Customer Reviews

A Fighting Man of Mars

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This was the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels that I read,
and after having read several others, I consider this one of his best. The copy I had, which I found on my grandfather's bookshelf, was from 1963 and showed one guy--who could not have been from earth--hurling through the air toward another guy, dagger in hand. That cover hooked me. Inside was just as good as the cover--Martian apes, mad scientists, battles in the air, invisibility, kidnapped princesses--you name it, Burroughs put it in this book. Out of all of his Barsoom novels, I consider this one the best.

This is one of the first science fiction/fantasy books I ever read and I couldn't bear to see it languish without a review. My copy (which originally belonged to my father) dates from 1931 and its story was originally published in six parts in the "Blue Book Magazine" from May to September 1930. It is wonderful to see these books reissued, as they are the progenitors of many, if not all of the heroic fantasy serials that take up so much room on modern bookshelves. Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) was the first and also (in my opinion) the best writer of multi-volume fantasies.

'Fighting Man' is the seventh book in ERB's Mars series and differs from most volumes in the series in that John Carter, gentleman of Virginia and Warlord of Barsoom (Mars) is only a peripheral figure.

The adventure is narrated in the first person by Hadron of Hastor, a warrior in the service of John Carter. Hadron's family is rich in honor but not in material possessions and when he falls in love with the wealthy Sanoma Tora, she snubs him. For months, the soldierly Hadron haunts the palace of Tor Hatan, Sanoma Tora's father, but his hope of winning her are vanishingly small until she is abducted one night by a mysterious flier.

The strange ship is armed with a weapon that disintegrates the metal of a pursuing flier, and the Warlord realizes that there is now a new weapon of mass destruction let loose upon the dying seas of Barsoom (it's hard not to adopt ERB's style after reading one of his books).

Hadron is promised Sanoma Tora's hand if he can rescue her. The Warlord dispatches the doughty warrior in search of his love, and asks him to keep an eye peeled for the new metal-disintegrator weapon.

Since this story was originally written to be serialized, there is a cliff-hanger at the end of every chapter. Hadron's flier is shot down by the terrible green warriors of Barsoom. He escapes and is trapped in a deserted tower by a man-eating white ape. He escapes, rescues a slave named Tavia from the green men and the two of them take to the air in Tavia's flier.

Unfortunately, they are forced to land in the demesne of a very paranoid tyrant. While Hadron is confined in the tyrant's Pit, he learns the secret of the invisible metal-disintegrating ray from a fellow prisoner.

Hadron, now under a sentence of death must escape to save both Sanoma Tora and all of Helium (John Carter's Barsoomian kingdom).

Our hero battles his way across the dead seas of Barsoom, evading or slaughtering cruel tyrants, mad scientists, formidably-tusked green warriors, etc. until the final reaches of chapter seventeen when he resolves all of the plot lines and finds his own true love (not who you might think).

'Fighting Man' has all of the color and breathless dash of its predecessors in ERB's Mars chronicles. It's okay to start your adventure on Barsoom with 'Fighting Man,' although I would strongly recommend beginning at the first volume, "A Princess of Mars." 'Fighting Man' can stand alone because ERB includes a long forward in which he describes the flora, fauna, principal races, and wars of Barsoom.