Jirel of Joiry

Cover art of an omnibus edition, by Arnold Tsang.

Guillaume’s white teeth clicked on a startled oath. He stared. Joiry's lady glared back at him from between her captors, wild red hair tousled, wild lion-yellow eyes ablaze.
"God curse you!" snarled the lady of Joiry between clenched teeth. "God blast your black heart!"
Guillaume scarcely heard her. He was still staring, as most men stared when they first set eyes upon Jirel of Joiry. She was tall as most men, and as savage as the wildest of them, and the fall of Joiry was bitter enough to break her heart as she stood snarling curses up at her tall conqueror. The face above her mail might not have been fair in a woman's head-dress, but in the steel setting of her armor it had a biting, sword-edge beauty as keen as the flash of blades. The red hair was short upon her high, defiant head, and the yellow blaze of her eyes held fury as a crucible holds fire.

—"The Black God's Kiss"

Jirel of Joiry is the heroine of a series of Sword and Sorcery short stories by C. L. Moore, running from 1934 to 1939 in Weird Tales. The character is notable for being one of the first female fantasy heroines. In The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror, Jonathan Helland called her "the world's first female sword-and-sorcery hero".

All of the stories originally ran in Weird Tales, and the copyright appears to not have been renewed. Thus, they are available to read at the Internet Archive:

  1. "The Black God's Kiss" (October 1934, pp 402-421)
  2. "Black God's Shadow" (December 1934, pp 701-718)
  3. "Jirel Meets Magic" (July 1935, pp 30-53)
  4. "The Dark Land" (January 1936, pp 53-71)
  5. "Quest of the Starstone" (November 1937, pp 556-575) -- A Crossover story with Moore's other famous character Northwest Smith, co-written with her husband Henry Kuttner. This story is set in an analogue of France in 1500 CE, giving us an anchor for when and where all of the stories are set.
  6. "Hellsgarde" (April 1939. pp 37-60)
The following tropes are common to many or all entries in the Jirel of Joiry franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.
  • Action Girl: Jirel. Some people who have trouble accepting the existence of strong female lead characters have analyzed Jirel as a "gender bending" character (to use Wikipedia's term).
  • Chainmail Bikini: Averted, no matter what the cover art of both the Planet Stories edition and the October 1934 Weird Tales would have you believe.
  • Crossover: With Moore's SF character Northwest Smith. This is not as mad as it sounds - both characters often end up in strange realms facing powerful, mysterious creatures and the word "magic" even pops up a few times in the Northwest Smith stories.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Black God. Pav might also qualify.
  • Feminist Fantasy: To the extent that it was possible to publish one during the 1930s.
  • Fiery Redhead: Jirel.
  • Narrative Profanity Filter
  • No Ontological Inertia: Jarisme's tower returns to its original location after her death.
  • Religion Is Magic: Wearing a crucifix will protect one against the Black God's realm, to the point that one cannot even see the realm.
  • Samus Is a Girl: Jirel's introduction.
  • To Hell and Back: In "The Black God's Kiss", Jirel visits a "land so unholy that one who bore a cross might not even see it" in order to gain a weapon powerful enough to use against the man who had conquered her land. She finds less — and more — than she expected.
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