Burroughs' books that seemed to be science fiction, the ones I tried to read, were really adventure stories that happened to take place on other planets.. ( )

I stopped reading this series after the third book three years ago, as if I knew this one was gonna be some bullshit. In this novel, we pretty much do away with all the characters we know and love from the first three books and focus on John Carter's son Carthoris and his love Thuvia who we met briefly earlier in the series. I was re-reading my reviews of the first three books and at some point I commented that John Carter is the least interesting character in his own series. His son Carthoris is even less interesting. Reading this crystalized for me what I actually love about this series though and it's the male friendships.

I don't often read stories about straight men that frequently express their affection and loyalty to one another, where their survival is mostly dependent on their ability to form faithful friendships. It's fun. When multiple male characters are on the page, I get pumped because I know they're about to do amazing things. That being said, most of this book was a drag because Carthoris was a lone figure for the majority of it, sometimes accompanied by Thuvia, near the end accompanied by Kar Komak who made me laugh once with his too few lines.

Many complain about these books for always centering around a hero saving a damsel and that of course exists in this book, but given this was written in 1916 about a woman in an even more patriarchal society than the U.S. at that time, Thuvia is a progressive heroine. She could be put in a book today and wouldn't be entirely out of place. Thuvia murders two men who dare to touch her and she locks a third in a room with a man intent on killing him. She uses man's weapons to kill, a dagger. And a more feminine method in the form of a connection she's managed to form with wild animals. She is principled until the very end and only gives her principles up for love after her prospective partner proves he respects them. Thuvia is not to blame for the mediocrity of this book.

The fault of this book really lies in Burroughs not giving Carthoris a bigger supporting cast. The plot also includes a sort of commentary on religion that never really coalesced for me and seemed repetitive of previous novels. ( )

This is the first Carter novel that does not feature John Carter himself as the central character. We now begin to focus on Carthoris, Carter’s son. He turns out to be quite the action hero himself. Our new damsel in distress is Thuvia of Ptarth, who Carter had earlier rescued in Gods of Mars, and who by the end of the last book Carthoris had fallen for.

Back in The Gods of Mars we learned that for some unknown reason Thuvia can control the banths, the great cats of Mars. When she and Carthoris are tossed into a pit to be eaten by the god the people of Lothar worship, she is pleasantly surprised to find out this particular god is just a very large banth, subject to her control.

Thuvia, Maid of Mars is a fresh book. If the Barsoom series was going to stall, it would be on the fourth book, where Carter steps off the stage.
Readers shouldn't go into a book written over a hundred years ago expecting it to compare to modern fantasy novels. I love the cheesy action with the same nostalgic fantasy I feel for the old Godzilla movies. Not to mention the fabulous book covers!


TBR 1384 ( )

Carthoris sets out to rescue Thuvia after she is kidnapped in Helios. He knows she is pledged to another but his love sends him on his way. They meet strange Martians with uncanny powers of mind projection before the final rescue. ( )

This is the fourth book in the Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but the first in where John Carter is not the hero. Instead, it focuses on his son, Carthoris.
My first reaction was a mild disappointment with the change. After the first three novels, my emoting with John Carter was deep and I wasn't at first ready for the transition but after a few chapters, I had settled in.
The plot to kidnap Thuvia seemed overly complicated at first as I did not comprehend the intentions of the captors on their initial plan. The whole taking her to a long-abandoned city in the south of Mars made no sense. It became obvious that the author was not worried about reason, only wanting to establish a new setting and characters not previously discovered in the previous novels. The whole 'mentally projected archers' thing also didn't work for me.
Nevertheless, like the first three novels, there is plenty of heroics, lots of battles, and a number of challenges, both mental and physical, for the hero, all things I had come to expect so all enjoyable.
The final result, 4 stars. The previously mentioned issues being too much to overlook to go 5. ( )