John Carter rescues his granddaughter from a series of hidden countries (on Mars!).

2/4 (Indifferent)

This collects four stories. Only one of them has an idea for a story (an ancient undead creature). The other three are not just bad, but made worse by collecting them together.

(Nov. 2021) ( )

Formulaic, typical of the genre in the early SF days ( )

Not really a 4 star book unless you really like ERB & the Barsoom series. This is one of the best in that series. ( )

This is a patchup of 4 pulp novelettes with the connecting link that John Carter is trying to get home to Helium. During the odyssey, he battles pirates, invisible men, yellow men, and warriors of every city he visits. The individual stories are better than the whole. The long awited final battle is covered in a couple paragraphs and is anti-climactic at best.
If read as an individual story, it's pretty good. If you're doing a chronological reading of the Barsoom series, by the time you reach Llana of Gathol, you're tired of the formula. ( )

Actually four related short stories combined in a serial novel.
Llana's story is generic window-dressing; as always, the main plot is about John Carter.
The content is basically a clone of the earlier books, with little new substance. However, sometimes you just want to read about a hero or two.

Note on book: First published as four novellettes in "Amazing Stories" Magazine as follows: "The City of Mummies", March, 1941; "Black Pirates of Barsoom", June, 1941; "Yellow Men of Mars", August, 1941; "Invisible Men of Mars", October, 1941. ( )

This book is composed of four inter-related stories in which our immortal hero, John Carter, travels all over the red planet alternately rescuing and losing his beautiful granddaughter, Llana of Gathol. Along the way, Carter and his friends awaken a city's-worth of ancient nobles who were boxed up underground in a state of suspended animation; foil the plans of a despot who keeps everyone in line using a powerful machine that can kill any of the citizens with the touch of a button; discover a million-man army that is kept frozen in the Martian arctic until called on by its leader; and are captured by a group of invisible warriors who can only be seen under certain special lights. In each story Carter has, then loses Llana; becomes trapped in a place from which no one can possibly escape; successfully hides his identity (even though he is the only white guy on Mars and the only person who has super powers of strength and can jump thirty feet in the air); fights at least one duel in which he completely destroys his opponent (who was invariably hailed as the best swordsman on Barsoom); and then manages to escape and save Llana and a few other friends and acquaintances.

It, my friends, is an action-packed book. And that is exactly why I love Edgar Rice Burroughs.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2009/03/llana-of-gathol-1948.html ] ( )

This is the tenth, and second to last book in Burroughs's John Carter of Mars series. This is not really a novel so much as it is a set of four linked short-stories. While traveling alone in his flyer in search of a lost city, Carter jumps into a fight that he observes, and the adventures begin. The over arching storyline of the book follows John Carter's attempts to return his granddaughter Llana to Gathol after encountering her by accident (and under unlikely circumstances: as always, an amazing level of serendipity seems to be the rule on Barsoom) in the first story.

To a certain extent, Barsoom seems to be played out in this book. Three of the stories are oddly similar: Carter and his companions are captured by hostile forces and made into slaves, one of his captors is impressed with his fighting ability and befriends him, Carter maneuvers his way into a one-on-one duel with one of his captors, and manages a daring escape as a result. Every enemy group reckons that they have the greatest warriors on Barsoom, and the swordsman Carter is to be pitted against is "the best on Barsoom" despite it being obvious that both claims are ludicrous. Carter manages to remind the reader that it is actually he who is the best swordsman on two worlds several times.

Despite this, the elements of interesting Barsoomian tales are here: a dead city inhabited by a hidden race of throwbacks to an era when Barsoom had oceans, an underground vault filled with hundreds of people in suspended animation, a machine that can be attuned to anyone's energy and kill them at the push of a button, a hijacked airship, a city under glass in the frozen north, a tyrant who is building an army to conquer Barsoom, and hiding them by putting them in cold storage, and a city full of invisible warriors. Most of these elements have cropped up in earlier Barsoom tales, and here they are again, pulpier than ever.

This is not one of the better Barsoom stories. It is also not one of the worst either. There is a level of silliness that the other books in the series don't quite reach which redeems the book to a certain extent. On the whole, if one enjoys the type of swashbuckling pulpy adventure that typifies Burroughs writing, it is a worthwhile read. ( )

See other copy.

Volume 10 of John Carter series ( )