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A Princess of Mars
A Princess of Mars
A Princess of Mars
Audiobook6 hours

A Princess of Mars

Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Narrated by John Bolen

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

Two years before Edgar Rice Burroughs became a worldwide celebrity with the publication of Tarzan of the Apes, he published A Princess of Mars. A futuristic sci-fi fantasy romance, A Princess of Mars tells the story of John Carter, a Civil War veteran who inexplicably finds himself held prisoner on the planet Mars by the Green Men of Thark. Together with Dejah Thoris, the princess of another clan on Mars, the unlikely pair must fight for their freedom and save the entire planet from destruction as the life-sustaining Atmosphere Factory slowly grinds to a halt.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 27, 2008
ISBN9781400179107
Author

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) is best known for his creation of Tarzan of the jungle and of the heroic John Carter who adventured on Mars, although he is also the author of many other novels in a range of genres.

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Reviews for A Princess of Mars

Rating: 3.5238095238095237 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

105 ratings86 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this book at the age of eleven, and couldn't stop reading until I had read all eleven books of the series. Aged fifty-four now, I still remember my fascination. This book launched a lifetime of reading sci fi and fantasy. At a young age I would have given the book six stars. Now, it has too little complexity and meaning to warrant five, though it is still a great adventure story. But were I at that young age again, I am certain I would again give it the maximum score, and on that basis, and with a fond memory, I rate the book five stars.The paperbacks I read had no illustrations. This edition illustrated by David Burton is really wonderful.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Who did I see describing this as "old school, pulpy goodness"? I think that works pretty well. I'm not sure how I'm going to relate this to Herland in my SF/F essay, but I'm thinking on it... Obviously there's a ton of colonial, North American stuff going on here, wherein a white man from Earth comes and suspiciously saves a red-skinned princess and reforms the Martian societies to good American values...But it's still sort of fun, and not a chore to read: the prose is straight-forward and not too crammed with infodumps, and I did get sort of fond of one or two characters, mostly Sola (perhaps because she was "civilised" and relateable before the Great White Man's intervention). No real surprises here, and I don't think I'll be in a hurry to read other Barsoom books, but it's enjoyable in its way.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is my absolute favorite book! I love everything about Burroughs writing, how wonderfully cheesy it is, the over dramatic adventure. It is absolutely perfect!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It reads like every 1950's Martian movie, but that's only because it set the standard for Martian stories. It is the original story of a man going to Mars and interacting with the alien civilizations he finds there. At times the hero is a bit too dashing, but that adds to the campy aspect of the read. It's enjoyable pulp, with a twist ending that's a bit like "what happens after the fairy tale is over?" The racial aspects of the story, red men and green men as savage warring civilizations, was laid on a bit too thick at times. Burroughs is writing from the perspective of early 20th Century America, where the Western frontier was quickly closing as white America was bringing an end to their destruction of the "red man", and at times it felt like he let his prejudices slip into the story. Overall, though, a very fun read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After fleeing from Apache Indians while prospecting near their territory following the Civil War, John Carter finds himself transported to the planet Mars where he quickly impresses the violent Green Men with his earthly muscles and mad fighting skillz. His captivity overlaps with that of Dejah Thoris, princess of the Red Men - her beauty... and poise in the face of imminent torture decide his immediate devotion. Many escapes from peril occur. Makes me want to read Tarzan. Probably not more of this series though. Love that all the creatures are violent (with varying degrees) since Mars is the god of war - that's just what happens there.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Perfect example of why being the first gets you undeserved accolades. Burroughs was one of the first science fiction writers. He was far from one of the best and the Barsoom series proves why.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Written in 1912 this classic still carries much weight today. I am on a "classic" kick right now. Wells, Doyle, Howard and this was just what the doctor ordered. Classic stuff from this classic writter
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    i went through about three chapters and was really bored.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Not very good. I'll give the author a break because it was his first novel, but it lacked the quirky charm of the Tarzan books that I've read. I'll probably read the next in the series and see if I like it any better.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this book after having it suggested that I may like it after saying that reading is for fun and pleasure and the escape it provides, and that fiction--especially science fiction--shouldn't be akin to reading a physics text book. And since this book is going to be made into a movie, I figure that it can't be all bad. I wasn't disappointed, though of course, John Carter is transported magically to Mars just by falling asleep, as if he's dreaming the whole adventure, so that would be sort of hard to grasp, but considering when the book was written, it was probably no more hard to believe in his day than space craft would be in ours. The plot is fairly simple. It's a love story, and John Carter's adventures to win the heart of the woman who he met and fell in love with. Though the number of people that John Carter killed to accomplish this task is somewhat overwhelming, and included the inhilation of an entire people. The writing was sort of hard to get into, with a lot of what I thought were unnecessary words. Because of this, it took me quite awhile to read it, and if I couldn't sit down and read for an extended period of time decided against doing so. Overall, though, I am curious to see what the next book brings, so it was exciting enough for me in that regard. At the same time, the next book in the series will not be the next book I read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Pulpy and terribly dated.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Having recently seen the film John Carter, I thought I'd download this classic from Gutenberg. It was OK but glad I saw the film first as the book is even more one fight after the next. It is also short so can be safely read on a phone in spare minutes.I have downloaded Gods of Mars too so will use spare minutes on that too.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This classic science fiction adventure story from Edgar Rice Burroughs begins the story of John Carter, a Civil War hero and inadvertent time and space traveler. John Carter finds himself mysteriously transported from an Arizona desert to Mars where he uses his superior strength and agility due to the difference in the pull of gravity to survive in an alien culture. He finds true love with a princess, Deja Thoris. His courage, loyalty and resourcefulness are tested in several dangerous encounters with the red and green Martians and he again becomes a hero. After being enslaved, losing his princess several times, battling beings and weaponry different than he was previously familiar with, he successfully becomes a leader for both the red and green Martians. He remains true to his own values and wins the princess. Today’s savvy readers will find several questions in Burroughs’ explanations for why things happen the way they do but will still be satisfied with the exciting plot full of action and adventure. Imagining suddenly finding themselves on an alien planet with very different races of humans, the reader will enjoy the adventure even if they aren’t always able to suspend their disbelief over some of the details. The new Disney movie “John Carter” is based on this novel and will encourage readers to continue the adventure with him in the other books in the series. As a classic and a movie tie-in, this is a good purchase for a school library. Grades 7-12.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Definitely pulp fiction, but more fun than I expected.

    I wonder what it would have been like reading this before we had sent spacecraft to Mars, and before we had nice pictures of Martian surfaces.

    I can't help but wonder if Burroughs meant the reader to believe Earthlings are descended from the red men of Mars--the planet is collapsing, the ancient humanoid residents of the huge now-dead cities created the atmosphere maker.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It took a while for me to warm up to this 1912 classic but in the end it is a surprisingly good adventure & love story that happens to take place on Mars. This type of sci fi (aliens and weird creatures) is generally not what I care for but if you can accept the one giant leap of faith - how John Carter gets to Mars is inexplicable even to himself - Burroughs does a good job. And this book is the origin of the stereotype that men from Mars are green (which survived in the original Star Trek with the Klingons), although John Carter's love interest is a woman from the red people of Mars!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ignoring the fact that we've disproved some of the myths of "Mars," actually quite a good read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A completely new World. John Carter finds himself on Mars, locally called Barsoom, and meets many dangers and adventures there.
    It reads like the Tarzan books. If you like them, you'll like this one too. It is no high literature, but a good read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    How awesome are the green women of Mars? Engineers, trauma surgeons, armorers, blacksmiths, teachers and more. What are the green men of Mars? Naked dudes with weapons.

    How does John Carter win the people's ovation and fame forever on Barsoom? Cuddles, people. He wins it with cuddles and kindness. Were he just a guy from a planet with higher gravity, he would still win the fights he fought and won, but he would not have won the affection and loyalty of Woola, his faithful toothy hound, and the thoats, and he would not have Sola and Dejah Thoris as his allies, all key at various points to his survival on Mars.

    Mars needs cuddles, my friends. Mars needs cuddles.

    I love this book. It is vibrant and silly and earnest and purportedly about manly business but every page is about the awesomeness of the ladies. Ok, sure, Dejah Thoris could do a bit more rescuing of herself and a bit less swanning about being sternly princessly and stiff upper lipped. She does save the day once, I suppose. I'd like to see more of her being awesome in subsequent books.

    My major complaint is being robbed of the reunion of Sola and Tars Tarkas. Books and books about Sola would be very fine indeed.

    In an epic display of juvenile behaviour, I found myself giggling every time I remembered that all the characters were naked but for jewellery and weapons. I find it hilarious that all the cover illustrations are over-dressing!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very curious book. If I had read anything by Burroughs in the past, I don't recall. I would have remembered reading A Princess of Mars, though. For a book that was written nearly one hundred years ago (1911, I believe), Mr. Burroughs certainly had the physics worked out to a tee -- except for, perhaps that out-of-body, interplanetary-travel thing (a violation so bad that they should have revoked his literary license). I mean, REALLY! Cavorite has more plausibility. I was troubled by the consistency of impossible-problem-encountered, problem-overcome, although current-day movies tend to follow that same sort of monotony, but I enjoyed the sheer variety of issues and solutions that Burroughs packed into the book. I'll definitely be reading more.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    OK, I give up…(checking)…81% of the way through. Bag this book.

    I grabbed Princess of Mars on Gutenberg.org, because it was in the Top Downloads chart, and because I’d never read any Burroughs before. (I realized a day or two later that it was being downloaded heavily because there’s a film adaptation out now.)

    Having recently read a ton of fiction from the century spanning roughly 1820-1920, including a lot of pioneering science fiction, and having enjoyed most of it, I expected about the same from Princess of Mars: an enjoyable story rich with references to its time, probably loaded with amusingly quaint touches like hokey science and corny dialogue. And it didn’t disappoint on the “hokey” front, what with the chariot-riding, pistol toting Martians and all. But it failed to grab me, and ultimately I bogged down out of sheer boredom. It read almost like a (mediocre) Western novel in which the places and people had been hastily switched at the last minute to create a “Martian” setting. (I understand this was not the case, just saying that’s how it felt.) I can definitely tell this stuff must have been an influence on L. Ron Hubbard.

    Having given this book an honest try, I don’t think I’ll be finishing it, let alone picking up one of the apparently 317 sequels. If I want my old-school fix, I’ll stick to Wells-Verne-Stevenson-Stoker and company.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The first in the John Carter series, this book is a very quick, entertaining read.Mr. Carter seems to be about thirty, but his true age is unknown. When he hides from his pursuers in the back of a dark cave, he’s suddenly and unexpectedly transported to Mars. This book covers his initial encounters with the strange Martian “humans” and his romance with his true love, the inimitable Dajah Thoris, the princess of the title.Author Burroughs never pretended to be anything but a writer of pulp action stories. Thank goodness he excelled at his chosen field. The John Carter books have had an enormous influence on sci-fi thrillers over the years, and reading them is both entertaining and informative about how the genre started.Not every book has to be deep, meaningful, and important. Sometimes a reader just wants to have fun, and this book provides plenty of that.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    While I respect the place this novel has in early science fiction, and the influence it had on some of the later greats of science fiction, and while I understand that all fiction is a product of the time and the place it's written, I will always find it difficult to respect speculative works in which it was easier to imagine aliens on Mars than women being treated as equals. As well, Mary Sue Carter really got to be a bit MUCH.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I hate giving it only three stars, because I absolutely loved this series when I was a kid. I'm now a much more sophisticated reader; maybe the difference is also that the style seems dated now -- lots of telling, not so much showing. It's still better than the unfortunate recent film.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was surprised at how well this book holds up considering it was written 95 years ago! I find the John Carter stories much more interesting than Tarzan. Brian Holsopple read the audiobook I listened to and he does a good job of making the older text more exciting. Good, classic sci-fi!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There are reasons why the story of John Carter, gentleman of Virginia and his high adventure on a strange world, has served as either a major influence of, or had its premise more or less rehashed, in countless forms and in several entertainment genres (novels, comics, movies, etc.)It is fun! It is strange! It shouts to the restless spirit in us all! Best of all, it is a timeless sci-fi story which resonates with us without feeling dated at all (as some later generations of the genre quickly become).John Carter's transportation to Mars, and the great power this event bestows upon him, echoes our yearnings to have the power to change our own situations in life. Some so called "sophisticated" readers may call this story overly reader-gratifying in its (I'll admit sometimes ridiculous) confluence of propitious events, which propel John Carter to the highest honors and happiness to which any man of two worlds could aspire. I think readers should not get wrapped up in this attribute (which really was necessary given the time and nature of the work's publication), but rather appreciate the feelings and hopes that these events and Carter's values, powerfully, bring out in us.Besides the fantastic adventure and gripping plot line, I also particularly enjoy the amoral standpoint that Burroughs takes. Many events (**spoiler alert**), such as the destruction of Zodanga, are quite morally ambiguous, especially given John Carter's strict honor code. Yet Burroughs doesn't let his story be hampered or slowed by a more textbook plot element. This accelerates the action satisfyingly and at the same time highlights the stark contrast of morality on a dying world from that of Earth.This book is a combination of pure fun and some great literary elements, I highly recommend it!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I gave it the old college try, I really did. It was just so godawful..
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    John Carter!The Warlord of Mars!Dejah Thoris, the most beautiful woman ever!Action! Excitement!It was all that in my youth. But somehow now, as an adult, things have changed.The writing is muddied, and the perspective not near as good as I remembered from those past times.For a young person, A Princess of Mars is a classic. The times that Burroughs wrote, this first person narrative style was probably all the rage. I remember that I felt a compulsion to read the stories when in my teens.Now though I see that there are points in the writing and development of the story that do not work as well for me as an adult that did when I was a child. Enjoyable yes. But not the great adventure story that it had been. And then suspend my disbelief as Burroughs tried to build his world. That has some problems that just don't seem to connect and I can't gloss over as I could when I was younger.Not only that, but the action just does not seem as well choreographed as it used to seem, and from the fire to the frying pan is just one looping occurrence. John Carter never seems to have a moment to take a breath which a penny-dreadful type tale might require. A well developed novel feels like it should allow for more.At this stage, having read the series when a child, I might finish the entire reread, but I think watching Disney's interpretation even with actors who are not as heroic, or as beautiful, as Burroughs portrayed them will serve.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Dated but engaging, fast-paced pulp.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book starts out with high action and then gets veeeery slow for a while, before it picks up to high action again. I felt like there were a lot of Superman parallels here (stranger from another planet that saves the day much?). It was a fun read and I'm glad I gave it a shot.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The beginning was a little hard to get through, since it read very much like an old Western. It got better, however, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the book despite the shortcomings. The language was a little hard to get used to, simply because it sounded very pompous. Aside from that, I soon found myself quite engrossed in the book. It does tend to be chauvinistic, yet that can be expected from a white male writing at the turn of 20th century. I found Burroughs' vision of Mars quite refreshing, and either he borrowed something from earlier writers, or quite a few later writers borrowed their ideas of Mars from this very book. Some of the technology was quite amusing, since it showed a very close-minded look at the world; other technology was quite forward-thinking. What disappointed me the most was the ending. It felt very "Umm, I need to finish this book, so why don't I slap together a chapter or two that brings the story to an unbelievable climax, and then leave the reader hanging." It was akin to a children's fairy tale ending in "And they lived happily ever after for 10 years, at which point the evil step-mother returned and gave the princess a poisoned apple. The end." Aside from that, however, I think the book was pretty good.