Under the Moons of Mars (Bison Frontiers of Imagination Series) (Paperback)

Originally published as "Under the Moons of Mars" in "The All-Story Magazine" in 1912, "A Princess of Mars" has John Carter dying in an Arizona cave, only to find his spirit looking down at his body. Opening his arms to the planet Mars, Carter is suddenly whisked to the Red Planet, where rival tribes battle while the planet's atmosphere continues to dissipate. Captured by a band of green six-limbed giants, Carter soon earns their respect for his prowess as a warrior and forges a lasting friendship with Tars Taras of the Tharks. But then the Tharks attack a fleet of airborne vessels and capture Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Helium, the greatest city on Barsoom. Of course, they get off on the wrong foot, since Carter knows nothing about the culture of the red humanoid race. But the lovely Princess of Mars has captured the Virginian's heart. Abandoning dreams of returning to Earth, he wants nothing better than to win her love. In the meanwhile, he has to protect her from the amorous attention of the depraved ruler of the Tharks, bring some semblance of civilization to the barbarian tribes, and stop all out war between the green men and red men from ending Barsoom's last chance for survival.

After the first novel, Carter finds himself back on earth, separated from his beloved princess. "The Gods of Mars," originally published in 1913 as a serial in "All-Story Magazine," finds John Carter returning to Mars and setting off to find his woman. Knowing there stories were originally published serials is useful because Burroughs loads on the cliffhangers throughout the novel. When Carter returns to Barsoom a decade has passed and he finds himself in that part of the planet that the natives consider to be "heaven," which proves to be a more ironic idea. Carter has to reunite with his friend the fierce green warrior Tars Tarkas, fight with the great white apes of Barsoom and plant men, violate some significant religious taboos, survive the affections of an evil goddess, help with a slave revolt, fight in an arena, and still save Dejah Thoris in the middle of a giant air battle between the red, green, black and white people of Barsoom.

Burroughs did not originally intended to write a trilogy, but his 1914 pulp novel "The Warlord of Mars" completes the epic saga of John Carter and Dejah Thoris (I really, really like that name). The story picks up six months after the conclusion of the previous novel, with our hero not knowing whether she is dead or alive in the Temple of the Sun of the Holy Therns where he last saw here with the blade of Phaidor was descending towards her heart as the evil Issus, queen of the First Born, had locked his mate in a cell that would not open for another year. However, it turns out that the exiled leader of the Therns has reached the trapped women to rescue his daughter and to seek revenge on Carter for exposing his evil cult. The focus of "The Warlord of Mars" is on Carter’s relentless pursuit of the villainous Thurid who have taken his beloved princess from the south pole of Barsoom across rivers, desert, jungles, and ice to the forbidden lands of the north in the city of Kadabra where the combined armies of the green, red and black races attack the yellow tribes of the north, thereby justifying the book’s title.

The first novel is the best of the bunch, introducing us to the diverse cultures of Barsoom, but there is some historical significance to the John Carter trilogy in terms of the development of science fiction (which was not even called that when Burroughs wrote these stories). The pattern established in each of these novels, where the hero pursues his beloved across an alien landscape rescuing her from one threat after another, would become the standard plot of ERB's pulp fiction adventures. Almost all of the eleven books in the Martian series follow this pattern, including the next pair, which tell the stories of the son and daughter of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. However, the best in yet to come in this series (i.e., "The Chessmen of Mars"). Burroughs always provided a solid mix of romance and adventure, but the Martian series also showed him at his imaginative best.