Reader discussion: A Princess of Mars

Public reader discussion about A Princess of Mars in the WeRead Catalog by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs feels like a classic isekai story

By juniperKettle68

Even though *A Princess of Mars* is over 100 years old, it somehow still feels like it could belong with a lot of the isekai stuff that’s been coming out in the last decade. A bunch of the same kinds of beats are there: the guy is basically overpowered with special abilities, there’s a pretty main heroine who ends up falling for him, the people in the new world practically worship him, and he has to push through a ton of setbacks just to pull everything together again and save the day. That said, I don’t think it’s bad just because it uses those things. It honestly comes across like a fast, fun adventure that handles the whole “isekai trappings” thing really well. Sure, it can feel dated sometimes, and I get why that would be a complaint now, but it still feels like a classic. Also, I’m not trying to dunk on isekai in general—there’s plenty I like too. I just found it kind of wild that two stories written so far apart can end up feeling so similar.

A Princess of Mars (Barsoom) by Edgar Rice Burroughs

By gathersStory

If you’re grabbing free ebooks on Amazon, don’t hit the “Read for Free” option. Use “Buy Now” instead since the Kindle price is showing $0.00. I think “Read for Free” is tied to Kindle Unlimited, which you end up paying for.

Reading Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy.

By BenLovesBooks

My go-to genres are sci-fi and fantasy, and I love them. The one snag is I can’t seem to get myself to read the “classic” stuff. I’ve never really read Tolkien, Asimov, Philip K. Dick, any of those, and I’m not sure why. Part of me feels like I’m just holding them back for later—maybe for when things are calmer? Or maybe I’m honestly a little scared I won’t like them. Anyone else feel the same way?

WARLORD OF MARS

By BraveWonder

I really liked the first couple of books, and this one feels just as wild and magical. John Carter is such a great main character—yeah, his ideas can be a little old-school and super romance-y, but honestly that’s kind of what makes him feel like a total badass. I know there are more stories after this, but this one still manages to tie up a bunch of loose stuff and make the first three books feel like a proper trilogy. It’s got that classic heroic vibe with a lot of dungeon-stuff and adventure. And one more thing: these Barsoom novels have spawned a ton of awesome artwork. Michael Whelan and Joe Jusko are still my go-to for it, but there’s a lot of really killer art out there—go look around.

TIL B'arzz O'oomm is an Allusion to Barsoom, a Fictional Planet Mars from the John Carter Series.

By DistantLamp96

Barsoom really does sound like some weird alien name—like “B’arzz O’oomm”—I didn’t clock it until I saw both written out. Also, I always forget that John Carter actually started as pulp stuff in old magazine issues in the early 1900s, not a movie first. I know it eventually got turned into a live-action film, but before that the stories were collected and published as A Princess of Mars. So yeah, that’s basically the whole Young Justice trivia piece.

Is the entire Princess of Mars series worth reading?

By bluewindow

I’ve had these books sitting on my list for years. When I finally saw John Carter, it really hyped me up to read them. I still like the whole concept, but I’m about halfway through *A Princess of Mars* and now I’m kinda unsure if I should keep going, not just with this one but with the rest too. The writing feels kind of plain and bland to me. Does it improve at all, or is it basically like this the whole time? And if the writing doesn’t get better, is the story still worth it, or should I just save it for some future bedtime story for kids?

John Carter of Mars

By BadgerBookworm

Hey everyone—first time commenting here. Hope you’re all doing alright. I was just browsing a used bookstore the other day and found a boxed, 3-volume complete set of the John Carter of Mars novels. It’s Disney-published, and I *think* it’s that centennial style edition that got bundled with the movie stuff around 2012. I’m honestly pretty excited to have them, they’ll look great on my shelf lol. Anyway, I’m curious what you all think of the series. I’m not American, and I didn’t really grow up with Burroughs (I’m a big Robert E. Howard fan though). I can find plenty of context online, but I’m wondering if actual readers today still really enjoy these books.

Anywhere online where I can read A Princess of Mars?

By WalletRed

Does anyone know a legit place online where I can read *A Princess of Mars* by Edgar Rice Burroughs for free? If you have links, I’d really appreciate it.

What was pre-Tolkien fantasy like?

By ivoryHoney

I’ve only really read fantasy that came out after *The Lord of the Rings*, so it’s pretty obvious to me that Tolkien shaped the whole genre. I honestly can’t picture what it was like before he showed up. Edit: Okay, wow—thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I’m digging in now.

Best version of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Princess of Mars

By Eclipse_Imber

I’m craving something a little pulpier now that I’m finished with the Conan stuff. I was thinking of jumping into *A Princess of Mars*, but on Audible there are like 7 different audiobook versions with different narrators, so I’m stuck. I see: - Scott Brick - Finn J.D. John - Jon Waters - Peter Silverleaf - Macleod Andrews - William Dufris - Patrick Loy Has anyone listened to any of these? What was it like?

Book series that refer to Mars as Barsoom (not Edgar Rice Burroughs)

By blue_tiger

Wait, were there any other authors before Edgar Rice Burroughs who actually called Mars “Barsoom” in a series? Or was that just him?

I want to read Princess of Mars but I'm confused by all the different kindle editions.

By amberfrog40

Can someone help me out and point me in the right direction?

Forgotten DS Album of the Week: Tim Stebbing - Princess Of Mars [UK, Berlin School, Fantasy Ambient] (1986)

By oldOwl1998

Happy Summer I guess! For July and maybe even August, and maybe into September too, I’m gonna kick off each week by picking something I’ve never even heard of from the /u/AvelineBaudelaire Artist Database. If you’ve got nothing else going on, throw it on and start grinding toward 100% dungeon synth. Artist: Tim Stebbing Album: Princess Of Mars Physical Purchase: No items available in the Marketplace Kap's Corner I’ve seen a few people who seem pretty okay with a really broad idea of what dungeon synth is, or could be. I talked about this in one of my articles too, that the whole homemade fantasy synth thing didn’t really begin in the 90s, but was probably always there in the back of some solo musician’s mind when sitting in front of gear that could fake other worlds. Tim Stebbing was a UK artist putting stuff out either himself or through small indie labels like John Palmer’s Mix Music label. A Princess of Mars is a concept record tied to the 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of the same name. It’s all instrumental and goes through different parts of an early fantasy book. I have no idea how many copies of this were actually made, but I’m sure it must’ve sounded amazing with packaging like this. If all that sounds weirdly familiar to a lot of current home synth stuff, it’s probably because there’s always been this pull toward making instrumental soundscapes about far-off places no matter what decade it is. A Princess of Mars feels familiar to people who may not have even heard it before, since its vibe got carried along into later generations. I really hope this gets reissued someday, and maybe I’ll even message the artist and show him this post to let him know there’s a whole new batch of listeners who’d love to take a trip to Mars.

(Podcast) The Great Books -- Episode 265: 'A Princess of Mars' by Edgar Rice Burroughs

By annotationcrescent

I liked the podcast overall, but it felt like the host kept throwing out pointless questions—like whether ERB was a hack or what his politics are—rather than actually talking about what the book is about.

Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles". I did not expect this.

By MoonQuill2006

I’ve had *The Martian Chronicles* by Ray Bradbury on my list for a while. I kept hearing it was this huge sci-fi masterpiece, but somehow I just never got around to it. I think part of why I dragged my feet is because I finally finished the *Tom Corbet: Space Cadet* books last year, and ever since I was a kid (like, pre-teen) I’d had that first 1950s volume where people are out there hunting dinosaurs on Venus. So I was expecting the same kind of vibe—flashy rockets, classic space-adventure stuff, maybe even a little John Carter energy, you know? Big “old school sci-fi” concepts. What I got instead was weirdly not that. It’s short stories, sure, but they feel like sci-fi that’s wearing a mask. A lot of it reads like ghost stories or straight-up horror. Funny in one moment, then you look a bit closer and there’s something really disturbing under it. The whole setup is basically the Earth people coming to Mars, and how the native Martians react—or don’t. It moves from the early expeditions to the settlers and keeps going, but it’s not the usual “humans are awesome and everything turns out great” type of thing. More like the slow grind of history, wear-you-down kind of slow. One section that really hit me was “Way in the Middle of the Air.” It’s about white guys in the southern U.S. reacting to Black folks leaving for Mars as the next settlers—like, every last one of them leaving all at once—and you can feel the rage and cruelty of them not understanding why. The lines about “things lookin’ up” and all the rights improving, but still wondering what everyone “wants,” are… brutal. Overall it was honestly haunting. Just don’t go in expecting laser guns and science saving the day. It’s more about how foolish people are—Earth and Mars both—and still somehow shows you there’s maybe something great in them too. Also, yeah… don’t go in treating it like a fun candy book. Because it’s got its own kind of calories.

Convert entire books to audio with TTS-Story

By lanternreads

Just pushed an update to the TTS-Story software I made, and now it works with Chatterbox Turbo too. If you want a way to turn a whole book into an audiobook and still have easy controls to manage everything, it’s worth a look. It uses a bunch of different tools, so you can put together some pretty solid text-to-speech stuff. https://github.com/Xerophayze/TTS-Story https://youtu.be/Yhnf8vMUAQQ https://preview.redd.it/5ja9yl4iqccg1.jpg?width=2451&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77b22aeb14f8b46fac5f76e121898c3e171bd97e

[Comic Excerpt] Love the beautiful first issue of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. It’s like A Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs) meets European sci-fi/fantasy comics.

By midnightTeacup

Evely’s art is seriously amazing—it feels like a masterpiece to me.

Need Overview on Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom (John Carter) Series

By nebula-horse6

I basically only knew Burroughs from Tarzan—I didn’t even realize there were multiple Tarzan books. Recently I grabbed an ebook of A Princess of Mars, and between the cover, the story setup, and the whole publication vibe, it really feels like the classic pulp novel. But the writing itself is kind of engaging, which surprised me. I’m guessing it’s at least partly because it’s over 100 years old. That said, I’m trying to figure out what the series is like overall. Has anyone actually read it? I’m not seeing much out there. I count 11 books, and it looks like a bunch of them switch narrators, not just John Carter, which makes it seem like it could get messy. And I’m a completionist, so I don’t really want to jump into something if it falls apart later.

A Princess of Mars

By field_simple

The short stories at the end were seriously wild. Stover is still my favorite writer, so I didn’t expect to get hooked, but now I’m gonna have to check out a Chuck Rosenthal thing too. That one gave me chills. I ended up finding it because Stover contributed to that annotated centennial collection. I guess like a lot of stuff back then, it first ran as serialized pulp. I wanted to see what all the hype was about since it clearly inspired a bunch of authors (Stover included). At first I was into it right away—the whole Old West vibe is awesome. But the way the OBE leads into Mars felt a little nuts. Then I started losing the thread. The writing felt clunky and like it was trying too hard, and the descriptions left me wanting more, especially when he’s dropping plot stuff and laying out the creatures and different groups. Also, the whole first-person omniscient thing was kind of weird. But thankfully it improved. I had to start reading it more literally because the style is kind of dry. Once I did that, I could actually let my imagination take over and the whole thing felt super epic. It’s bold, and sometimes he’ll say something super straight-faced and it ends up making the moment feel even bigger than you’d expect. By the time I finally got used to the way it’s told—like, past the first couple-thirds—I was basically in love with it. It turned into one of those “okay wow” adventures. I swear it really earned the time it took. It also made me think about continuing the series. I’m probably gonna grab The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars before I jump to something else. And weirdly, near the end it made me want to read Conan too. So… yeah, might be happening. Anyway, this book has that magic feeling to me. What did you think?

Overlooked Icons: Leigh Brackett

By pencil_cliff60

Leigh Douglass Brackett was born in Los Angeles in 1915, and I guess she only really got going after reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. Her first thing showed up in 1940 (“Martian Quest” in Astounding Science Fiction), and after that she basically kept writing sci-fi nonstop—over twenty stories, with titles in all those pulp mags. I did notice her early Mars-y stuff leaned pretty hard on Burroughs (ruins, ray guns, sword fights, all that), but then she found her own lane. “Shadow Over Mars” in 1944 is where she really got the reputation, and then she kept stacking up more classics like The Starmen, The Sword of Rhiannon, The Long Tomorrow, and a bunch others. By the time she died in 1978, she was basically celebrated as a top genre writer. Okay, but why does this feel like it turned into Westerns at some point? Because it does. Before Shadow Over Mars she tried crime with No Good from a Corpse, and then Hawks called her about working on The Big Sleep. Later Hawks brought her back for Westerns with John Wayne—Rio Bravo, Hatari!, El Dorado, and Rio Lobo. She also did Follow the Free Wind about Jim Beckwourth and even won a Spur Award for it. And then she wrote the screenplay for Altman’s The Long Goodbye too, which is wild because it’s not even the same vibe as her sci-fi. But I’m still not fully sure where her “most remembered” spot is supposed to be—because the note about her doing the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back feels like the kind of thing you only remember because of the trivia, not because you actually know the details. Also, John Carpenter somehow named a Halloween character after her, so… yeah, she’s got a footprint in places.