I was flipping through a bunch of different stuff last weekend, trying to figure out what I wanted to read, when I realized I had read A Princess of Mars a while back, and hadn't gone any further than that!
So, I sat down with the second book in the Barsoom Saga, The Gods of Mars, and I think it was a little better than the first one, overall, though there were some tradeoffs.
Once again, John Carter returns. He got out of his weird mausoleum and gave a bunch of notes to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and it's a new adventure in a different part of Mars/Barsoom.
It's a similar kind of story, very action-packed adventure stuff, but it does a good job of building upon some of the characters and relationships established in the first book, while piling on a whole new mountain of worldbuilding.
Carter's archaic tone remains, and we get a few bits of reflection here and there to remind us of what he claims he is: some kind of weird semi-immortal Earthling who has lived through the Civil War.
The first book introduced green and red Martians; this one gives us white (therns) and black (first born) Martians, as well as a fleeting mention of yellow Martians.
Instead of playing around mostly with ideas of culture shock, this book looks at what happens when a group of people believes themselves to be gods. The results... are not pretty.
It's a fun read, like the first one, with a couple of major differences. First, there's a lot more detail in general. In the first book, Burroughs relied on describing Martian creatures as analogs to Earth creatures. In this book, the descriptions are much more vivid and stand alone, and he even describes some things which have very little analog to anything I've seen on Earth, with very good attention to detail.
Second, the combat in this book is also more detailed and more visceral than the first book. I complained that the sword fights in the first book were like, "I wiggled my sword at him until I won," and this book gets away from that pretty well. Fights have more detail, and in addition, we get a lot more "grappling" type fights. It's more brutal and more fun to read.
Third, this book is a bit more repetitive than the first one. It runs through the cycle of battle, capture, escape several times and there's not much more to the plot than the repetition of that cycle.
Plot conveniences are less significant, and occasionally get overturned in interesting ways.
We get a whole host of new characters with some good development, but nothing too deep or profound.
Carter remains a bit overpowered as in the first book, but he never seems too invincible. Over the course of this book, we see his influence and the spread of his sense of honor and morals, helping to unite and make peace over more of Barsoom.
Overall, I thought it was a little better than the first book. I liked the additional detail more than the repetitiveness annoyed me. Also, this one ends in a huge cliffhanger, and according to what I could find, the people reading it had to wait six months for the next installment to begin: The Warlords of Mars.
It's worth reading if you enjoyed the first book and want more details. Definitely read Princess first, because a ton of this book depends on you knowing the world and characters.
Also, if you want a plot synopsis, check the section of the embedded video starting at 13:20.
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