Mars Attacks! Invaders From Mars! The War of the Worlds! All of those would be appropriate titles for the latest novel from Will Murray and the latest installment of The Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The actual title is BACK TO MARS, and it’s a wonderful book, a front porch yarn if ever there was one.
To elaborate . . . This novel opens shortly after World War II when Tarzan returns
from his military service and flies over the African landscape in a P-40B
Tomahawk fighter plane. This is a wonderful scene that really captures Tarzan’s
personality. However, his happy reunion with Jane and the Waziri doesn’t last
long. Invaders from Mars have arrived in Africa and intend to set up a colony
there. Tarzan puts the kibosh on that idea, of course, but after learning that
this was only first foray in a much larger invasion, he realizes that to put a
stop to it, he’ll have to travel back to Mars, or Barsoom as its inhabitants
call it, and team up with John Carter, Warlord of Mars, to end the threat once
and for all. Using the method of astral projection he learned in the previous
novel, TARZAN, CONQUEROR OF MARS, he heads off to Barsoom and adventure after
adventure.
If you’re an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, as seems likely if you’re reading this,
you probably have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen. Strange creatures,
bizarre situations, captures and escapes, swashbuckling swordfights, and a pace
that barely slows down to take a breath now and then. Will Murray captures
Burroughs’ style in fine fashion and spins a yarn packed with dramatic scenes. The
sections of the book that are told in John Carter’s first-person point of view
are also very well done and bring back vivid memories of racing through those
Barsoom novels as fast as I could lay my hands on them when I was a kid. Murray
includes plenty of characters from those books and references to their
plots, as well as tying everything in with Burroughs’ other major series,
Pellucidar.
BACK TO MARS is just pure fun to read, and boy, did I need that right now. I
give it a very high recommendation. It’s only available in a trade paperback edition at the moment, but I believe hardback and e-book editions may be in the
works. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Murray plants some seeds in this
book that may well pay off in future novels. I hope so, because I’m already looking
forward to reading them.
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