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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is a classic pulp action book through and through. You have your perfect hero, your beautiful heroine/damsel, and the loyal mutt, all in a non-stop action sequence whereby the main hero, John Carter, finds himself in a different world of cultures and politics and is somehow better at those things than any of the natives.
What's really nice about the book is the setting. Mars (or Barsoom, as the Martians call it) has some cool ideas that you can only really find in the sort of semi-ignorant times of science fiction. Mars itself is described as being covered in a soft, yellow moss no matter where you go. And the vast, dry plains are referred to as "seabeds," enforcing the lore that Mars is a planet at the end of its lifecycle now that even the oceans have dried up.
There are two main types of Martian species: the Red Martians who are more humanoid (I actually don't know how they differ from humans other than being red and laying eggs), and the Green Martians who are still pretty humanoid but also more beastly, having six limbs and tusks and stuff. These creatures wield technology far ahead of our own, as well as technology far behind us: so basically, swords and lasers.
I like the "swords and lasers" style of fantasy sci-fi. There's something neat about worlds like Dune and The Dark Crystal and here, in Barsoom, where everything is incredibly simple but magically mysterious in some way. In Barsoom for example, they discovered that light has two extra colors! These colors, called the 8th and 9th Rays, each have some weird mystical power. The 8th Ray creates propulsion, and the 9th makes energy? I think? It's pseudo-scientific nonsense and that's what's fun about it.
So basically John Carter is running away from a group of dangerous US natives some time after the civil war (John's a confederate veteran), and winds up on Mars in a way that frankly makes no sense and doesn't need to. He's then captured by a tribe of Green Martians who are painted as somehow being vicious, uncivilized tribesman who can kill you at any moment to take your rank, and also super stiff law-abiders that have a rich and unbreakable tradition of nuanced formalities and rules. So basically, pre-Klingons. But green.
From here he sees the titular princess of the Red Martians being held captive by these green ones, and gets it in his head that she is the perfect woman, and that he will now live his life only to ensure she is safe and happy. Beautiful. Also he befriends a Martian dog.
My biggest gripe in the narrative is that it is written as a diary. For an action book, where death is at John Carter's heels at every turn, all the tension of his possible death is lost from page one when you are told that he survives 10 years to tell the tale. The second problem of this first-person narrative is that it makes John Carter, who is otherwise seen as the perfect male with infallible ethos, incredible fighting prowess, and a sharp mind, also seem like a braggart. In practice, he isn't super egotistical, because a Real Man practices humility! But because the narrator who is describing how awesome John Carter is also happens to be John Carter himself, you can't help but feel like he's constantly stroking his own ego or telling a story that makes him sound cooler than he actually was.
What's really nice about the book is the setting. Mars (or Barsoom, as the Martians call it) has some cool ideas that you can only really find in the sort of semi-ignorant times of science fiction. Mars itself is described as being covered in a soft, yellow moss no matter where you go. And the vast, dry plains are referred to as "seabeds," enforcing the lore that Mars is a planet at the end of its lifecycle now that even the oceans have dried up.
There are two main types of Martian species: the Red Martians who are more humanoid (I actually don't know how they differ from humans other than being red and laying eggs), and the Green Martians who are still pretty humanoid but also more beastly, having six limbs and tusks and stuff. These creatures wield technology far ahead of our own, as well as technology far behind us: so basically, swords and lasers.
I like the "swords and lasers" style of fantasy sci-fi. There's something neat about worlds like Dune and The Dark Crystal and here, in Barsoom, where everything is incredibly simple but magically mysterious in some way. In Barsoom for example, they discovered that light has two extra colors! These colors, called the 8th and 9th Rays, each have some weird mystical power. The 8th Ray creates propulsion, and the 9th makes energy? I think? It's pseudo-scientific nonsense and that's what's fun about it.
So basically John Carter is running away from a group of dangerous US natives some time after the civil war (John's a confederate veteran), and winds up on Mars in a way that frankly makes no sense and doesn't need to. He's then captured by a tribe of Green Martians who are painted as somehow being vicious, uncivilized tribesman who can kill you at any moment to take your rank, and also super stiff law-abiders that have a rich and unbreakable tradition of nuanced formalities and rules. So basically, pre-Klingons. But green.
From here he sees the titular princess of the Red Martians being held captive by these green ones, and gets it in his head that she is the perfect woman, and that he will now live his life only to ensure she is safe and happy. Beautiful. Also he befriends a Martian dog.
My biggest gripe in the narrative is that it is written as a diary. For an action book, where death is at John Carter's heels at every turn, all the tension of his possible death is lost from page one when you are told that he survives 10 years to tell the tale. The second problem of this first-person narrative is that it makes John Carter, who is otherwise seen as the perfect male with infallible ethos, incredible fighting prowess, and a sharp mind, also seem like a braggart. In practice, he isn't super egotistical, because a Real Man practices humility! But because the narrator who is describing how awesome John Carter is also happens to be John Carter himself, you can't help but feel like he's constantly stroking his own ego or telling a story that makes him sound cooler than he actually was.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Sexism
Ok, I got a ways into this and I just couldn't bring myself to continue. I can't get past the constant barrage of white male supremacy or the "I need to explain to you how brave and honorable and heroic I am because nobody else will." There's something really fascinating to me about pre-space flight scifi, but this obviously isn't the book for me.
I have a friend who swears that Edgar Rice Burrough's Princess of Mars (the first of the Barsoom series of John Carter adventures) is the greatest sci-fi novel ever written. His avowed love and the fact that the latest in a long line of movie versions (this one starring Taylor Kitsch of Friday Night Lights fame) is now in theaters and the fact that the book is free from many legitimate and very legal sources left me figuring "why not?" So I read it and I gotta admit that I fully enjoyed it. I'm not a big fan of science fiction or fantasy novels because I sometimes have trouble imagining the environs and characters that most authors of the two genres either spend too much or too little time building. It would seem that my mind has trouble finding a happy medium. But, for some reason, this one clicked with me.
John Carter is a now retired soldier of the Confederate States of America who decides to venture into Arizona to make his fortune in gold with a fellow ex-soldier named Powell. In a very short span of time, Carter finds himself praying to Mars, both the planet he observes in the sky and the God of War who has, to this point, been the source of his livelihood as a warrior. The next thing he knows, and completely inexplicably, Carter finds himself on Mars in the midst of growing tensions between three tribes of Martians. When Carter falls in love with Dejah Thoris, the Princess of the Heliumites (one of the three tribes) who is a prisoner of another tribe, tensions spill over.
One of the coolest twists about this book for me is that it's a story shared by Burroughs who explains in the beginning that Carter was his uncle and, being his favorite nephew, he was sworn to share the story verbatim when the time was right. Unique way to approach it.
John Carter is a now retired soldier of the Confederate States of America who decides to venture into Arizona to make his fortune in gold with a fellow ex-soldier named Powell. In a very short span of time, Carter finds himself praying to Mars, both the planet he observes in the sky and the God of War who has, to this point, been the source of his livelihood as a warrior. The next thing he knows, and completely inexplicably, Carter finds himself on Mars in the midst of growing tensions between three tribes of Martians. When Carter falls in love with Dejah Thoris, the Princess of the Heliumites (one of the three tribes) who is a prisoner of another tribe, tensions spill over.
One of the coolest twists about this book for me is that it's a story shared by Burroughs who explains in the beginning that Carter was his uncle and, being his favorite nephew, he was sworn to share the story verbatim when the time was right. Unique way to approach it.
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No