Friday, March 09, 2012

Currently Reading: Llana Of Gathol by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Art by Michael Whelan
In the run up to the release of Disney's John Carter on March 9th, I'm reading through the entire Edgar Rice Burroughs 'Barsoom' series for the first time, I'm now up to book 10 - Llana Of Gathol. 

From Wikipedia: 
Llana of Gathol is an Edgar Rice Burroughs a collection of four stories that were originally published in Amazing Stories in 1941 - "The Ancient Dead", originally "The City of Mummies", "The Black Pirates of Barsoom", originally "Black Pirates of Barsoom", "Escape on Mars", originally "Yellow Men of Mars" and "Invisible Men of Mars"

The first collected edition of Llana of Gathol was published in 1948. It is the penultimate book in the Barsoom series and the last to be published during Burroughs's lifetime.

Almost finished this and I have really enjoyed it. Broken down into the four short stories, charting John Carter's travels across Barsoom, after rescuing his granddaughter, Llana of Gathol, in Horz in the first story. As I've read the previous nine books in the series, this one feels back on form and is of a similar feel to the first books. It also feels like a bit of a primer to the series, as if you haven't read any of the books before, Burroughs does describe events and details that have previously happened in the series. Definitely worth picking up if you enjoy good old pulp action adventure stories.

And according to Wikipedia the copyright for this story has expired in Australia, and thus now resides in the public domain there. The text is available via Project Gutenberg Australia.

Just one more book to go after finishing this one - 'John Carter Of Mars', a collection of two stories. The first is 'John Carter And The Giant Of Mars' and the second is 'Skeleton Men Of Jupiter'. Will be interesting to see how the series ends.

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