Ship of Ishtar

After The Moon Pool, this is probably Merritt's most famous work. Fortunately for us, Paizo has seen to reprint Merritt's definitive edition here for us. All of Merritt's trademarks are here--the achingly beautiful woman, the lush prose, the dreamlike atmosphere, the diabolical villain, the darkness somewhat uncharacteristic of a pulp writer--and all are used to great effect. Strikingly for a pulp novel, Kenton and Sharane come across as somewhat more than just types. Although adhering somewhat to pulp archetypes, their romance is fairly fresh and well developed (predating as it does any number of imitations). In addition, Merritt provides us with a wealth of wonders in the alternate, sea-bound world the Ship exists in. In short, this is a fine book to spend an afternoon reading and savoring and an even better introduction to Merritt's work as a whole.

I entirely agree with Mr. Slater's comments. There are literary authors and there are story tellers. On all-too rare occasions one writer combines both aspects in his or her work. If A. Merritt was not among that rarified class, he certainly ranked as a master story teller. "The Ship of Ishtar" is a charmingly old-fashioned, rip-roaring good read. I have and treasure the Borden Memorial edition with the excellent Virgil Finlay illustrations. The book is everything that Mr. Slater says it is, and more. By all means snatch it up if you ever stumble on a copy. You won't regret it. Five adventurous stars.

"The Ship of Ishtar," one of Abraham Merritt's finest fantasies, first appeared in the pages of "Argosy" magazine in 1924. An altered version appeared in book form in 1926, and the world finally received the original work in book form in 1949, six years after Merritt's death. In this wonderful novel we meet John Kenton, an American archaeologist who has just come into possession of a miniature crystal ship recently excavated "from the sand shrouds of ages-dead Babylon." Before too long, Kenton is whisked onto the actual ship, of which his relic is just a symbol. It turns out that the ship is sailing the seas of an otherdimensional limboland, and manned by the evil followers of the Babylonian god of the dead, Nergal, and by the priestesses of the Babylonian fertility goddess, Ishtar. A force barrier of sorts prevents the two parties from coming into contact with each other, and they have been sailing thus for...nobody knows how long. It seems that, centuries ago, a priest of Nergal and a priestess of Ishtar had been guilty of the sin of falling in love; this eternal cruise is the punishment that has been meted out by the gods. Kenton becomes embroiled in this ages-old strife; falls in love himself with Sharane, a Babylonian princess; eventually takes over the ship; and then goes in pursuit of the Black Priest of Nergal, after Sharane is kidnapped. He is aided in his quest by a sword-swinging Viking, a hugely strong and mace-wielding man of Nineveh, and by a scimitar expert from Persia. The quartet makes for one formidable team, lemme tell you! This is high fantasy done to a turn, and Merritt is at the peak of his game here. While "Ship" does not boast as much of the purple prose and hyperadjectival descriptions as his first two books, "The Moon Pool" and "The Metal Monster," there is still quite a bit, and in places the descriptions of various isles and temples almost reads like prose poetry. The story moves along briskly and builds to a pair of splendid set pieces: Sharane's rescue from the Temple of Seven Zones, in which each floor is dedicated to another Babylonian god and is decked out with its own color scheme, shrines and so on; and a very tense sea battle between the Ship of Ishtar and the Black Priest's bireme. The novel really is a stunning feat of imagination. I wonder if Merritt was perhaps influenced or inspired by the excavations at Uruk (now in southern Iraq, and one of the original cities of Ishtar worship) that had commenced in 1912. He may have also been inspired here by H. Rider Haggard's seminal fantasy work "She" (1887), in which Ayesha, head priestess of Isis, is given an eternal punishment for her own love dalliances. Whatever the inspirations, though, Merritt makes it all work, with great detail, color, action and character. The book is a fantasy classic, but still, Merritt makes some small booboos. Thus, the gold bracelet on Kenton's left arm is on his right arm several pages later. Kenton is said to have disappeared fro

This exhilerating adventure story is jammed with as much true fantasy creation as the modern writer's ten book series. The Ship of Ishtar is all but forgotten, but deserves to be even more popular than Tolkien's novels.The story centers around a British man who is wisked into a fantasy world where evil and good are trapped together on a ship. Adrift. To delve too deeply into the plot now would cheat prospective readers, but this is a sexy, romantic, thrilling, brilliant, fantastic, adventure yarn.No one I've loaned my copy to have ever not loved it.