The Fire Princess by Edmond Hamilton

The princess of the hidden kingdom looked like some warrior maid of archaic times, imperious as a tyrant, dangerous as a leopard, wild as a hawk poised for flight.

Here at MPorcius Fiction Log we love Edmond Hamilton, we love Weird Tales, and we love reading stories that are sort of forgotten, stories that were printed once and never printed again.  So Hamilton's The Fire Princess, a serial that published in three installment across the August, September and October 1938 issues of Farnsworth Wright's magazine of the bizarre and unusual, and does not appear to ever have been reprinted, is right up our alley.

The Fire Princess has almost the same plot and structure as the Hamilton Weird Tales serial we read back in July of 2023, The Lake of Life, and most of the stuff I say in my The Lake of Life blogpost applies to this story.  A cast of characters finds a remote kingdom of white people in the middle of a nonwhite region of the world, where the main character falls in love with these people's princess and gets involved in their internecine conflicts, which include a struggle between the lords temporal and the lords spiritual.  The secret kingdom is somehow connected to an ancient alien race, and poses a threat to the entire world.  The main character faces a moral dilemma, and then the plot is resolved by a deus ex machina, and our heroes narrowly escape just before the hidden kingdom gets totally destroyed.

Compared to The Lake of Life, The Fire Princess is downbeat and tragic--all the people who fall in love in the story lose their beloved.  Also curiously, the main character, an American spy, and the character readers are secondmost likely to identify with, a female British spy, actually accomplish little, and do not kill anyone--the Japanese and Russian spies do all the necessary killing, and the plot is resolved when a native of the secret kingdom kills another.  Though the threat to the world is neutralized, nobody in the story who makes any plans sees them succeed--nobody lives happily ever after.  The most interesting and active character in the story is the princess, who has a selfish, solipsistic, love of freedom, and psychopathically (or is it sociopathically?) overcomes all moral and religious obstacles to her pursuit of a life of risk and adventure and exhibits zero inhibitions about killing people and destroying entire civilizations in pursuit of her goals.   

Though I like that the story involves lots of lava, and multiple love triangles, I think The Lake of Life is probably marginally superior, seeing as it had more active characters, better fights, and a somewhat more exciting setting.      

The Fire Princess offers some interesting things for scholars.  As it involves the Great Powers meddling in the politics of mountainous Asia, there are both Yellow Peril angles and echoes of "the Great Game"--a Russian spy actually uses the phrase "the great game."  Hamilton's portrayal of a Japanese and a Soviet spy perhaps offer insight into the beliefs about Imperial Japan and the USSR of ordinary Americans; also of interest is the fact that the American agent seems to see the British agent as just as much a rival as he does the Japanese and the communist--the USA is against all imperialism, even that of our limey pals!  

Below I will provide a summary of the plot of The Fire Princess for those interested.

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The protagonist of The Fire Princess is Gary Martin, an American intelligence agent who for six years has been traveling around the Far East, playing the role of a paleontologist but in reality collecting not fossils but information on the activities of the Imperial Japanese.  He meets his boss in Tientsin (we are supposed to call it Tianjin, now, kids), and is relieved to learn that he has been granted six months leave and can get back to America to watch a football game and hear people speaking English!  But the boss has another assignment for Martin--he can't order our boy to undertake it, but he thinks that if Martin hears about it, he'll realize how important it is and volunteer!  And he does!

You see, rumors are spreading among the nomadic tribes of Tibet about a woman, the leader of a reclusive tribe in the sacred Tibetan valley known as the Valley of Koom, where once lived the gods and where still rest their secrets.  This woman, Shirani, is said to be about to descend from the mountains that surround Koom to lead the people of Asia to great victories in war!  The superstitious nomads, united under a charismatic leader, could plunge Asia into chaos and trigger a worldwide cataclysm.

Perhaps even worse, Martin's boss has learned that Japan's greatest secret agent, Major Okara, has left Tokyo for Tibet--no doubt the Japanese are going to try to gain control of the Koom woman and thereby gain control of the Asian interior!  America needs somebody to get to this mysterious Shirani before Okara and make sure she doesn't come under the influence of Japan or any other great power, or, failing that, kill her, and Martin is just the man for the job!

In Chapter 2, Martin and the small party of locals he has haired are riding in Tibet, towards the mountains beyond which lies the sacred and forbidden kingdom of Koom.  They meet a determined Englishwoman, Joan Laird, who is in Tibet looking for her missing father, a missionary.  She is on foot and without supplies because her Chinese hirelings abandoned her when they got this close to the sacred mountains.  She joins Martin's party (he maintains the fiction that he is searching for fossils) and that night they see a red glow behind the forbidden mountains.

In Chapter 3 our heroes are captured by Tibetan nomads and taken to a veritable city of tents where an army of Tibetans awaits the prophesied arrival of Shirani.  Martin and Laird find that the Tibetans have another white captive with them--Boris Borchoff, a big jovial Soviet spy, no doubt in Tibet pursuing a mission much like Okara's.  The Tibetans' leader declares that all three of them will be executed on the day that Shirani comes down from the mountains.

In Chapter 4 Borchoff outs Laird as a British spy sent to manipulate Shirani in the interest of the British Empire; at first Martin doesn't believe the Red, but then he strip searches Laird (hubba hubba) and finds her British Intelligence ID card in "the silk bandeau that confined her firm breasts."  More manhandling of women follows when the captives overpower the Tibetan woman who brings them their grub and strip her so they can disguise Martin's right hand man, a Mongol, with her clothes.  The disguised Mongol sneaks off, charged with collecting horses and weapons for the spies, but a hubbub off in the camp suggests he has been detected.  Martin, Laird and Borchoff manage to escape anyway, and catch up with the Mongol halfway through the canyon into Koom, at which point the "Mongol" reveals he is no Mongol, but Major Okara in disguise!  He is about to kill the Western and Soviet spies when the Tibetan horde catches up with them and the four outsiders have to work together to escape.

An avalanche separates the four spies in the snowy canyon.  Okara is the first to make it to Koom, and Borchoff is not far behind.  Martin and Laird are tied for last place, and join forces and march up to Koom, following the course of a river of lava.  The American and British spies keep saving each others' lives, even though they are rivals in the quest to get influence over Shirani, and even though Martin keeps saying he will kill Laird if he must to keep the British Empire from dominating Asia through Shirani.  The two Anglos make their way through a tunnel full of lava and poisonous vapors into the beautiful forested valley of Koom, where they find Okara and Borchoff; Okara has incapacitated the Soviet spook and is about to throw him in the lava when he sees Martin and turns his attention to the Yankee.  The fight, and Chapter 5, end when a troop of mounted white men in mail, led by a white woman, opportunely show up.

The leader of the cavalry troop is none other than Shirani, ruler of Koom, and in Chapter 6 we get acquainted with her and her milieu.  This blue-eyed blonde is the most beautiful woman Martin has ever seen, and Hamilton describes her in some detail, stressing not only her beauty but her pride, imperiousness and mercilessness.  The four outsiders are seized and taken to the city of Koom, which sits next to a lake of lava two miles across.  We learn of the conflict within Koom between Shirani and the priesthood--Shirani thinks her people's religion is a bunch of old bunk that is holding back Koom (but mostly herself.)  In the palace, as the four spies watch, the black-garbed head priest demands that Shirani hand over the outsiders so he can put them to death as the laws of the ancient gods prescribe.  The laws of the ancient gods are all about keeping Koom isolated from the outside world, and making sure nobody gets their mitts on the tremendous power the gods left behind.

Chapter 7 begins the September installment of the serial with Shirani turning the tables on the high priest.  In the Temple is secured the key to the Place of Power, and Shirani demands the cleric hand it over so she can access the Power that will allow her to conquer the world, and the assembled nobility of Koom sides with her, they sharing her belief that "The Ancient Ones have been dead for ages--their law is dead also."  The priest is forced to leave the palace without the captives.

Okara begins scheming with Jhulun, Shirani's fiancé and the top noble of the kingdom.  For her part, Shirani takes a shine to Martin and has him brought to her room for a fancy meal.  Jhulun finds the princess kissing the American agent, arousing the noble's jealousy.  

By Chapter 8, Okara and Martin have to agree that no outsider is going to be able to control the strong-willed Shirani, and the Japanese convinces everybody that to prevent mass war in Asia they have to kill Shirani.  Martin agrees only reluctantly, leading  Laird to accuse him of being in love with the princess.  Okara, Borchoff and Martin sneak out of their cell and fight their way into Shirani's room--Borchoff dies in the melee--but when Martin has a chance to kill Shirani he can't bring himself to do it; as the brown-eyed Laird divined, Martin is hopelessly in love with the blue-eyed princess, and Shirani is just as much in love with him. 

In Chapter 9 we learn that Martin is not the only man who is betraying his duty for Shirani--a junior priest arrives at the princess's room bearing the key to the Place of Power!  The princess brings Martin with her to the Tomb of the Ancient Ones; Martin sees the centuries-old corpses of the last members of this extinct race of alien gods, who turn out to have been silicon-based life forms shaped like men but ten feet tall and with eyes like jewels.  According to Shirani, these jokers once ruled the world but then grew tired of their eternal lives and committed suicide after locking up their source of power and teaching the people of Koom to make sure no human ever got his hands on all that power.  At the locked entrance to the Place of Power, Shirani is confronted by the high priest, who has noticed his key was missing.  He whips out a dagger with which to kill the blasphemous princess, but she is the quicker and it is the man of the cloth who falls dead, slain by Shirani's dagger.

Chapter 10, the first chapter of the third and final installment of The Fire Princess, sees Shirani and Martin explore beyond the massive doors that conceal the Place of Power, a miles-deep chasm with fire and lava at its bottom.  Above the chasm is mounted an elaborate machine with eight ray projectors controlled by eight levers; this apparatus can shift the Earth's tectonic plates and cause civilization-destroying quakes anywhere in the world.  Shirani plans to use this machinery to wreck the nations of the outside world, softening them up so they will be easy prey for her army of Tibetans and Mongols.  Having confirmed that the Power is real, the princess summons an assembly of all the people of Koom to announce that tomorrow she will loose the Power and then lead them out of the valley to victory--also, that she is marrying this outlander here.  Spurned Jhulun tries to get the populace to reject Martin, with no success; Martin's efforts to dissuade Shirani from destroying civilization outside the valley are equally fruitless.

When Martin gets back to the cell, Okara denounces the American and even tries to kill him, but, before he can get the job done, Jhulun and some of his retainers burst into the room to seize the three spies.  In Chapter 11 the outsiders are carried off to be thrown in the lava, but Okara sacrifices his life to sound the alarm, so Shirani's men arrive in time to rescue Martin and Laird.  Jhulun's men are killed, but Jhulun himself escapes.  Back in their cell again, Laird tries to convince Martin to kill Shirani to save the world, and confesses her own love for Martin.  Martin--who has been letting Okara and Borchoff do all the killing throughout the story--can only bring himself to pledge to kill Shirani after determining that he will kill himself afterward--he couldn't live with himself after destroying the woman he loves.

In Chapter 12 Shirani brings Martin with her to the machine with eight levers in the Place of Power.  Martin's plan to kill her while she is distracted operating the machine is foiled when the princess has him tied up so she can focus on running the device.  She then sends away the guards, who are nervous over being in such a sacred place, which leaves her open to sneak attack by Jhulun, who has been hiding in the Tomb.  Shirani only has time to pull one lever before the scorned noble rushes her, grabs her, and jumps down into the chasm with her to be killed in now rising lava below.  Martin breaks his bonds, returns the first lever to the off position, and flees Koom with Laird--the rising lava destroys Koom behind them, but the rest of the Earth is spared.

In the Epilog, Joan Laird tries to get Gary Martin to stay with her, but he refuses--Shirani, the woman of spirit who disdained a life of "ignoble security" and was willing to kill millions and risk her own life in pursuit of "high adventure and conquest," will be his girl until the day he dies.