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| 1972 SFBC edition Art by Frank Frazetta (and see below) |
By Edgar Rice Burroughs (The Barsoom Series #4, All-Story Weekly serial 8-22 Apr 1916, book 1920)
This fourth in the “John Carter of Mars” series actually focusses
on his and Dejah Thoris's son, Carthoris, and the red Martian
princess and “banth-whisperer” introduced in The Gods of Mars,
Thuvia of Ptarth By the end of Warlord of Mars it was, I
think, pretty apparent they were smitten with each other (or perhaps I read that into the text with foreknowledge of this book). But when we begin here, their
undeclared love seems fated not to be consummated, because Thuvia's father, Thuvan Dinh, has promised her to
his and John Carter's ally, Kulan Tith of Kaol. But there is another
suitor, Astok, son of the Jeddak of Dusar, who is not willing to take
“no” for an answer – and has a grudge against Carthoris. Thus
is executed a plot whereby Astok means to steal Thuvia away and place
the blame on Carthoris.
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| Art by Frank Frazetta |
And so the adventures begin, which take Carthoris and Thuvia to a
remote region of Barsoom, where they first encounter the Lotharians,
a strange remnant of the old Barsoomian auburn-haired race that had
once ruled much of the planet, now reduced to a few hundred who
espouse a strange philosophy regarding the very nature of reality –
or actually competing philosophies which share in common the ability
to manifest images of and even ultimately to materialize objects and
even persons from their minds. The competition is between the
“Etherealists” who believe that there is no such thing as matter,
only mind, and the “Realists,” who accept the existence of matter
as a creation of mind. (I wonder how much this has to do with the
strange doctrines of Theosophy that seem to inform certain aspects
of Burroughs' fiction, especially his Barsoom series, first
noticed, I believe, by Fritz Lieber way back in 1959 and discussed
here). Such a
distinction matters little to their enemies, local green Martian
barbarians who periodically attack their city and are turned back by
legions of Lotharian archers who rain on them very lethal hailstorms
of arrows because they have no reason to believe they are not real.
In the course of their escape, Thuvia is stolen away from Carthoris
by Dusarians while the warrior ends up meeting the fulfillment of the
Lotharians' mental development in Kar Komak, a memory of
the greatest archer of ancient Lothar, who has indeed taken on
independent material existence. Carthoris and Kar Komak become
allies and by the end of the book have rescued Thuvia from death at
the hands of Astok – or rather at the hands of one of the Dusarian
nobles because Astok is not man enough to do his own evil deed to
hide the infamy of his actions that have set the great city-states of
Barsoom at war with one another.
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| Art by Frank Frazetta |
In the climax of the story, as they escape Dusar toward Ptarth in
Astok's own racing airship, they come to the aid of a downed Kaolian
airship besieged by green Martians, saving Kulan Tith himself.
Overwhelming numbers of Lotharian bowmen pour from the small airship
– many times over more than it could possibly hold – and rout the
attacking green men in an unforgettable sequence that is followed by
Kulan Tith's realization that Thuvia's heart truly belongs to
Carthoris.
“'Take back your liberty, Thuvia of
Ptarth,' he cried, 'and bestow it where your heart already lies
encchained, and when the golden collars are clasped about your necks
you will see that Kulan Tith's is the first sword to be raised in
declaration of eternal friendship for the new Princess of Helium and
her royal mate!'” (1972 SFBC ed., p. 124)
Such is the nobility of the best of the red Martian warriors.
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| 1973 Ballantine Books ed. Art by Gino d'Achille |
Like the entire series, this is at least the third time I've read
this novel. The first was in the early 1970s in the Ballantine Books
paperback editions with the beautiful covers by Gino d'Achille. In
my memory, this was indeed one of my favorite of those covers. The
second was a few years later when I acquired the series as a
six-volume hardcover set from the Science Fiction Book Club –
which I still prize for the powerful covers and interior art by Frank
Frazetta (well, except for the sixth volume, by Richard Corben, I
believe – and although I know he's considered a great artist that
volume must not be representative). The basic production quality of
SFBC books of that era may have been inferior, but I would not trade
the vision of Barsoom presented by Frazetta for anything. Between
the two of them, d'Achille and Frazetta formed the mental image of
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars that I will likely carry to my grave.
Nevertheless, my current reading has been predominantly in ebook
form, the free Kindle format available from Project Gutenberg. I
find the convenience of carrying a library with my on my iPod Touch
mostly overwhelms even the sensation of holding a real book in my
hands and turning real pages. I don't think that ebooks will ever
completely replace physical books, but in just a couple of years I
have gone from a conviction that ebooks would never be for me to
doing a large part of my reading on my iPod Touch – as in this
case, even if I have the physical book I will often grab a free or
inexpensive ebook format simply for the convenience of always having
it handy. (It's great for doing quick word searches as well.)
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| Full Painting by Frank Frazetta |
As to the story told here, although some of the later tales in the
series I remember less fondly, as far as I'm concerned Thuvia
is right up there with the opening trilogy as a rousing tale of
adventure and romance. I am struck by how the real age difference
obviously meant little or nothing to Burroughs' Martians who hatched
from their eggs presumably somewhere near fully grown and aged little
over their typical life-span of a thousand years. It's unclear how
much time has passed since Warlord of Mars; Carthoris would
seem to me to have still been somewhere shy of twenty Earth years in
age. Thuvia had, for an unspecified reason, taken the pilgrimage
down the River Iss fifteen years before John Carter first appeared on
Barsoom, therefore if I'm counting it right somewhere on the order of
thirty-five years prior to Gods of Mars where she is
introduced, having spent all that time in slavery to the Therns.
Presumably she was not newly hatched when she took that ill-fated
pilgrimage. It's impossible from Burroughs' own writings to know how
old she really is, but the Dynamite comic series Warlord of Mars:
Dejah Thoris introduces her as a youthful princess in Ptarth four
hundred years in the past. Admittedly that's not canon, but in
Dynamite's main series, Warlord of Mars, Thuvia has now made
her appearance in their adaptation of Gods of Mars, so in that
version of the stories there is a considerable age difference.
But what does that matter when the “older woman” is
all-but-eternally young and beautiful?
Kaor!
– and thanks for reading!
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