WARRIOR OF LLARN
by Gardner F. Fox
A gift from my good friend and very talented artist James Hanson, Fox's sword and planet story stands out among a sea of imitators. When it comes to sword and planet, any book in the genre will be compared to the one that started it all, Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars. Warrior of Llarn (and Warlord of Ghandor and Renegade of Callisto and Tarnsman of Gor and so on--see a pattern here?) has plenty of obvious similarities, yet still manages to be its own thing. We will see is not always for the best.
"Envoy to a world of science-wizardry!" reads the weirdly-worded blurb above the title. Envoy sounds strangely diplomatic, and like most books in the genre there is precious little diplomacy. The beautiful Frank Frazetta cover, in a transitional style between his early Tarzans and the more famous Conan covers, makes up for it.
All his life, earth man Alan Morgan has been guided all his life by a strange voice. At the urging of this voice he trained to be a master of firearms and bladed weapons. Instead of being diagnosed as mentally ill and possibly dangerous, Morgan is judged merely eccentric. While at his family's remote wilderness cabin on a wolf-hunting trip, Morgan is finally seized by the voice and transported to the distant alien planet of Llarn.
From there we are get a story with all the familiar beats: a dying or half-dead planet, meeting the princess of a powerful race in decline, an enemy race of not-quite-human warriors, captivity and escapes from captivity only to be captured again, an usurped throne, the oddly abbreviated battle to reclaim it, and so on.
If any of this sounds like a slam against Fox's writing, it isn't. Outshone by a handful of brighter stars, Fox is a legitimately good, if not necessarily great, sci-fi writer of the era. Comic book fans are probably already very familiar with his work as co-creator of the Flash and Hawkman (and their Silver Age reboots), the Barbara Gordon Batgirl, and writer for the early Adam Strange series.
No one doubts Fox's creativity. The tragedy of Warrior of Llarn is that he should have followed that creativity more than the standard sword and planet template laid out by Burroughs. Warrior of Llarn is at its best when Fox deviates from that pattern.
Rather than a protracted star-crossed, unrequited romance between earthman and alien princess, Alan Morgan and Tuarra declare their love well before the final chapter. Instead of John Carter's perpetually unexplained transmigration to Mars, Alan Morgan has been brought to Llarn for a purpose. Rather than the typical femme fatale, rival princess Ulazza of the Azunn is a believable contender for Morgan's love in a way that, say, La of Opar could never rival Jane for the love of Tarzan.
Warrior of Llarn is a competently written, briskly told tale of adventure that will more than do if you have already exhausted the usual sword and planet offerings. I've been wanting to read it since I first saw it on the shelf of a used bookstore in the 80s. I regretted not buying it then, and it was worth the wait even if I'm not precisely blown away. It tantalizes you with what might be or could have been. My guess is if the few glimpses of a slightly more sexually aware mindset in keeping with the times (the waning 1960s) had been more in focus this would be a much more highly regarded entry in the genre.
Up next? I'm open to suggestions. I recently picked up one of the few Tarzan novels I haven't read. I have also filled in several of the gaps in my Dray Prescott/Antares collection. Let me know!