Book #14. The
Warlord of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Nook.
I
thoroughly enjoyed the first two John Carter novels that I read, A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars. But this one did contained neither the same amount
of action nor of world-building that those prior Barsoom novels did.
At the end
of the prior novel, John Carter’s wife Princess Dejah Thoris (along with two
other women) is imprisoned in the Temple of the Sun by Issus. It is said one
has to wait an entire Barsoomian year before the room the prisoner is in revolves
back to the entrance. But that cliffhanger is quickly resolved, Carter’s sole
mission in this novel is rescuing his wife.
Burroughs
does give this short novel an epic sweep, sending Carter all over the planet tracking
down this wife’s captors, to both take vengeance of them and free her. Some of
the battle set-pieces were strong, but there was a sense of repetition going on,
of simply moving from one action scene to another similar action scene.
I love the
mix of genres at work in these novels, as well as Burroughs’ word choices, both
of which are mostly bcause of the era in which this books were written, the
1910s. There is an innocence and purity in Carter’s motivations that I
appreciate. Despite the quibbles I have with this particular novel, I continue
to enjoy the series, and expect to read the next one shortly.
Source: I
read this on my Nook, having downloaded the copy from Project Gutenberg. While
I appreciate Project Gutenberg’s commitment to make copyright-free works available
digitally, I have to say that the text of this book was riddled with mistakes,
probably more than one per page. Whether it was scanned or typed in, the data
input process was very weak.
Ah, this is my favorite book series, so glad you are giving it a read through! In my opinion, it only goes up from here, with The next two being really good, and book 6 being my favorite of the bunch and possibly of all Burroughs' work.
ReplyDeleteThepuzzler6
That's encouraging. I'm reading the next one (Thuvia) now, and will keep reading them. Really enjoying them.
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