is named Don, he’s a wealthy lawyer, and he and Jennifer hit it off well – soon enough she’s nude at his place, listening to “the latest Led Zeppelin album” while checking out a closeup of her own nether region on the closed circuit TV Don has in his room. “Don began to eat me out like a madman,” Jennifer casually informs us, and off we go into Massage Parlor Part II.

Jennifer and Don also hit it off business-wise; Don convinces Jennifer to open a new parlor here in Los Angeles, and he will co-manage it, using his connections with famous and wealthy people to make it the top sex spot. Jennifer comes up with the idea to call it The Body Club, and after a screening of a porn director’s latest flick, she also decides to hire a bunch of its performers. This sequence is the first evidence of the kinky bent which will drive this volume; there are few straight-up sex scenes this time around, with more focus on oddball stuff. As evidence, Jennifer notes that, after the actors in the movie have sex, they piss on each other. Hmmm….

But one new element this time is that Jennifer actually massages people; whereas the previous book was all about the sex, this one Jennifer keeps reminding us that she gives bona fide rubdowns, and good ones, too; here she proves herself to the porn actors with a bit of zone therapy, making massively-hung actor Geraldo (likely a Harry Reems stand-in) “shoot his load” with some masterful massaging. But Jennifer has her own limits; when an orgy threatens to break out, she says no thanks – and then changes her mind after a little amyl nitrate from an inhaler.

The Body Club is set up in the rundown mansion of an old ‘30s director, who died years ago. Jennifer and Don pay exorbitantly to fix it up, complete with three sex rooms that have different themes and also closed circuit TVs in them. Don also comes up with Jennifer’s price list, which shocks our narrator: it’s a thousand dollars to join the club, and Jennifer’s “services” cost a whopping five hundred bucks…and that’s in 1974 money! Don’s argument is that it’s all about “flash” in Hollywood, and the higher the price tag the more people will covet whatever it is your selling; he also informs Jennifer that they need to capitalize on the fame her book has given her. Now that she’s seen as an expert on sex, she should be paid accordingly.

But Jennifer rarely has just normal sex with any of her clients; at least, Lewis doesn’t focus on those. Instead we get a dude on “a baby trip,” who likes to wear diapers and be rubbed down and spanked and baby-talked to, the climax coming when he breastfeeds off Jennifer. Then there’s the football star who only gets excited when Jennifer slips a finger into his ass – he bridles at the insinuation that he might be gay – and royally gets off when Jennifer puts a pair of her panties on him. And then there’s the guy who hires Jennifer and another massuese, jams sausages and fruits and whatnot in all their passages, and starts to eat them! The “subuman look” in the man’s eyes scares even grizzled Jennifer. 

Indeed, Jennifer gets burned out with all the kinky shit, and wonders “what’s going on with sex?” She complains to Don that no one just wants to screw anymore, that it’s all about the latest weird and freaky scene. I would say this is Dean Koontz’z dictum, from Writing Popular Fiction, being proven once again – that the author of sleaze will eventually reach burnout. And Jennifer does periodically throughout the novel, which turns out to be Lewis developing his escape route; late in the game Jennifer tells us that this volume “finishes” her story, which began in the first book (despite which another one came out, two years later, via Fawcett Books: Jennifer’s Boys).

During a weekend getaway with Don – who doesn’t achieve the narrative importance that Tom did – Jennifer meets an older, “World’s Most Interesting Man”-type Latino dude named Giorgio who seems very interested in her, and vice versa, but Don won’t give Jennifer the chance to talk with him, as the dude is mega-wealthy and Don wants to take advantage of that. Occasionally in the novel Jennifer will muse about Giorgio, wondering if she should take him up on his invitation to visit one day; Giorgio does not know Jennifer is a massage parlor girl/whore.

More johns ensue, from a married couple who get off on jet sprays in the Body Club pool before having sex with each other, to an actor Jennifer names “Dick” who is about to appear nude in a women’s magazine centerfold but is afraid his equipment’s too small. Clearly inspired by Burt Reynolds’s Playgirl appearance, this part has Jennifer using everything from a “penis vacuum” to some pubic trimming to convince “Dick” that his equipment isn’t small at all – capped off with the joke finale that the magazine uses a photo of him with a hand over his crotch. Then there’s the Howard Hughes stand-in, whom Jennifer calls “The Bashful Billionaire;” he rents out the club for an entire night and watches in the darkness as Jennifer and employees carry out a prepared script and screw. The Hughes stand-in plays “pocket pool” and then bids them adieu.

But Jennifer is getting more burned out; it’s been months and she’s had at least two men a day, despite her outrageous fees. Also she fights more and more with Don, though Lewis doesn’t do much with this subplot, not even giving a final confrontation between the two. Instead Jennifer, inspired by a famous diplomat whom she gives a handjob (while spouting awful, punny “policy” dialog), tosses a coin and decides to hell with it – it’s off to Giorgio’s to announce who she is.

For Jennifer spent a weekend with him previous to this, concerned that Giorgio never made any advances on her, just wanted to get to know her. At first Jennifer wondered if Giorgio was gay, before it hit her that he was merely courting her! In the finale though Giorgio admits that he’s known who Jennifer was all along, and about the Body Club as well, but could care less about her past.

The novel ends six months later and Jennifer is now married to Giorgio, living with him in Rome: “Instead of being a happy hooker, I’m a happy woman.” She tells us her story has now come to its close, her massage parlor life behind her, but as mentioned Lewis delivered another novel as “Jennifer Sills” two years later. I’ll get to it eventually.

Satan's Chance

Satan's Chance, by Alan Ross Shrader
March, 1982  Ace Books

Picked this one up a few years ago on my last horror fiction binge and I’m just now getting to it. Satan’s Chance appears to have been the one and only novel by Alan Ross Shrader, and it’s clear that this is the work of a first-time novelist: it’s a too-busy doorstop of a book (385 pages of small print) with too much melodrama and soap opera, and it takes much too long to get interesting.

Published in early 1982, the novel takes place in late ’85, during the next visit of Halley’s Comet (which I remember quite well, though damned if I was able to see it! As I recall it was too foggy or something…). Our hero is Ted Witherspoon, a young history teacher who very recently married the lovely Jill Banner, a physical therapist. The story is set in San Francisco, and Shrader peppers the novel with enough details for the reader to assume he was familiar with the place. He also invests Ted and Jill with enough personality and background that they aren’t just cardboard cutouts, but boy does he spend a little too much print in this effort.

For as it is, the first 60 or so pages of Satan’s Chance are a slooow-moving, soap operatic affair. Ted we’ll eventually learn spent his formative years in an insane asylum, sent there against his will by his aunt and uncle. When Ted was a child he had visions of his parents dying in a plane crash, but no one believed him. When they did in fact die in a crash into the Pacific, he was consumed with grief – there’s a helluva lot of teeth-gnashing courtesy Ted throughout the novel – and it got worse when, years later, he had another vision, this one of his sister being run over by a car while riding her bicycle.

The same scenario played out; no one believed Ted, but this time his aunt and uncle even took him to a shrink. Humorously enough, while everyone was at the shrink’s, Ted’s sister hopped on a bike – and was promptly run over by a car. This time a grieving Ted was locked up in the local loony bin, as still no one believes he predicted anything and thus must be nuts. But anyway all that was a long time ago and he’s kept this hidden from Jill. Lots of stuff here about their new marriage and their small circle of friends. But then one night in November 1985 Ted’s visions begin again.

Here the melodrama gets thick. Ted becomes a veritable bed-wetting simp, reduced to catatonic frenzy after a late-night vision of a fiendish Jill with glowing eyes, followed by a mysterious voice intoning “She is in danger.” Again keeping this from Jill, Ted acts like a nail-biting new parent, pacing the floor and watching the clock anytime Jill leaves their apartment. Oh, and Jill has troubles of her own, tending to a game-legged roughian who harbors impulses of sexual violence. It just goes on and on, more so a turgid melodrama than a horror novel.

In fact it’s laughable at times, particulary when it comes to Ted’s escalating paranoia and his attempts to keep his fears from Jill. At one point Ted’s pal, whom Ted has confided in, tries to tell Jill about Ted’s fears, but can’t bring himself to do it – this goes on for pages and pages – and eventually it culminates with Ted screaming at him and promising to kill him if he ever talks to Jill again. There are lots of scenes of Ted screaming like a ninny when he walks into their empty apartment, screaming for Jill – who shows up, wondering what the hell is going on. In true soap opera style, Ted even resorts to booze, causing another fight, as Jill tries to upend a bottle into the sink:

“It has got to stop, Ted! It has got to stop!” 

Ted ran over to her. “What are you doing? Stop it!” 

“NO!” she shouted, emptying the bottle and throwing it in the trash. “I’ve had enough, Ted! I can’t let you destroy yourself!” 

“Stop it!” he hissed, grabbing her arm. 

“Let go!” she screamed. She knew she was getting hysterical but the momentum of her emotions was too strong to stop. Ted was destroying himself! He was destroying them both!

And so it goes, friends, sad to say. The entire friggin’ novel is like this, like some really bad After School Special.

Finally, stuff starts to happen – like over a hundred pages in. Reports filter around SanFran of a glowing-eyed woman who tossed some muscle-bound dude, or so the dude claims. Another interminable sequence follows as Ted listens slackjawed to the man’s story, of how a woman with demonic, glowing eyes just tossed the man like he was a ragdoll, and Ted can’t get over how it’s so like his vision. But Ted’s vision was of Jill! (The narrative is like this, by the way, with many sentences ending with exclamation points, further lending the book an unintentionally-humorous melodramatic tone.)

Here in the gaggle of people Ted runs into an old man, and much later he’ll realize – he was the old man in his vision! Now Ted continues to run around San Francisco like a screaming ninny, looking desperately for this old man; somehow he manages to hook up with a grizzled cop named Bates, who for whatever reason lets Ted tag along with him when he goes to murder scenes(!). Comically enough, all Bates does is ridicule Ted, calling him “Mr. Concerned Citizen” and mocking his concerns over these “monstrous” deeds going on in the city, which of course begs the question why Bates would even bring Ted along with him in the first place, but I digress.

Anyhoo, glowing-eyed women are killing people and animals and then dying themselves. Ted is certain all this has to do with his vision and that Jill will somehow be endangered herself. Every scene though is played out past the breaking point, like when Ted rides along with Bates to a murder scene where an obese woman with glowing eyes was reportedly sighted and also apparently ripped apart an old woman’s dog. The novel’s first sex scene occurs here, and it’s quite graphic, only marred by the fact that it’s Bates conjugating with the, er, obese woman – he’s found her hiding in the woods, and is instantly mesmerized by her glowing eyes.

Shrader finally delivers the twisted stuff I want, well over a hundred pages in, as the woman traps Bates’s member in her with her demonically-superpowered nether-region muscles and then he stares into her demonic eyes and falls into them, and is reborn as a demon embodied in a human’s skin. But nothing much is made of this, and indeed we’ll later learn that Bates’s own body has been found. Also there’s some business about these demon-people scrawling a Halley’s Comet-like symbol in blood at scenes of their crimes. 

The old man meanwhile gets his own overlong subplot; he’s an ex-priest named Simon who, back in 1938, came across an ancient parchment which claimed to give a rundown on the truth of good and evil. FYI, Satan’s Chance is one of those horror novels squarely in the Catholic or at least Christian mold; Satan is a real presence and only belief in Christ (or at least, wearing a cross) will save you. I can take or leave these types of books – unless that is they’re filled with sleazy sex, as was the case with The Nursery – and sadly there isn’t enough of “the good stuff.”

It gets even more unintentionally humorous when Simon reveals that the ancient parchment contained prophecies of various events which happened after the time of its writing, including the fall of the Roman empire and WWII. And guess what – Ted himself is mentioned in it, prophecized as “the Orphan” who will one day decide who wins the battle between God and Satan! Ted’s reaction to this? He throws yet another hissy fit that his “entire life has been a lie” and tears up Simon’s ancient parchment! I tell you,this guy is a loser, but we’re stuck with him.

Ted continues throwing hissy fits, paranoid that Jill will be consumed by the Satanic forces. And unsurprisingly, it’s Ted himself who causes her to be possessed, regardless – during one of the novel’s few action scenes, a demon-possessed man attacks Jill, Ted, and Simon, and Ted kills him. Thinking he’s victorious, Ted is shocked when Simon berates him. For now “the demon is free” to posses any of them – and sure as shit it possesses Jill. Now Jill becomes a smokin’ hot she-devil bitch from hell, but you won’t be shocked to learn that Shrader doesn’t exploit this development very much. No, we have to endure more of Ted’s self-pity and hissy-fitting.

Simon gets killed, by the way, and eventually Ted finds himself the new leader of the motley crew of believers who have congregated around the old ex-priest. It’s full on Christian Fiction as Ted, now a firm believer, wields a cross and goes about casting out demons and whatnot, a skill learned from Simon, who gave his life saving Ted from one of those she-demon hell-bitches who tried to bang Ted in the novel’s only other slightly sleazy sequence. The crux of Satan’s Chance is that Halley’s Comet is the “effigy” of Satan, and initiates his potential conquest of the world – it is up to “the Orphan” to decide who the victor will be, as “God needs the help of man to defeat Satan.”

Given that the novel opened after the events of the story, with a dazed Ted being carted off to the hospital, we already know that he survies – the question which is supposed to keep us turning the pages is whether Jill did. No one will be surprised to discover that she has, in fact, lived, and also her demon was cast out by Ted, who in an act of mercy (ie, not blowing away the demon-possessed Jill) threw the balance on the side of the “Loving God,” and thus Satan was defeated.

The end – and if ever there was an opportunity to thank God, this would be it, for we are finally done with this overwritten slog of a novel.

Massage Parlor

Massage Parlor, by Jennifer Sills
January, 1973  Ace Books

A ‘70s sleaze “true story” that sold millions of copies, Massage Parlor is an obvious cash-in on Xaviera Hollander’s trendsetting The Happy Hooker. Like that book this Ace PBO purports to tell the tale of a sex-loving gal who comes to big-city New York and finds fame and fortune establishing her own massage parlor.

Copyright Ace, the book is credited to Jennifer Sills, who informs us in the opening pages that this is just her working name. However, Sills was actually the pseudonym of a prolific ‘70s writer named Stephen Lewis. Ironically, Ace didn’t do much to hide the secret – a 1973 Ace publication from Lewis (Sex Among The Singles) openly proclaims him as “the author of Massage Parlor” on the cover. But the ruse apparently worked, as what few online comments you can find today are from people who long assumed that “Jennifer Sills” was a real person.

And to tell the truth, Lewis easily fools the reader into thinking that this is the legitimate account of a brothel worker. The voice he uses for Sills sounds just right, of a wide-eyed young woman who doesn’t have a mean bone in her body (so to speak), who fully and openly embraces the sexual revolution (so to speak). The novel is mostly made up of anecdotes and sort of “case histories” of the men (and few women) our narrator has had sex with during the course of her career. And “she” gets quite graphic in her descriptions, so here once again we have that strange conundrum where a male author writes the first-person POV of a female character who explicity describes her sex life.

There really isn’t much of a plot to Massage Parlor, although it opens with the makings of one, as Jennifer is arrested by a “john” just as he’s about to have sex with her. Turns out it’s a raid on the massage parlor in which she works, the Pleasure Palace in the Midtown district of New York, and the john is an undercover vice squad cop who has waited until the second before inserting himself into Sill’s eager body to jump up and tell her she’s under arrest!

Our girl though is able to talk herself out of it…and the cop, Tom, likes her so much that he gets her out of the parlor before the rest of the cops can get there. To pay him for his kindness she takes him back to her apartment for a freebie! This opening makes one think the story will follow from here, and while it does, it takes about a hundred pages to get back to this point. Instead Jennifer tells us about herself and how she got into the business – a wanna-be actress from Chicago, she found herself surrounded by thousands of other wanna-bes in New York, and eventually in desperate need of cash she answered an ad in the classifieds and became a masseuse at the Pleasure Palace.

Lewis doesn’t really bring to life sleazy ‘70s Times Square, like Len Levinson did so capably in Without Mercy, and truth to tell, beyond the general sleazy vibe, there aren’t many topical details to be found in Massage Parlor. In fact we don’t even get a description of what the Pleasure Palace looks like, though you’d expect it would be pretty grimy, given its location and the era. And also per Len’s comments on that time and place, the women to be found in those parlors were a pretty rough-looking bunch, but Jennifer Sills you won’t be surprised to know is a gorgeous and stacked blonde.

Our narrator blithely recounts her many, many sexual experiences in the Pleasure Palace, dealing with all manner of men, from “regular johns” who just want regular sex, to “freaks” who request all sorts of wacky shit. We also learn the many dollar-making schemes of NYC massage parlors, circa 1972, courtesy Dom, Jennifer’s mafia-aligned boss. We go from random “off the top of my head” reminisces, hopscotching around from Jennifer’s brief trip to Vegas as the personal masseuse for a mafia don, to her first day in the Pleasure Palace, where her first client (who of course was a good looking stud) took her through the ropes, telling Jennifer when she should ask him for money and etc.

Each chapter is basically a sex scene, as Jennifer tells us about some john who comes in for a rub, a blowjob, some sex, or whatnot, and the merriment that ensues. Along the way she gets hit on by another masseuse (Jennifer waiting until after the girl has gone down on her to inform her that she’s just not into the lesbian scene!), gets tips on how to invest her money, buys a new apartment due to her new wealth, and eventually decides to go solo, once the Pleasure Palace has been busted and shut down.

In what comes off today as hilariously unsafe, Jennifer starts putting ads in the classifieds and, after a mere phone call, will go to the homes of strangers to have sex with them! Yet it is presented as a super-smart business move, and fun to boot! When placing the ad she meets another masseuse, this one a guy: Tony, an “Italian stud” who also works solo and does both men and women (literally). In another element that comes off as hilariously unsafe today, Tony has unprotected sex with both genders on the job, yet he and Jennifer immediately hit it off and start their own thing. Tony also introduces her to amyl nitrate poppers, which they snort during one of the book’s most descriptive sex scenes. 

Eventually Jennifer, Tony, and Jennifer’s co-worker pal Darlene decide to start their own place, mostly thanks to vice squad cop Tom, who re-enters the picture and tells Jennifer he’s crazy about her. He also warns her how unsafe her classifieds ad is, telling her about a recent case in which an independent masseuse was murdered. Hence, a posh parlor in a better area would be safer. Not only that, but Tom offers to help fund the place!! So Jennifer finds a ritzy 6-bedroom penthouse on the East Side, which costs a bundle, and opens business as “Massagarama,” which I assume is intended to be read as “massage-a-rama,” but instead looks like the name of some Indian dude.

Advertising to a select clientele at much higher rates, Jennifer is able to rake in the cash. She hires a few more attractive women, with Tony helming the front desk and catering to whatever women (or bi-curious men) might happen to come in. (Jennifer also informs us that she and Tony are now “just friends,” due to her hot and heavy romance with Tom, whom she loves…) Jennifer herself is advertised as the parlor’s elite masseuse, and clients must inquire for her prices and availability.

Here Lewis delivers another long sex scene, even in the novel’s home stretch, as a Canadian hockey team comes in and Jennifer handles three guys at once! I should mention that Lewis doesn’t skimp on the descriptions, and Massage Parlor is not one of those novels that clouds its explicitness in metaphors and analogies. After this we get a last-minute plotline in which a few hoods try to extort Jennifer, but after a call to her handy cop boyfriend she sets up a sting which ends with the hoods arrested and Jennifer considered a hero for her efforts!

Suprisingly enough, this was actually the start of a veritable trilogy. The following year saw the publication of the unimaginatively-titled Massage Parlor, Part II, also from Ace, and in 1976 there was Jennifer’s Boys, from Fawcett Crest – given the publisher switch-up, I’m guessing the sales must’ve dried up. I’ve got them all, though, and look forward to continuing the adventures of “Jennifer Sills.”