The novel “People of the Talisman” by Leigh Brackett was published for the first time in 1964. It’s the sequel to “The Secret of Sinharat“.

Eric John Stark is trying to reach the city of Kushat together with his friend Camar, who is mortally wounded. The city is too far away for them to arrive in time and Camar confesses that years ago he had stolen a sacred talisman of Kushat. Before dying, he asks Stark to bring it back to the city.

Stark has pledged on his honor to fulfill his friend’s last wish but on the road is captured by a group of raiders. Their leader Ciaran has the face covered by a mask and wants to conquer Kushat. Stark must try to escape from the raiders in order to reach the city of Kushat in time to warn its inhabitants of the impending attack.

In 1951, Leigh Brackett published a novel titled “Black Amazon of Mars” in the magazine “Planet Stories”. Years later, this novel was heavily revised and expanded before being published in 1964 under the title “People of the Talisman” along with “The Secret of Sinharat”. In the end, the two versions retain several similarities but the differences introduced with the revision make its second version a different novel.

In “People of the Talisman” Eric John Stark is back in another of his adventures on Mars. This is one of the stories that can be placed in the planetary romance sub-genre and are part of the Martian series written by Leigh Brackett.

The Mars described in these stories is in many ways inspired by that of classic stories such as those by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a dying planet filled with relics of ancient civilizations where the inhabitants, native and not, constantly have to fight for survival.

The influence of the heroic fantasy genre is particularly strong in “People of the Talisman” and sometimes you may think you’re reading one of the stories of Conan the Barbarian. Every so often there are specific references to terrestrial technologies or ancient Martian technologies but often the story really seems an adventure that Robert E. Howard could have written.

Eric John Stark gets involved in a war between the city of Kushat and the army commanded by Lord Ciaran to fulfill the last wish of a friend. The talisman he brings to Kushat is the product of an ancient civilization but that advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The town is inhabited by a decadent society so its rulers are unprepared for an attack and only the thieves are ready to heed Stark.

“The secret of Sinharat” was a novel short even by the standards of the years in which it was written so the story was linear. “People of the Talisman” is longer and, also because it’s the rewriting of a previous novel, is more sophisticated. The basic plot remains very adventurous with a fast pace but there’s more space to develop it not only with plot twists but also in the development of the characters, especially Lord Ciaran and some of the inhabitants of the city of Kushat that represent some of its social classes.

These two novels marked the success of Eric John Stark, so much that in the ’70s Leigh Brackett wrote a new trilogy about this character. At that point, the solar system wasn’t enough for him anymore, also because the era of pulp magazines with their unlikely descriptions of the planets was now in the past. As a result, the new adventures were set on Skaith, a planet in another solar system. Instead, a story published posthumously is set in the universe of the Star Kings created by Edmond Moore Hamilton, Leigh Brackett’s husband.

“People of the Talisman” along with “The Secret of Sinharat”, is an excellent example of the adventurous science fiction of the pulp magazines era. If you look for stories with a lot of sense-of-wonder I recommend reading it.