‘Black God’s Kiss’ – C.L. Moore


Page Count: Around thirty pages but felt much longer at times, I’ll tell you more about that further down the post.

Apologies for the silence these last few days… It was a mixture of things really; partly work (far too much to do) but also a hefty dose of ‘Turn of the year, do I really want to carry on with the blog?’ overthinking. I’m not planning on quitting blogging just yet but I want to turn it back into something I really enjoy so, a lot to think about there. I’ve also finally broken the back of Erikson’s ‘The God is Not Willing’ so a lot of my free time went into that this week, expect a review fairly soonish, for real this time 😉

I didn’t want the blog to be silent for too long though so thought I’d hop back in and tell you about a short story that I tackled the other day. My reading is still full of pretty big gaps, one of which is anything by C.L. Moore, in particular her ‘Jirel of Joiry’ stories. I was in the office last week so grabbed an e-copy of ‘Black God’s Kiss’ for reading on the way home. It took me until this week to finally pick it up but I managed to get round to it and…

Even though this was my first read of ‘Black God’s Kiss’, I feel like we probably all already know the plot. If you don’t though, it’s an easy one to get your head round… Jirel’s castle and a kiss have both been taken by the wicked Guillaume (who is angling to take the rest later) and Jirel has sworn her revenge. To achieve this though, she must venture into the underworld, beneath the castle, and find a weapon to take her revenge. Weapons such as these though, cut both ways.

I’m trying to be a lot more forgiving of books these days; after all, the book stays the same throughout, it’s the readers who are constantly bringing new stuff to the table. That said then… A week of stress and subsequent loss of focus was probably the wrong time to read ‘Black God’s Kiss’. I did though and here we are 😊

I loved the energy of the beginning, of ‘Black God’s Kiss’, and the gradual buildup of otherworldly horror at the end; a great hook to get you invested and a finale that comes with a neat little twist. It was the middle bit that did for me. I can appreciate the worldbuilding here (which is just brilliant, all that landscape Jirel travels through is beautifully drawn), it just felt like there was a little too much of it coming at a time when the story had promised something a little more fast moving. Or maybe I needed something a little faster paced because of where I was? Possibly but still, ‘Black God’s Kiss’ felt bogged down when it really wanted to fly.

Would I read more of C.L. Moore’s work off the back of ‘Black God’s Kiss’? Probably but I’m not in a huge hurry to get to it now. If ‘Black God’s Kiss’ is anything to go by, you have to be in a certain mood to get the most out of Moore’s work. You won't have any trouble finding a copy of 'Black God's Kiss' by the way, I have an e-copy but it can also be found in 'Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams' (the Fantasy Masterworks collection) and there is a more recent collection of C.L. Moore's Jirel tales - 'Jirel of Joiry'.

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