Finally Checking It Out: The Moon Maid (Edgar Rice Burroughs)

moon-maidAs a kid I never checked out Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Tarzan just really held no interest for me.  In 2007 my heavy metal co-worker Bruce gave me the John Carter of Mars books to read because he knew I was a fan of Robert E. Howard.  Sure the John Carter books are a little bit goofy sci-fi romance, but they are generally fun & good (I’m especially fond of A Fighting Man of Mars).  Bruce told me that he had tried to read some of the other Burroughs stuff & they generally weren’t as good, so I never really pursued anything else.

Anyway, I stumbled on The Moon Maid for a quarter at a thrift store & figured I’d give it a shot.  I can’t really explain why this book isn’t as good from a literary & word choice side from what I remember about the John Carter stuff & maybe that’s not even true.  It is essentially the same story of an earthman falling in love with an alien princess & fighting monsters & scientists, but it does have a major problem that it ends in the middle of a scene (the same thing happens in the last John Carter book actually).  The narrative starts with a guy telling a story on a train & then it ends with the train arriving & the guy not finishing the story.  I guess that gets you to buy the second book & third books & I am under the impression that this break point in the story was just for the paperback market.  I guess if I find the next one for a quarter, I’ll go ahead & grab it, but I’m not sure why as I’d probably be more satisfied re-reading A Princess of Mars.

Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that the cover art picture of the Va-ga (it’s Frazetta, but based on an older cover for the novel) doesn’t seem to fit the description of them in the book to me & that’s kind of a pet peeve of mine.

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