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Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

It’s been a long time since I’ve read Burroughs’ Mars series — I first discovered them in high school (25 years ago, wow!) — but with the new film coming out I thought I’d give them a reread. (And they’re free on Kindle, so yeah!) This is an enjoyable book. Burroughs doesn’t much limit himself to science so these are more fantasy than science fiction (remarkablely imaginative considering when these were written), but he does an excellent job at creating interesting and unusual cultures (that’s my favorite thing about his books). Here he’s got warring populations and species of Martians, a lone human (John Carter) thrust in the middle and trying to survive, and a terrific adventure tale of daring and brawn. Things are a little tedious at times as Burroughs has to spend a great deal of time explaining the world — it’s our narrator hero’s first time there, too — and while some of that exposition is interesting, more action would have been preferable. (I’m really curious about how the subsequent books handle this as they should have more story.) A few of the details are almost too pat (you can see solutions to future problems as things happen to him earlier on), and I found the descriptions of battles boring (war isn’t interesting to me). The love story is the most fascinating part of the book, as he’s falling in love with an alien with a different thought process and culture. Overall, it’s a book that holds up remarkably well. I’m not sure if this is the book they’re making into a movie — it’s the first novel but there is a book called “John Carter of Mars” which I heard was the movie title — but I’m very curious to see what they produce. Considering the nature of the novels — a foreign planet, strange beasts and creatures, epic battles, airships, alien cities — these are not books that were filmable (at least realistically) without today’s special effects abilities. We shall see!