The Warlord of Mars Book

More hectic adventures for John Carter on Mars Barsoom!



He jumps right back into the action, immediately following the crazed cliffhanger of the preceding Gods of Mars! He's going to save his wife and mother of his son Dejah Thoris and her new bff Thuvia come hell or high water! He's no wimpy regular sorta guy, he's the greatest warrior of two worlds! He's going to hop all over Mars with his super-powered leaps, wearing nothing but his skin! Pity the fool that gets in his way! He won't take no for an answer!



I should have read this third book right after the second one because they are basically one book! Maybe I would have liked it better if I had! But I'm not going to cry over lost opportunities because John Carter would no doubt smack me upside the head! He'd probably tell me to stop mooning over lost opportunities because he misses opportunities all the time and he still manages to come out on top! He just can't abide any sort of wimpy mooniness because that's so typical of the Earth Men he gladly left behind!



But I sure do wish I liked this one as much as I liked the first two books! The adventures run between Mars' two poles, helter and skelter, willy and nilly, and I kinda got lost in all the breathlessness! Not lost like confused but lost like Uh Do I Even Care About This Anymore Where Is He Now Exactly Eh Whatever Just Keep On Reading! It all just felt like a whole lotta running around so I didn't ever get a sense of the places that I was visiting! I missed the exotic worldbuilding and sly social critiques and the riveting cast of supporting characters! Well at least there was John Carter's trusty 10-legged "dog" companion Woola! But then he gets sent off on his own mission halfway through the book and so that was that, goodbye! Farewell sweet Woola!



I especially missed the weirdly resonant primary-colored races of Barsoomians where Burroughs is at his best! Lots of interesting social and political critique there! All of that was kinda lacking in this book! I wanted more of those Red Men and Green Men and Black Men and White Men! Instead we get these boring Yellow Men and all they are are black-bearded yell0w-skinned aristocrats, sorta like the White Men minus the religion and baldness and plus beards! There's nothing all that interesting about them except they live in hothouses on the South Pole and like every other race of men on Mars, they think wearing clothes is for losers! Well at least they built an interesting defensive weapon: a giant tower that's like a big magnet that pulls those Red Men-built airships out of the sky to fall into a junk heap where survivors get gobbled up by gross insect-eyed albino ape creatures! Ouch! And yuck!



Even though I was disappointed I think I'm gonna keep on keepin' on with this series! On to the next one!