1985 Orbit PB, art by Mick van Houten

Like Atlan, the previous volume in the saga of Cija’s constant imperilment, The City (1966) was published simultaneously with a realistic novel from Gaskell, this time All Neat in Black Stockings, the tale of an innocent young woman who falls for a womanising window-cleaner (filmed in 1969 as an Alfie-like comedy that left the darker aspects out). Cija’s adventures, on the other hand, are basically a continuation of the previous books. First, there’s that disparaging tone which always clamps onto something to complain about, as the book opens with Cija finding herself on “The dirtiest quay I’ve ever been on. And a scum of dirty ice over almost everything…” Almost immediately, she’s sold into a brothel, but escapes that for a life of domestic drudgery. It’s only then she realises where she is: back in the city of her birth, in the realm of her Dictatress mother and High Priest father, who are vying for control of the land. Her father, of course, wants Cija dead, because he’s supposed to be celibate, so can’t have a daughter walking around. If that weren’t imperilment enough, she’s kidnapped by a tribe of ape-men, who seem to be intent on fattening her up to feed to their children, until one of the tribe, Ung-g, becomes protective of her and is forced to flee with her into the surrounding jungles. The two witness a pair of Tyrannosaurs mating, concluding in the female eating the male. It’s a savage moment that could well be Gaskell’s ultimate vision of the relationship between the sexes, if it didn’t turn out that Ung-g, despite not being human, is the most ideal mate Cija has yet encountered:

“It has taken primaeval man, an animal of the forests, to show me how tender tenderness can be.”

But the idyll doesn’t last. Cija is found by her father’s men and taken to his volcano fortress where, she’s told, she is to be sacrificed. (Her father, it turns out, has got round the demand for celibacy by taking a bejewelled crocodile as a consort—a crocodile that, despite being a reptile, has breasts.) Needless to say, Cija is once again rescued from her peril, reunited with her mother, and, just as she realises she’s pregnant with Ung-g’s baby, is told her husband Zerd is due to arrive any moment…

1970 edition from Paperback Library, art by Michael Leonard

Although this was the last volume in the Atlan saga for just over ten years, it doesn’t show any signs that this was meant to be a conclusion. (The story of the four books has, for me, shown no overall shape, despite this being the volume where Cija comes home.) All the same, there’s something of a thematic resolution in Cija being faced by two of the most extreme examples of maleness so far—and the series has, really, been all about Cija’s very difficult relationships with men. On the one hand we have Ung-g, an almost wordless semi-human who’s nevertheless protective of Cija and tender towards her; on the other, there’s her father, who wants to kill her. Mother-figures don’t fare much better, either. There’s the brothel-madam Rubila, then the woman who takes Cija in as a servant of sorts, whom Cija actually refers to as Mother (and whose actual daughters say they know she hates them), and then her Dictatress mother, right at the end, who we know has already used her quite coldly in her own plots. The Atlan saga is, frankly, a nightmare of personal relationships.

1976 Tandem paperback, art by Dave Pether

One of the things that’s kept me reading these books—apart from the difficulty I have in not finishing something I’ve started—is learning how this bizarre series (which must have seemed even more bizarre at the time it was published) was received, in the days before fantasy became a publishing phenomenon. How did the reviewers understand it? As literature or schlock? Well, there was this kind of review, from Patricia Hodgart in the Illustrated London News:

“The City, third in a series of horror-comic Gothic romances, has the same kind of sick jokiness as Pop art. Here be dragons, but her heroine, Cija, survives them all—alligators, octopuses, sadistic priests, the lot—only to become pregnant by an almost human ape who has rescued her. Crudely written indigestible stuff, for monster-lovers only.”

But also this kind, from Wendy Monk at the Birmingham Daily Post:

“The richness of the author’s imagination comes into its own when the outcast empress goes into the jungle with an ape… Miss Gaskell’s sleight-of-hand just manages to deceive until the end of the game; only it is not the end, for we shall meet Cija again.”

But overall, I’m more inclined to agree with Susan Hill (who I’m assuming is the same Susan Hill who wrote The Woman in Black), in the Coventry Evening Telegraph:

“Miss Gaskell writes with her imagination in full flood, but I’m beginning to find Cija rather a bore.”

Nevertheless, with only one volume left, I’ve got this feeling I’m going to end up finishing this saga anyway, if only to see what a gap of ten years might make of Gaskell’s fantasy world. The final volume, Some Summer Lands, came out in 1977.