A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

[Omphalos]

One of the earliest commercially successful science fantasy novel series was Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series, and A Princess of Mars was the first book in the cycle. Though it was not as commercially successful as Burroughs' later Tarzan novels, he did make his mark on SF with these books. In my opinion this first one is the best. It’s a big book, with multiple sub-plots and a moderately large cast of characters. So rather than get into what is sure to be a hectic description of the plot, I will just touch on that, and then discuss Burroughs' use of themes. Three out of five stars, with reductions for sub-par writing style and what appears to me to be a lack of a clear outline and path to resolution. Keep in mind that Burroughs is not a traditional SF writer. His work largely predated the modern genre, and his works are considered "scientific romances," in that they were largely updates of the old romance stories with a few scientific gizmos and ideas thrown in for the purposes of modernization...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..

 

[AE35Unit]

I read this last year and am now trying to find the second one. It was quite enjoyable but if you're used to fast paced modern SF you'll be in for a shock as its quite a different style of writing. Great if you love old stuff,stuff like Conan Doyle's professor challenger books. It IS sf but when compared to our modern scientific age it can seem more akin to fantasy. But good fantasy. It makes for a great adventure,just don't read if you get hung up on scientific accuracies,tho at the time it was written,1912,noone knew what mars was like really. Just enjoy the journey and good writing!

 

[Happy Joe]

This series was one of my early favorites.
The first several of books are available as files here;
Science Fiction (Bookshelf) - Gutenberg
And here;
Free ebooks by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The remaining books are also available, on line, although you will likely have to search for them.
My copies on paper are becoming a bit too fragile to relax with.

Enjoy!