Thuvia, Maid of Mars
This is a science fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fourth of the Barsoom series. The principal characters are the Son of John Carter of Mars, Carthoris, and Thuvia of Ptarth, each of whom appeared in the previous two novels.In this novel the focus shifts from John Carter, Warlord of Mars, and Dejah Thoris of Helium, protagonists of the first three books in the series, to their son, Carthoris, prince of Helium, and Thuvia, princess of Ptarth. Helium and Ptarth are both prominent Barsoomian city state/empires, and both Carthoris and Thuvia were secondary characters in the previous novel.Its plot devices are similar to the previous Martian novels, involving the kidnapping of a Martian princess. This time John Carter's son Carthoris is implicated. It does however have some inventive and original ideas, including an autopilot and collision detection device for Martian fliers, and the creation of the Lotharians, a race of ancient martians who have become adept at telepathic projection, able to create imaginary warriors that can kill, and sustain themselves through thought alone.Carthoris is madly in love with Thuvia. This love was foreshadowed at the end of the previous novel. Unfortunately Thuvia is promised to Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. On Barsoom nothing can break an engagement between a man and woman except death, although the new suitor may not cause that death. Thus it is that Thuvia will have none of him. This situation leaves Carthoris in a predicament.As Thuvia suffers the common Burroughsian heroine's fate of being kidnapped and in need of rescue, Carthoris' goal is abetted by circumstances. Thus he sets out to find the love of his life. His craft is sabotaged and he finds himself deep in the undiscovered south of Barsoom, in the ruins of ancient Aanthor. Thuvia's kidnappers, the Dusar, have taken her there as well, and Carthoris is just in time to spot Thuvia and her kidnappers under assault by a green man of the hordes of Torquas. Carthoris leaps to her rescue in the style of his father.The rescue takes Carthoris and his love to ancient Lothar, home of an ancient fair-skinned human race gifted with the ability to create lifelike phantasms from pure thought. They habitually use large numbers of phantom bowmen paired with real and phantom banths (Barsoomian lions) to defend themselves from the hordes of Torquas.The kidnapping of Thuvia is done in such a way that Carthoris is blamed. This ignites a war between the red nations of Barsoom. Carthoris must try to be back in time with Thuvia to stop the war from breaking loose. Carthoris wonders if his love will ever be requited by the promised Thuvia.
Contents
- Chapter 1 - Carthoris and Thuvia
- Chapter 2 - Slavery
- Chapter 3 - Treachery
- Chapter 4 - A Green Man's Captive
- Chapter 5 - The Fair Race
- Chapter 6 - The Jeddak of Lothar
- Chapter 7 - The Phantom Bowmen
- Chapter 8 - The Hall of Doom
- Chapter 9 - The Battle in the Plain
- Chapter 10 - Kar Komak, The Bowman
Related Books
Author other works
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The Warlord of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
This book is a science fantasy novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the third of his famous Barsoom series.This novel continues where the previous one in the series, The Gods of Mars abruptly ended. At the end of the previous book, John Carter's wife, the princess Dejah Thoris, is imprisoned in the Temple of the Sun by the vile pretender goddess Issus. It is said one has to wait an entire Barsoomian year before the room the prisoner is in revolves back to the entrance.John Carter discovers that a First Born knows the secret of the Temple of the Sun and he and the Holy Hekkador Matai Shang want to rescue the Holy Thern's daughter, who is imprisoned with Dejah Thoris and another Barsoomian princess, Thuvia of Ptarth. John Carter follows them in the hope of liberating his beloved wife. His antagonists flee to the north, taking the three women along. Thereafter John Carter follows them untiring into the north polar regions where he discovers more fantastic creatures and ancient, mysterious Martian races. These he overcomes in battle, and is later proclaimed "Warlord of Barsoom" by his allies. This book is the last to feature Tars Tarkas, John Carter's ally, in any major role; indeed, the green Barsoomians of whom Tars Tarkas is an oligarch disappear altogether from most of the later novels.
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The Land That Time Forgot
Edgar Rice Burroughs
This is an Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy novel, the first of his Caspak trilogy. His working title for the story was "The Lost U-Boat." The sequence was first published in Blue Book Magazine as a three-part serial in the issues for September, October and November 1918. The complete trilogy was later combined for publication in book form under the title of the first part by A. C. McClurg in June 1924. Beginning with the Ace Books editions of the 1960s, the three segments have usually been issued as separate short novels. The first of these is treated in this article.The novel is set in World War I and opens with a framing story in which a manuscript relating the main story is recovered from a thermos off the coast of Greenland. It purports to be the narrative of Bowen J. Tyler, an American passenger with his Airedale terrier Nobs on a ship sunk in the English Channel by a German U-boat, U-33, in 1916. He is rescued by a British tugboat with another survivor, Lys La Rue. The tug is also sunk, but its crew manages to capture the submarine when it surfaces. Unfortunately, all other British craft continue to regard the sub as an enemy, and they are unable to bring it to port. Sabotage to the navigation equipment sends the U-33 astray into the South Atlantic. The imprisoned German crew retakes the sub and begins a raiding cruise, only to be overcome again by the British. A saboteur continues to guide the sub off course, and by the time he is found out it is in Antarctic waters.The U-33 is now low on fuel, with its provisions poisoned by the saboteur Benson. A large island ringed by cliffs is encountered, and identified as Caprona, a land mass first reported by the (fictitious) Italian explorer Caproni in 1721 whose location was subsequently lost. A freshwater current guides the sub to a stream issuing from a subterranean passage, which is entered on the hope of replenishing the water supply. The U-boat surfaces into a tropical river teeming with primitive creatures extinct elsewhere; attacked, it submerges again and travels upstream in search of a safe harbor. It enters a thermal inland sea, essentially a huge crater lake, whose heat sustains Caprona’s tropical climate. As the sub travels north along the island’s waterways the climate moderates and wildlife undergoes an apparent evolutionary progression.On the shore of the lake the crew builds a palisaded base, dubbed Fort Dinosaur for the area’s prehistoric fauna. The British and Germans agree to work together under Tyler, with Bradley, the mate from the tug, as second in command and Von Schoenvorts, the original sub commander, in control of the Germans. The castaways are attacked by a horde of beast men and take prisoner Ahm, a Neanderthal. They learn that the native name for the island is Caspak. Oil is discovered, which they hope to refine into fuel for the U-33. As they set up operations, Bradley undertakes various explorations. During his absence Lys disappears and the Germans mutiny again, absconding with the submarine.Tyler leaves the other survivors to seek and rescue Lys. A series of adventures ensues among various bands of near-human primitives, each representing a different stage of human advancement, as represented by their weaponry. Tyler rescues Lys from a group of Sto-lu (hatchet men), and later aids the escape of a woman of the Band-lu (spearmen) to the Kro-lu (bowmen). Lys is lost again, and chance discoveries of the graves of two men associated with Bradley’s expedition leaves Tyler in despair of that party’s fate. Unable to find his way back to Fort Dinosaur, he retreats to the barrier cliffs ringing Caspak in a vain hope of attracting rescue from some passing ship. Improbably reunited with Lys, he sets up house with her, completes the account of his adventures which he has been writing, and casts it out to sea in his thermos.
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The Return of Tarzan
Edgar Rice Burroughs
This book is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the second in his series of books about the title character Tarzan.The novel picks up where Tarzan of the Apes left off. The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot. On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two shady characters attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. Rokoff, it turns out, is also the countess's brother. Tarzan thwarts the villains' scheme, making them his deadly enemies. Later, in France, Rokoff tries time and again to eliminate the ape man, finally engineering a duel between him and the count by making it appear that he is the countess's lover. Tarzan deliberately refuses to defend himself in the duel, even offering the count his own weapon after the latter fails to kill him with his own, a grand gesture that convinces his antagonist of his innocence. In return, Count Raoul finds him a job as a special agent in Algeria for the ministry of war. A sequence of adventures among the local Arabs ensues, including another brush with Rokoff. Afterwords, Tarzan sails for Cape Town and strikes up a shipboard acquaintance with Hazel Strong, a friend of Jane's. But Rokoff and Paulovitch are also aboard, and manage to ambush him and throw him overboard.Miraculously, Tarzan manages to swim to shore, and finds himself in the coastal jungle where he was brought up by the apes. He soon rescues and befriends a native warrior, Busuli of the Waziri, and is adopted into the Waziri tribe. After defeating a raid on their village by ivory raiders he becomes their chief. The Waziri know of a lost city deep in the jungle, from which they have obtained their golden ornaments. Tarzan has them take him there, but is captured by its inhabitants, a race of beast-like men, and condemned to be sacrificed to their sun god. To his surprise, the priestess to perform the sacrifice is a beautiful woman, who speaks the ape language he learned as a child. She tells him she is La, high priestess of the lost city of Opar. When the ceremony is fortuitously interrupted, she hides him and promises to lead him to freedom. But the ape man escapes on his own, locates the treasure chamber, and manages to rejoin the Waziri.Meanwhile, Hazel Strong has reached Cape Town, where she encounters Jane, and her father Professor Porter, together with Jane's fiancé, Tarzan's cousin William Cecil Clayton. They are all invited on a cruise up the west coast of Africa aboard the Lady Alice, the yacht of Lord Tennington, another friend. Rokoff, now using the alias of M. Thuran, ingratiates himself with the party and is also invited along. The Lady Alice breaks down and sinks, forcing the passengers and crew into the lifeboats. The one containing Jane, Clayton and "Thuran" is separated from the others and suffers terrible privations. Coincidentally, the boat finally makes shore in the same general area that Tarzan did. The three construct a rude shelter and eke out an existence of near starvation for some weeks until Jane and Clayton are surprised in the forest by a lion. Clayton loses Jane's respect by cowering in fear before the beast instead of defending her. But they are not attacked, and discover the lion dead, speared by an unknown hand. Their hidden savior is in fact Tarzan, who leaves without revealing himself.Later Jane is kidnapped and taken to Opar by a party of beast-men pursuing Tarzan. The ape man tracks them and manages to save her from being sacrificed by La. La is crushed by Tarzan's rejection of her for Jane. Escaping Opar, Tarzan returns with Jane to the coast, happy in the discovery that she loves him and is free to marry him. They find Clayton, abandoned by "Thuran" and dying of a fever. In his last moments he atones to Jane by revealing Tarzan's true identity as Lord Greystoke, having previously discovered the truth but concealed it. Tarzan and Jane make their way up the coast to the former's boyhood cabin, where they encounter the remainder of the castaways of the Lady Alice, safe and sound after having been recovered by Tarzan's friend D'Arnot in another ship. "Thuran" is exposed as Rokoff and arrested. Tarzan weds Jane and Tennington weds Hazel in a double ceremony performed by Professor Porter, who had been ordained a minister in his youth. Then they all set sail for civilization, taking along the treasure Tarzan had found in Opar.
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Pellucidar
Edgar Rice Burroughs
This book is a 1915 fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the second in his series about the fictional "hollow earth" land of Pellucidar.David Innes and his captive, a member of the reptilian Mahar master race of the interior world of Pellucidar, return from the surface world in the Iron Mole invented by his friend and companion in adventure Abner Perry.Emerging in Pellucidar at an unknown location, David frees his captive. He names the place Greenwich and uses the technology he has brought to begin the systematic exploration and mapping of the unknown land while searching for his lost companions, Abner, Ghak, and Dian the Beautiful. He soon encounters and befriends a new ally, Ja the Mezop of the island country of Anoroc; later he finds Abner, from whom he learns that in his absence the human revolt against the Mahars has not been going well.In a parlay with the Mahars David bargains for information of his love Dian and his enemy Hooja the Sly One, which his foes agree to supply in return for the book containing the Great Secret of Mahar reproduction that David stole and hid in the previous novel. David undertakes to recover it, only to find that Hooja has been there before him and claimed Dian as his own reward of the Mahars!Now he has to track down and defeat the sly one before resuming the human war of independence. Ultimately this is accomplished, and with the aid of the resources David has brought from the surface world he and Abner succeed in building a confederacy of human tribes into an "Empire of Pellucidar" that wipes out the Mahar cities and establishes a new human civilization in their place.
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The Lost Continent
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Lost Continent is one of the least-known of Burroughs' thrilling science-fiction tales. In the year 2137, civilization has been in decline for nearly two centuries, and war-torn Europe is but a distant memory to the inhabitants of the isolated United States. But an American adventurer rediscovers the Old World, which has become a strange and savage land.