41. The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt

One of my reading side quests is finding and reading some of the more obscure of the famous (in gaming circles) Appendix N of the original Dungeon Master's Guide.  Gary Gygax listed all the authors that inspired D&D and it has since been shared as a reference, critiqued and added to by the tabletop RPG community.  Goodman Games in particular has made a big deal about it and helped to revive awareness of it.  The did their own expanded Appendix N and often highlight specific authors in their blog, including this one specifically about Merritt by influential gaming blogger James Maliszewski So in the last year, I found two A. Merritt books in paperback.  I knew nothing about him and was pleased to see that he was writing in the 20s and 30s so really back in the origin of pulp fiction.

I was receptive to the Ship of Ishtar right from the beginning.  First of all, this cover is awesome.  Second, it starts not in medias res per SE (can you say that?), but pretty much right into the situation.  Kenton, presumably a well-to-do New Yorker is in his study standing before an excquisite miniature ship that just appeared from behind the dissolving mists of a slab of masonry another scientist explorer friend had sent him.  As he stares at the ship, noticing tiny figures on the deck, he finds himself sucked into the ship and the world it is in.  He becomes entangled in the war between Ishar, Goddess of Light and Nergal, God of Darkness who are battling it out on this ship through the complex machinations of the Gods as a result of two of their highest priest and priestess falling in love.  The spiritual construction and plot leading up to the ship situation is complicated, but basically the ship is black on one side and white on the other, with representatives of each God on each side and they cannot cross (it's like a curse against the two lovers).  Kenton arrives and can cross back and forth and thus upsets the balance and becomes the vehicle (and hero) to break the curse.

The spiritual stuff was way to detailed for me.  Merritt is like a gamemaster who desperately wants to create a complex pantheon and religious history where his players just want to cast fireballs.  I think audiences of the 20s and 30s went in for this exotic mysticism.  Fortunately, the characters and action in between the religious stuff are pretty frickin' awesome.  I get why this is in Appendix N.  Kenton meets basically an adventuring party:  Zubar the urban Persian warrior who will accept anything but boredom, Gigi the with the powerful upper body, Dwarven legs and a backstory of regret due to baldness and Siggurd the Viking always ready for Valhalla.  The bad guy is Klaneth, the evil priest and the love interest is Sharane, priestess of Ishtar.  The ship sails across this fantasy world, visiting cool little islands, cities of evil priests and in the finale a vast labrynth of coloured stones thrusting out of the sea.  The action is excellent and super gory!  There are two lovingly detailed decapitations, much smashing and bashing with blunt weapons and a really nasty eye-gouging.  I was quite surprised by the level of gore.

Now this is some 1920s stuff, so while it is not straight up racism and nowhere near bad as Burroughs, it definitely has the language of that period of racial distinctions.  It's actually not that bad given the time period, leaning more towards patronization and exoticism.  The treatment of the women is worse, though again, not negative and aggressive.  Sharane and her priestesses do get armoured up and fight at the end, but one gets tired of her constantly telling Kenton that he is her lord.  Ultimately, it's a white male fantasy so one's enjoyment of the book probably depends on how much of that sort of thing one can tolerate.  I will say that it is a really lively and creative one, with all kinds of cool situations and imagery, marred a bit by too-long passages of religion that kind of lost me.  I'm looking forward to the second book of his I have on deck.

This actually happens

Zubran, the Persian