The gods of Mars

About the book

Carter's return to Barsoom brings him into a region associated with the planet's beliefs about death and final pilgrimage. What he finds creates immediate threats and forces him to question the authority behind those beliefs. Familiar loyalties reappear amid encounters with new peoples, concealed arrangements, and institutions defended through fear. Burroughs expands the world introduced in A Princess of Mars while keeping pursuit, captivity, and escape at the centre of the action. The adventure connects personal attachments with a challenge to systems that depend on others accepting an inherited account of reality. Carter's readiness to act gives the story its pace, while the increasingly complicated geography makes discovery itself a source of danger. This second Barsoom novel continues into the following volume.

• Authority and deception
• Loyalty
• Forbidden knowledge

Why read it

For an expansion of Barsoom that turns the discovery of hidden institutions into a sustained adventure of pursuit and resistance.

English text