***** - Excellent
**** - Good
*** - Okay
** - Bad
* - Terrible
+ - Half-star
A Princess of Mars
(The Barsoom/John Carter of Mars series, Book 1)
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+
DESCRIPTION: When the Confederate States of America fell at the end of the Civil War, Captain John Carter of Virginia was one of the many soldiers left with little
means and no vocation. Unsure of what to do, he headed to Arizona to try his luck at prospecting... but instead found himself at the beginning of a journey he cannot explain.
While fleeing Apache attackers, he finds himself lost in a strange cave, where he is detached from his physical body and transported to the red planet Mars. Here, he must
learn to survive amid strange beasts and hostile natives on the surface of a dying world.
REVIEW: Yes, another free-for-Kindle download, admittedly inspired by previews for the upcoming movie adaptation of the franchise. Like many older sci-fi stories
(such as Jules Verne's works), it's more about the bizarre, otherworldly settings and situations than about any semblance of plot or character coherence. Also like many older
stories, the white civilized hero has little to no trouble making a place for himself among the ignorant savages, generously imparting the wisdom of his superior culture upon
them for good measure. Never mind that conditions on Mars are so totally unlike Earth that our ways may not be the most effective means of survival. Never mind that these are
aliens, with an alien brain attuned to an alien mindset, even if the "higher" Martians are essentially egg-laying humans. (And never mind that our supposedly civilized
protagonist deals out death on a dime when it suits his purposes.) John Carter's the hero, unquestionably and unequivocally, and hero status trumps all else. There is, of
course, a love interest, the titular Princess of Mars, who seems to exist primarily to inspire Boris Vajello paintings: the nude, sexy girl constantly threatened by hulking
monsters in a vaguely erotic fashion. (Again, why a six-limbed giant green alien would be physically attracted to a puny red-skinned woman is never questioned; human females
are evidently a universally lusted-after object.) The dialog, like the action, tends to the grandiose and overblown. Once you get through the cardboard characters and
stereotypes, though, Burroughs presents a highly imaginative alien world, full of intriguing mysteries and pseudoscientific marvels... enough to earn it the extra half-star
in the ratings. (Well, that and I tend to cut older stories a little bit of slack; you can't really fault Burroughs for being a product of his time, after all.) I don't expect
I'll read much further in the series, though; all the mind's-eye candy in the world can't entirely overcome the thin characters and generally tedious plot.
You might also enjoy:
The Everworld series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Four Chicago teens find themselves in a world of elder gods and magic)
The Remnants series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - A handful of humans survive Earth's destruction, awakening from statis in a bizarre new world)
The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, YA Fiction - A tornado sweeps Dorothy from Kansas to a magical world, where only a terrifying wizard can send her home)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - After finding a faerie prince in the garden, a boy finds himself embroiled in an interdimensional conflict)
Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold! (Terry Brooks, Fiction - A lawyer buys a magic kingdom through a high-end catalog)
Dragon Companion (Don Callander, Fiction - A librarian finds himself, suddenly and inexplicably, in a world of elves and dragons)
The Wiz Biz books (Rich Cook, Fiction - A wizard plucks a Silicon Valley programmer from his cubicle into his magical world)
The Lost World (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Fiction - A professor leads an expedition to a remote South American plateau, where prehistoric animals still roam)
Pyramid Scheme (Eric Flint and David Freer, Fiction - An alien probe transports modern Americans to a world of classical myths and gods)
Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman, Fiction - After helping a homeless girl, an ordinary London man must survive the surreal dangers of London Below to reclaim his old life)
The Dinotopia books (James Gurney, YA? Fiction - The illustrated journeys of a professor and his son through a lost world, where humans coexist with prehistoric creatures)
King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard, Fiction - Three Englishmen seek legendary diamonds in the heart of colonial Africa)
Pendragon: The Merchant of Death (D. J. MacHale, YA Fiction - After agreeing to help his peculiar uncle, a boy finds himself swept into another world)
The Airborn books (Kenneth Oppel, YA Fiction - A courageous boy in a world of airships explores strange wonders in the stratosphere and beyond)
The Transall Saga (Gary Paulsen, YA Fiction - A beam of light transports a boy to a hostile alien wilderness)
The Diadem series (John Peel, YA Fiction - Three children are plucked from their homeworlds, caught up in a dangerous quest and their own secret destinies)
Larklight (Philip Reeve, YA Fiction - In a Victorian-era space adventure, two British children embark upon a singular adventure through the aether of space)
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson, Fiction - The epic tale of humanity's colonization of the red planet)
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (James Rollins, YA Fiction - Two modern teens find themselves swept into a world filled with dinosaurs, lost civilizations, and danger)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne, Fiction - Three men become unwilling guests on a madman's submarine)
A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Jules Verne, Fiction - A professor and his assitant enter a lost world beneath the planet's crust)
Mirror World (Tad Williams, YA? Fiction - Giant mirror portals appear across Earth, leading to a strange planet)
The Otherland quarter (Tad Williams, Fiction - Ordinary people stumble across top-secret virtual worlds, including one inspired by the Barsoom series)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man explores the strange, dark wonders of Faerie)
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Tarzan of the Apes
(The Tarzan series, Book 1)
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Adventure/Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: The Englishman John Clayton, Lord Greystoke by rank, and his wife thought they were on their way to Africa merely on government business. They never
intended to die there. A mutiny aboard their ship left them, abandoned by the sailors, on a remote coast in the midst of an uninhabited swath of wildest jungle. Bad enough
that they must wait on the increasingly-dim hopes for rescue, but Lady Alice bears Greystoke's heir - a baby boy doomed to die when the wilderness finally claims his parents.
Fate, however, has other plans: as his parents lay dead near his cradle, a nearby mother ape, her own baby freshly deceased, hears his cries. Kala takes the babe to her breast,
raising him as her own.
Years later, the child Tarzan grows restless. He knows no mother other than Kala, knows no family but the apes, yet deep down he knows he is something different. Even the
savage dark-skinned people, who look so similar, are too different in mind and body for him to understand. Then he spies the strange thing floating upon the waters, from which
disembark creatures very like his own reflection... and one, the female Jane Porter, whose beauty and love might lure Tarzan away from the only world he has ever known.
REVIEW: Early on, the book was headed for a higher rating. Tarzan grows up like an African Mowgli, only without the Kipling character's annoyingly selfish
pigheadedness. He makes certain intuitive leaps - learning how to read and write English while remaining ignorant of spoken human speech, for instance - that stretch
credulity, but overall his jungle adventures were fun to read. Even when the cannibals come, setting up a village in his domain and giving Tarzan his first (unpleasant)
taste of humanity, I remained interested; as savage as they were, they, too, were victims of white colonists who drove them from their homeland, leaving them an embittered
and degraded people. Then came the Great White Man and the Lady Love, and things started going downhill. Unfair as it is for me to judge Burroughs - who, after all, grew up
in such a different world, with such a different set of values and prejudices, that I can hardly fathom it - I found myself choking on the stereotypes and assumptions he
rammed down my throat. The idea that noble-born white men have an inherent advantage, ingrained in the blood, over the lessers of their own race, to the point where a boy
raised in a savage wilderness by animals instinctively displays gentlemanly behavior and grace the moment the opportunity arises to do so... The ridiculously oblivious and
arrogant behavior of Jane's father, Professor Porter, and his well-to-do companions... Jane's persistent helplessness over her own life, let alone her own heart... the
shamefully stupid behavior of Esmeralda, Jane Porter's black maid, who doesn't even have a cannibal's excuse of growing up in a different world than her white employers...
I came close to lopping another half-star off the rating. The story itself clunks and hiccups, grinding its gears as it removes itself from the jungle and returns to civilization.
The ending is supposed to be bittersweet, but the only one I really felt sorry for was Tarzan, who seems to have chained his heart to a creature too faint and fickle to do his
love justice. Once again, while I'm glad I finally got a chance to read the original story, I find myself preferring more modern interpretations of the iconic Tarzan character.
You might also enjoy:
The Alexander Cold trilogy (Isabel Allende, YA Fiction - A modern teen discovers wonders in the remote corners of the Earth)
The Lost World (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Fiction - A British expedition investigates reports of dinosaurs living in South America)
The Sword and the Cross (Fergus Fleming, Nonfiction - Nineteeth-century Europeans attempt to "tame" the Sahara)
King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard, Fiction - Three Englishmen seek treasure in the unexplored heart of Africa)
The Leopard's Daughter (Lee Killough, Fiction - In prehistoric Africa, a warrior girl with a leopard's soul seeks acceptance among humans)
The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling, YA? Fiction - Tales of the boy Mowgli, raised by animals in the Indian jungle)
The Call of the Wild and White Fang (Jack London, Fiction - In two stories, a domestic dog learns the ways of the wolf and a wildborn wolf hybrid learns the ways of Man)
The Brian Robeson books (Gary Paulsen, YA Fiction - After his bush plane crash-lands in the Canadian wilderness, a modern city boy must learn survival skills from scratch)
The Transall Saga (Gary Paulsen, YA Fiction - A mysterious beam of light transports a modern boy to a hostile, alien wilderness)
Wolf Brother (Michelle Paver, YA Fiction - In prehistoric times, an orphaned boy and his wolf pup companion must defeat a demonic bear)
Deltora Quest: The Forest of Silence (Emily Rodda, YA Fiction - A forest-born girl helps with a quest to restore a magical artifact and save the land)
Swamplandia! (Karen Russell, YA? Fiction - A backwater Florida family of alligator wrestlers has trouble adapting to a rapidly-changing modern world)
The Young Merlin trilogy (Jane Yolen, YA Fiction - A feral boy begins the journey that will transform him into the greatest wizard of all time)
Tarzan (Disney Collector's Edition)
(1999 DVD - Raised by gorillas in the African jungle, Tarzan is both fascinated and repelled by the first humans he meets. A modern Disney classic.)
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