Swords of Mars: Book Eight of Martian Series

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• ISBN: B00DMMPBM0
• Release Date: January 1967
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Passably Entertaining Barsoomian Adventure

Altogether, Edgar Rice Burroughs is credited with eleven Martian (Barsoomian) novels, most of which featured the heroic John Carter and the lovely (but frequently kidnapped) Princess Deja Thoris. I would argue that the two best-written Martian novels by Burroughs are _The Chessmen of Mars_ (_Argosy All-Story_, 1922; A.C. McClurg, 1922) and _The Swords of Mars_ (_Blue Book_, 1934-35: ERB, Inc., 1936). They are Mars books numbers five and eight, respectively. To be sure, very few novels by Burroughs escape from a certain amount of silliness. But _Chessmen_ and _Swords_ are a touch more tightly written, a bit more solidly plotted, and display a certain amount of imaginative pizazz. _Swords of Mars_ features the return of John Carter as the central hero and first-person narrator. Carter has become aware of the rise of a nefarious crime ring known as the Guild of Assassins that has taken root in the somewhat disreputable Martian city of Helium. Carter goes undercover, posing as an unscrupulous mercenary freebooter in order to penetrate various levels of the Guild. This Carter manages to do; but he quickly finds that for all practical purposes, he has leaped out of the skillet and into the atomic fire. He is in constant danger. He does manage to recruit some allies against the Guild. But then the criminals kidnap Princess Deja Thoris. Carter and his allies must then travel by airship to the Martian moon of Thuria (that is, Phobos) to rescue her. More capture and escape episodes follow until things come to a rather abrupt (but appropriate) ending. Descriptive passages in _Swords_ tend to be somewhat brief; the novel is mainly an action-oriented story. But there are just enough of them to effectively capture the flavor of an extra-planetary setting. There is the fantastic airship with a mechanical brain and "two round ports" that were "like the huge eyes of some gigantic monster" (53). There is the sight of Clorios (that is, Deimos) riding "high in the heavens, illuminating the streets" (64). There is the first sight of Thuria, with its dead sea bottoms and "dark masses that could have been forests" (110). And there is the "gleaming shaft" of "the lofty Tower of Diamonds" (154), where Deja Thoris and several other women are imprisoned. There are a multitude of editions of this novel, but I rather like the various paperback editions from Ballantine/Del Rey. They feature some first-class cover illustrations by Bob Abbett, Gino D'Achille, and Michael Whelan.