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Barsoom #8-11
The Collected John Carter of Mars
Book Three of the John Carter of Mars collections, this edition contains the original text from the eighth, ninth, tenth, and the two short stories and make up the eleventh of Edgar Rice Burrough's world-famous novels. Originally published between 1934 and 1943, Swords of Mars; Synthetic Men of Mars; Llana of Gathol; John Carter and the Giant of Mars; and Skeleton Men of Jupiter are science fiction classics!
896 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2012
About the author
Edgar Rice Burroughs
2,980 books2,787 followersEdgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 21, 2017
This is the third of a three-book compilation of John Carter of Mars stories. As a result, it is a mix of different kinds of stories, most of which are not actually about John Carter specifically. Carter is so capable and strong and able he's a bit difficult to write -- the strongest, smartest, fastest, best swordsman etc -- so I understand focusing on other characters.
Some of the stories are stronger than others, the first about John Carter yet again rescuing his lovely wife but it had a fascinating scientific story regarding mental control of a starship and artificial intelligence. The first story is solid, the second was kind of moderate, the third was pretty weak, and so on. Overall its a decent read but I can see where Burroughs was running short on energy and passion in the books like Doyle did in his Holmes stories.
Some of the stories are stronger than others, the first about John Carter yet again rescuing his lovely wife but it had a fascinating scientific story regarding mental control of a starship and artificial intelligence. The first story is solid, the second was kind of moderate, the third was pretty weak, and so on. Overall its a decent read but I can see where Burroughs was running short on energy and passion in the books like Doyle did in his Holmes stories.
January 23, 2019
Edgar Rice Burroughs is humorous in Llana of Gathol in the character of John Carter, ‘it might almost be a pleasure to have one’s throat slit by one of them, he would be so polite about it.’ ‘Women have their own ways. As a rule they are unpleasant ways, but they seem the proper ways to win men, so I suppose they must be all right.’ He’s also humorous through the character of Carter’s sidekick, ‘you have been dead a million years. You should lie down.’ Another character is explaining the origin of life on Mars, for the sake of any reader who doesn’t already know. ‘I hoped he was through for I’d heard this many times before.’ Having adequately described a scene, Carter says, ‘unfortunately my powers of description are wholly inadequate. But perhaps some day you too will visit Mars.’
John Carter likes fighting. He fought in wars before the civil war. He doesn’t know how old he is. He recalls no childhood, nor if he was born of a woman. He suggests he could be the materialisation of a long dead warrior. That would explain his ability to cross the void of space. It wouldn’t explain Ulysses Paxton’s ability to do the like except he too were a long dead warrior. When he says, ‘if a man can’t live without oxygen, he can’t fly back and forth between Thuria and Barsoom in an open flier’, as he did, I think, he’s probably claiming he can. ‘That I’m narrating this adventure must assure you that I landed on the deck of that flier.’
When Carter, in this first person narrative novel, describes a fight, his opponent ‘waiting for me to make one little false move, but I do not make false moves,’ my comment in the margin is ‘of course not.’ He also says, ‘I am never off balance.’ Bravado possessed him, ‘let them see once more the greatest swordsman of two worlds. I knew it was foolish,’ but pride overcame prudence. It does again, ‘“Come and take me!” In that I made a mistake but I was a little sore at being laughed at.’ He doesn’t feel he’s bragging. “I only state facts.” He makes excuse for killing in a way he doesn’t like to, that ‘now there was no other way and it was not for myself that I killed him.’ He verges on the pompous, ‘That warrior would have been surprised could he have known that he conferred upon me a title far inferior to my own.’
No Martian is able to read his mind, that of an Earth man ‘and may account for the fact that telepathy has not advanced far on our planet’. Burroughs gives no indication telepathy is the communication of one unconscious with another, bypassing consciousness.
He only uses the word ‘gorgeous’ once in this novel.
Some things are predictable, like Carter’s going to have to find the controlling machine, others not, like how he’s going to get the flier out of the domed city. He’s inventive and his effects extraordinary. His women are hostages to fortune, ‘I should have done it had it not been Llana of Gathol was still a prisoner here.’ ‘It humiliates me to admit that it was not an unpleasant experience’ to hold a ghost in his arms and kiss her.
‘It seemed strange to walk there among the enemy unseen; all that I had to do was avoid contact with any of them and I was safe from detection.’ What about smell?
In the last of the series, John Carter of Mars, there’s no rationale for the third person narrative. The moons are given their Earth names with Deimos misspelt. He misspells ‘stupefy’. Language is careless: ‘the dim light was caused by the phosphorescent radium glow that is used on all Mars for radiation.’ He uses ‘verdure’ when the greenery’s not green. He uses exclamation marks too much. He has a plural when he means ‘ally’s’. Rats smell if men don’t. His psychology is still good: John Carter banks everything on Pew Mogel’s not looking up. People don’t. When I was ten we played a game of hiding within the confines of the Avenue. If caught, you joined the searchers. I climbed a tree and watched the line of playmates pass.
Part 2 is first person narrative. The author has chutzpah: he refutes science that Mars is inhabitable on the basis of John Carter’s fact, “I live here.” Carter endorses the virtue of optimism, that it commands the breaks in life, and of baiting an enemy, that it so disconcerts it gives the baiter the advantage, and of self-confidence, that because of it ‘I so often accomplish the seemingly impossible’. He’s still funny: men cut limbs from living trees and roast them. He’s walking across a planet of twenty-three billion square miles to get to faraway Zanor and says ‘I shall not bore you with an account of that part of my odyssey.’ With one mighty leap he’s there! The ending is a surprise because you don’t expect it and the novel would require to be much bigger to give what you do expect and entail the beginning of a whole new series of novels much like those of this series that started with John Carter’s arrival on Mars.
John Carter likes fighting. He fought in wars before the civil war. He doesn’t know how old he is. He recalls no childhood, nor if he was born of a woman. He suggests he could be the materialisation of a long dead warrior. That would explain his ability to cross the void of space. It wouldn’t explain Ulysses Paxton’s ability to do the like except he too were a long dead warrior. When he says, ‘if a man can’t live without oxygen, he can’t fly back and forth between Thuria and Barsoom in an open flier’, as he did, I think, he’s probably claiming he can. ‘That I’m narrating this adventure must assure you that I landed on the deck of that flier.’
When Carter, in this first person narrative novel, describes a fight, his opponent ‘waiting for me to make one little false move, but I do not make false moves,’ my comment in the margin is ‘of course not.’ He also says, ‘I am never off balance.’ Bravado possessed him, ‘let them see once more the greatest swordsman of two worlds. I knew it was foolish,’ but pride overcame prudence. It does again, ‘“Come and take me!” In that I made a mistake but I was a little sore at being laughed at.’ He doesn’t feel he’s bragging. “I only state facts.” He makes excuse for killing in a way he doesn’t like to, that ‘now there was no other way and it was not for myself that I killed him.’ He verges on the pompous, ‘That warrior would have been surprised could he have known that he conferred upon me a title far inferior to my own.’
No Martian is able to read his mind, that of an Earth man ‘and may account for the fact that telepathy has not advanced far on our planet’. Burroughs gives no indication telepathy is the communication of one unconscious with another, bypassing consciousness.
He only uses the word ‘gorgeous’ once in this novel.
Some things are predictable, like Carter’s going to have to find the controlling machine, others not, like how he’s going to get the flier out of the domed city. He’s inventive and his effects extraordinary. His women are hostages to fortune, ‘I should have done it had it not been Llana of Gathol was still a prisoner here.’ ‘It humiliates me to admit that it was not an unpleasant experience’ to hold a ghost in his arms and kiss her.
‘It seemed strange to walk there among the enemy unseen; all that I had to do was avoid contact with any of them and I was safe from detection.’ What about smell?
In the last of the series, John Carter of Mars, there’s no rationale for the third person narrative. The moons are given their Earth names with Deimos misspelt. He misspells ‘stupefy’. Language is careless: ‘the dim light was caused by the phosphorescent radium glow that is used on all Mars for radiation.’ He uses ‘verdure’ when the greenery’s not green. He uses exclamation marks too much. He has a plural when he means ‘ally’s’. Rats smell if men don’t. His psychology is still good: John Carter banks everything on Pew Mogel’s not looking up. People don’t. When I was ten we played a game of hiding within the confines of the Avenue. If caught, you joined the searchers. I climbed a tree and watched the line of playmates pass.
Part 2 is first person narrative. The author has chutzpah: he refutes science that Mars is inhabitable on the basis of John Carter’s fact, “I live here.” Carter endorses the virtue of optimism, that it commands the breaks in life, and of baiting an enemy, that it so disconcerts it gives the baiter the advantage, and of self-confidence, that because of it ‘I so often accomplish the seemingly impossible’. He’s still funny: men cut limbs from living trees and roast them. He’s walking across a planet of twenty-three billion square miles to get to faraway Zanor and says ‘I shall not bore you with an account of that part of my odyssey.’ With one mighty leap he’s there! The ending is a surprise because you don’t expect it and the novel would require to be much bigger to give what you do expect and entail the beginning of a whole new series of novels much like those of this series that started with John Carter’s arrival on Mars.
October 16, 2017
SWORDS OF MARS
For its first couple chapters, SWORDS OF MARS tricks you into thinking you're getting an atypical John Carter adventure, more of a spy novel than a princess-in-peril yarn. Alas, however, the book quickly falls back on repeating all the usual John Carter cliches, with Edgar Rice Burroughs basically writing on autopilot. Especially disappointing was the book's final chapter, which felt like a whirlwind summary of what would normally be an additional 100 pages of story.
Here are John Carter's stats for this adventure:
Princesses rescued: 2
Successful prison escapes: 2
Alien worlds visited: 1
New cultures/races discovered: 3
Mad scientists bested: 2
Insanely gorgeous females' hearts broken: 2
Sidekicks attained: 2
New languages learned: 1
Enemy strongholds infiltrated: 4
Enemy airships stolen: 1
Alien disguise success rate: 100%
Number of times John Carter is saved through sheer luck/coincidence: ∞
SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS
Since the character of Ras Thavas was featured in both the John Carter volumes I absolutely did not enjoy (THE MASTER MIND OF MARS and JOHN CARTER OF MARS), I was not looking forward to seeing him return, which is why I put off reading SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS until the very end. Turns out, though, my dread for this novel was misplaced. The ridiculous body-swapping element from MASTER MIND is still present, but this time Burroughs uses it in a fun, memorable sort of way. I wouldn't call it a good novel in the traditional sense, but it does manage to entertain. I'm glad I read it, but also glad that my reading of this series is now complete.
LLANA OF GATHOL
Your enjoyment of LLANA OF GATHOL entirely depends on whether or not you can turn your brain off without losing all ability to be entertained. Even by old-school pulp sci-fi standards, this book is dumb. And yet, as with all John Carter novels, it possesses a certain kind of charm for anyone reading it for purely escapist reasons.
LLANA OF GATHOL is composed of four inter-connected novellas, each with the same basic story structure: A strange new city is discovered, Llana is taken prisoner, and John Carter must break free from his captors and rescue her. And, since Carter is a god-man who is the very best at absolutely everything he does, his eventual success is never in question.
The repetitiveness and shallowness of these stories would render them boring were it not for the fact that Burroughs creates a mythology interesting enough to compensate for the majority of the book's shortcomings. Every new city that John Carter visits has its own unique and fascinating characteristics--the kind of settings that would've made for great episodes of the original STAR TREK.
Though recommended for John Carter fans only, LLANA OF GATHOL is the sort of ultra-lowbrow entertainment that keeps you coming back for more.
JOHN CARTER AND THE GIANT OF MARS
Written by Burroughs' son, this novel is god-awful. Apparently, it started out as a children's book; all I know is it reads like a bad '80s cartoon. It might make an OK bedtime story for your six-year-old, but that's about it. Plus, it's largely inconsistent with the rest of the John Carter series.
SKELETON MEN OF JUPITER
This is standard John Carter fare, but Burroughs died before he could carry the story to its proper resolution. Certainly it's a far cry from the proper send-off these characters deserve.
For its first couple chapters, SWORDS OF MARS tricks you into thinking you're getting an atypical John Carter adventure, more of a spy novel than a princess-in-peril yarn. Alas, however, the book quickly falls back on repeating all the usual John Carter cliches, with Edgar Rice Burroughs basically writing on autopilot. Especially disappointing was the book's final chapter, which felt like a whirlwind summary of what would normally be an additional 100 pages of story.
Here are John Carter's stats for this adventure:
Princesses rescued: 2
Successful prison escapes: 2
Alien worlds visited: 1
New cultures/races discovered: 3
Mad scientists bested: 2
Insanely gorgeous females' hearts broken: 2
Sidekicks attained: 2
New languages learned: 1
Enemy strongholds infiltrated: 4
Enemy airships stolen: 1
Alien disguise success rate: 100%
Number of times John Carter is saved through sheer luck/coincidence: ∞
SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS
Since the character of Ras Thavas was featured in both the John Carter volumes I absolutely did not enjoy (THE MASTER MIND OF MARS and JOHN CARTER OF MARS), I was not looking forward to seeing him return, which is why I put off reading SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS until the very end. Turns out, though, my dread for this novel was misplaced. The ridiculous body-swapping element from MASTER MIND is still present, but this time Burroughs uses it in a fun, memorable sort of way. I wouldn't call it a good novel in the traditional sense, but it does manage to entertain. I'm glad I read it, but also glad that my reading of this series is now complete.
LLANA OF GATHOL
Your enjoyment of LLANA OF GATHOL entirely depends on whether or not you can turn your brain off without losing all ability to be entertained. Even by old-school pulp sci-fi standards, this book is dumb. And yet, as with all John Carter novels, it possesses a certain kind of charm for anyone reading it for purely escapist reasons.
LLANA OF GATHOL is composed of four inter-connected novellas, each with the same basic story structure: A strange new city is discovered, Llana is taken prisoner, and John Carter must break free from his captors and rescue her. And, since Carter is a god-man who is the very best at absolutely everything he does, his eventual success is never in question.
The repetitiveness and shallowness of these stories would render them boring were it not for the fact that Burroughs creates a mythology interesting enough to compensate for the majority of the book's shortcomings. Every new city that John Carter visits has its own unique and fascinating characteristics--the kind of settings that would've made for great episodes of the original STAR TREK.
Though recommended for John Carter fans only, LLANA OF GATHOL is the sort of ultra-lowbrow entertainment that keeps you coming back for more.
JOHN CARTER AND THE GIANT OF MARS
Written by Burroughs' son, this novel is god-awful. Apparently, it started out as a children's book; all I know is it reads like a bad '80s cartoon. It might make an OK bedtime story for your six-year-old, but that's about it. Plus, it's largely inconsistent with the rest of the John Carter series.
SKELETON MEN OF JUPITER
This is standard John Carter fare, but Burroughs died before he could carry the story to its proper resolution. Certainly it's a far cry from the proper send-off these characters deserve.
October 22, 2023
I loved this series. Every one of these stories is awesome. If you haven't already done so, you owe it to yourself to do so.
August 8, 2012
The writing goes way down hill as this series progresses, I did enjoy seeing John Cartel back in action once again.
June 11, 2013
Yucky book. I love John Carter books, but this one was yuck.
September 30, 2013
More adventures of John Carter swashbuckling his way across Mars. Not bad. I'm just over testosterone and swords.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews