The Gods of Mars.

By Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Synopsis:
John Carter returns to Mars, but instead of arriving back in the city of his beloved princess, Dejah Thoris, he finds himself in the strange lands that the Martians believe to be heaven...

Review:
I liked this. Mainly because it wasn't a love story - fair enough, John Carter does spend most of the book trying to get back to Dejah Thoris, but they'd already got it on, so there wasn't the usual complete obliviousness of both parties followed by sudden, passionate realisation over the course of the last three pages, which seemed to be becoming the standard. Every female in the immediate vacinity did keep trying to shag John Carter at every opportunity (including, disturbingly enough, Thuvia of Ptarth, his future daughter-in-law), but he remained thoroughly uninterested.

The subject matter was mostly false religions, and the evil, self-obsessed gits who set themselves up as gods to take advantage of the tragic gullibility of the populous in general. John Carter went to great lengths to point out and re-point out his status as a rational athiest, although he also made it clear how he was very respectful of the poor deluded creatures' foolishness. Despite all this, the overall tone was very much anti-religion (or possibly just anti-Martian religion, Earth religion never really came up), especially concerning reactions to unbelievers (the Martians who travelled down the river in hope of a blissful afterlife were enslaved by the evil bastards who lived there. Or they were just eaten by the soulless plant-men (who I liked a lot). However, anyone who escaped and made it back to civilisation to tell their terrible tale was executed as a blasphemer).

Race could possibly have come into it. Considering who the author is, I was expecting the Black Martians to be savage, primitive and superstitious. And they were, but so were the White Martians, Green Martians and Red Martians. Also the Black Martians had been outsmarting the Red and White Martians for hundreds of years. I didn't see anything particularly offensive or noiceably outdated - the Black and White Martians are very much removed from black and white Earthings, and presenting their relationship in juxtaposition to the Red and Green Martians did serve to highlight the general daftness of race conflict, but it's all down to interpretation, and probably wasn't intentional.

The cover art, at first glance, was absolutely terrible, but upon reading the opening scene on Mars, turned out to be pretty accurate (A brief aside - the problem was probably a combination of relatively crap artist, and a too literal interpretation, These outlandish alien creatures sound great when described, but I'm not sure they're meant to be envisaged as a whole, and when they are drawn as such, it kinda spoils it. On a similar vein, I recently bought a cheap Lovecraft paperback, upon the cover of which was an artist's interpretation of one of the hellish demon creatures he (Lovecraft, not the artist) is so fond of. Lovecraft descriptions were not meant to be illustrated by mortal men). John Carter looked very much like Marcus Brigstocke, and was also butt nekkid. Now, it is completely accurate to the story, and god knows I don't normally object to naked men, but... not John Carter. Really. Please. Not Marcus Brigstocke either.

Speaking of John Carter, his attitude to women struck me as rather strange at first. For example:

Never have I been much of a ladies' man, being more concerned with fighting and kindred arts which have ever seemed to me more befitting a man than mooning over a scented glove four sizes too small for him, or kissing a dead flower that has begun to smell like a cabbage.

While I was quite familiar with the Martian custom which allows female slaves to Martian men, whose high and chivalrous honour is always ample protection foe every woman in his household, yet I have never myself chosen other than men as my body servants.

It took me a while to figure out why that seemed weird, until I realised that the current norm in fiction as a whole is to portray men in the presence of a beautiful woman (as all the women on Mars seem to be) as slathering idiots completely at the mercy of their dicks, whereas John Carter harks back to a time when men were cool and masterful, and could not be brought low by a mere woman (and who also seem to prefer fighting to shagging. Ah well, takes all sorts). Of course it could always be that the books are aimed primarily at young boys still in the 'girls, ugh' stage.

Conclusion - Good. And also short, so even if you don't like it, it doesn't waste too much of your valuable time.