This volume represents the third collection of linked stories. While Robert Silverberg wrote In Another Country to take place at the same time as C.L. Moore’s Vintage Season and Harry Turtledove’s The Pugnacious Peacekeeper was a more traditional sequel to L. Sprague de Camp’s The Wheels of If, Karen Haber provided a prequel to Leigh Brackett’s The Jewel of Bas. Although Haber’s Thieves’ Carnival appears first in this volume, I’m going to stick with my norm of reviewing the earlier published story first.

The Jewel of Bas was originally published in Planet Stories in Spring 1944. It is the final of three stories by Leigh Brackett in the Tor Double series. The story opens with Ciaran and Mouse, a raggedy couple who has recently gotten married. Leaving the city they have known for their entire lives, Ciaran convinces Mouse that they should take a shortcut he has heard of across the Forbidden Plains, despite its foreboding name and its reputation for causing people to disappear.

Ciaran in a minstrel and Mouse is a thief. To pass their time as they travel, Ciaran tells Mouse about the sleeping god Bas, his Stone of Destiny, and the mountain  Ben Beatha, where Bas sleeps, guarded by his androids. Not just a data dump, this information foreshadows Ciaran’s adventures, but Brackett has worked it into the story in a natural way that gives both Mouse and the reader information they would need, and didn’t necessarily have.

Despite his assurances of safety, as the two eat dinner, they are set upon by the savage Kald, Knocked unconscious, they awaken to find themselves chained together and being herded by the Kald toward Ben Beatha, now among the number of people who have disappeared on the Hidden Plains. Mouse’s burglary skills come in useful as she is able to free them from their chains and the two, along with a hunter, a hermit, and a trapper, join forces, although they are still being herded by the Kald, who they endeavor to avoid.

Once inside the mountain, they discover a slave labor camp in which the androids are using the missing humans to build a vast machine to be used to overthrow Bas the Immortal. When Mouse is recaptured, Ciaran seeks to find Bas to affect a rescue. This sets Ciaran apart from the heroes of the other two Brackett stories reprinted in the Tor Doubles series. In both Nemesis from Terra and The Sword of Rhiannon, Brackett’s heroes are more passive, allowing themselves to be carried by events until they exert themselves at the right moment to win the day. Ciaran is more preemptive.

Cirin his driven not only for his love of Mouse and the desire to rescue her, but by his knowledge of the legends of Bas, the Stone of Destiny, and other ancient tales. Not only does Ciaran know these stories, which he sings of for his audiences, he believes in them. He knows that they tell the true history of his world and the subjects of the songs will help affect Mouse’s salvation.

His proactivity becomes important when he finds himself face-t-face with Bas. Ciaran must not only wake him from his sleep, but also from his stupor, because Bas refuses to see, or care about, the danger Ciaran outlines for him. The Bas Ciaran finds may be the one described in the songs, but Ciaran learns that more than one song can be true and more than one song can refer to the same person or events.

The Jewel of Bas has many feature in common with other Brackett stories.  Although it plays with the tropes of fantasy, including a jewel with supposed magical powers, thieves, minstrels, degenerate races, and slavery, it also includes science fictional elements. There are strong indications that the story is set at the edge of our solar system on a planet beyond Pluto and colonized by humans, of which Bas was an immortal descendent. His is attended by androids, although they are in revolt, and artificial light is provided by small sun balls.

Brackett’s writing is often defined as “sword and planet,” a deliberate play on the phrase “sword and sorcery,” which was introduced in 1953 and popularized by Fritz Leiber in 1961. The nomenclature is fitting because there are definite parallels between Brackett’s planetary romances such as The Jewel of Bas and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories. Brackett even includes a reference to “the wild dark things the Cimmerians sing at the bier of a chief,” and although the Cimmerians were an historical people, they are also associated with Conan.

Thieves’ Carnival was an original story for the Tor Double line and is a prequel to Leigh Brackett’s The Jewel of Bas. It is the second original story to be featured in the series. Brackett focused on Ciaran as her protagonist, with Mouse spending a considerable time off stage. This allowed Haber to have somewhat free range in her prequel, told from Mouse’s point of view.

Haber’s story does, in fact, begin at a carnival of thieves, the sort of thing which can only exist in a sword and sorcery (or sword and planet) setting, where the logic of the event (or having a thieves’ quarter) is ignored for the sake of the story. Haber tells how Mouse entered “The Race,” which would pair her with another participant at random and they would be assigned to steal something and return it first. Hoping to be paired with the tall, handsome thief Vandor, she is instead paired with a stranger, the minstrel Ciaran.

Mouse takes an instant dislike to Ciaran as the two of them are assigned to steal the “Portal Cube” from the local Cathedral. The two succeed and return it to Gray Tom, who is running the Race, only to discover that they have come in second. After Gray Tom takes the Portal Cube to story in the thieves’ treasury, Ciaran suggest the two steal it. Despite Mouse’s misgivings about him, she goes along with the audacious suggestion.

After successfully stealing from the treasury, the two find the difficulty of fencing the stolen item as a bounty is placed on their heads.  At the same time, they begin a physical relationship, although it quickly becomes clear that it means different things to each of them as Mouse gets jealous of Ciaran’s flirtation with a barmaid. Although her jealousy makes sense given what has transpired between them, Haber shows little chemistry between the two characters. They must wind up together since they were together in Brackett’s original story, but they are given no real reason to get together within the context of the story.

The two also discover that the cube may be responsible for something called the Dream Plaque, which they are also caught up in. The Dream Plaque appears to transport people, at random, to various worlds and historical periods before returning them, in most cases, to where they left from.

Eventually, they do find a wealthy man who is willing to buy the Portal Cube from them. Jodayn views the Portal Cube as an opportunity to travel through time to meet Bas, helping cement the idea that these stories are set in our far future after humanity has colonized the outer planet, with this action taking place on a planet beyond Pluto. Things don’t go quite as planned and the couple once again winds up with the Portal Cube, along with the imperative feeling that they must get rid of it, eventually leading them back to the cathedral from which it was stolen.

In truth, the Portal Cube is just a maguffin, as are the adventures Mouse and Ciaran have trying to steal it, reclaim it, sell it, and eventually return it. Haber’s purpose in the story is to get the two together so Brackett’s story can take place. The twists, turns, and time slipping she introduces mostly create a convoluted plotline that never really matters. Unfortunately, the part of the story that should matter, the growth of their relationship, never feels natural.

After getting the Portal Cube back from Jodayn, Mouse, part of her memories wiped, wonders “why was she getting so upset over a silly harp player, anyway,” which is the readers first real indication that she is getting upset over Ciaran. Even then, Haber hasn’t given the reader a reason to believe the two belong together except that fate has clearly tossed them together and they can’t seem to separate despite the dictates of own desires.

Its appearance in the Tor Doubles series in Thieves’ Carnival’s only publication (one of four stories with that distinction). Because of its nature as a companion piece to Brackett’s story, it works best when paired with the source material (and it may be notable that the only reprint of Turtledove’s The Pugnacious Peacekeeper kept it with de Camp’s original). Read on its own, Thieves’ Carnival would seem a little disjointed and the relationship between its two main characters would feel forced, perhaps pointless.

This volume was published in the standard anthology format rather than tête-bêche, reflecting the two stories’ relationship to each other as original and prequel. Luis Perez provided the cover.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.