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Read Llana Of Gathol (1979)

Llana of Gathol (1979)

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Rating
3.76 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0345324439 (ISBN13: 9780345324436)
Language
English
Publisher
del rey

Llana Of Gathol (1979) - Plot & Excerpts

The last of the "full stories" in the Barsoom series. This one, as others have pointed out, does poke gentle fun at some of the conventions of the series. Yet another example of hareing off after a woman in distress, this time John Carter's Granddaughter.This one is billed as four short novels, but it's really just a single story with its parts disarticulated so as to create novelettes for serial publication in some magazine. No less cohesive than any of the other novels.Other than the humor and almost ironically stereotypical behavior of old John Carter, this one doesn't offer a huge amount of new material. This one does introduce the "bad pirate crew" element, as well as the idea of drinking to excess, which is generally not mentioned in other novels of this series. Up through, say, the 8th or 9th books, I don't believe that there was so much as a mention of any alcohol abuse.Though I love them dearly, I can tell that, by this time, the Barsoom stories were running pretty short of steam. One can see why Burroughs used other characters besides John Carter in many of the stories. Being better, stronger, and more dauntless than anyone can make the stories hard to pitch. In this one, he's really winking at the reader with much of it, especially some of the verbatim renditions of old info. It's funny to see John Carter himself lampooning his own accomplishments. For that reason, it's really worth the read. That, and getting another jolt of Barsoom...

Tenth book in ERB's Martian Tales brings John Carter back into the forefront and again have him setting off to rescue a damsel, this time his granddaughter, the beautiful Llana of Gathol. Llana has been targeted by a mad conquerer named Hin Abtol who not only wants Llana for his harem but, wants to rule all of Barsoom. Carter's quest to rescue her and stop the mad Abtol takes him from a dead city that is not so dead to Abtol's frozen kingdom at the Martian polar cap to a bizarre invisible city in the middle of a desert oasis. While being the tenth book, Burroughs keeps things as imaginative as always and that and the fast pace keep this basic damsel rescue tale fresh. Sure there are coincedences that require suspension of disbelief that move the plot along and help Carter get out of trouble but, it's still fun and we go along with it for the ride. Another entertaining read in this classic series.

What do You think about Llana Of Gathol (1979)?

I should write a review of the plot in these reviews for my own memory. I had to check out the Barsoom wiki when Tan Hadron of Hastor shows up. He was the protagonist of "A Fighting Man of Mars". There were a lot of other cameos from characters in past books and I had to look up every one of them but I was happy to see them sho up in this one. Most of them are slaves of course that were captured after their flyer broke down over the remote and unknown city of ______. The book was great moving fast-paced from one creative yet predictable adventure to another. It ended really fast though and we never get to find out the fates of Tan Hadron, Gor-don and Fo-nar aboard the Dusar. I'm sure they were rescued and themselves then rescued and married beutiful women that were princesses who had somehow come into slavery.
—Scott Cook

Some of the old John Carter magic reappears in this late installment – the last complete novel – of the Barsoom series. Though it is more a quartet of related novelettes than a novel, perhaps.And that may be a good thing, as it speeds the action along. Each episode is neatly played out and then off to the next! It’s not unlike a modern television drama/adventure series in this respect, self-contained stories within a larger arc.‘Llana’ ends up being one of the more entertaining of Burroughs’s later Mars novels. That, however, is at the expense of his usual inventiveness — most of the ideas here are recycled from earlier books. They are nicely done and do manage to evoke the wonder of Barsoom occasionally.I could almost bring myself to give “Llana of Gathol” four stars. Three will have to do — let’s call it three-and-a-half, okay?
—Stephen Brooke

These were considered "planetary romances" according to one source back when this series from the creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, was written. This series of about 10 books started in 1912 and culminated around 1948. There's an odd mention of a book in 1964, but the other had been dead for 14 years by then. Plus there are a few shorts published in some pulp periodicals of the 1940s (where many of these stories appeared in years prior).Today we call this stuff sci-fi, but it's quite different. More like space opera, but it doesn't take place in space. It's a Virginian, John Carter, an immortal, who is able to pass back and forth between bodies: one on Earth, the other on Mars.I read these books because they were an inspiration to other authors, such as Conan creator, Robert E, Howard, who paid tribute to Burrough's in his novella, Almuric. And those author, in turn, inspired another generation. At the heart of today's popular sci-fi there are traces of Burroughs and John Carter of Mars.I was most interested in finding traces of George Lucas's Star Wars in these books; and traces abound. In some cases just a word, a name, a phrase, or a sentence conjures up a moment in Star Wars, and in other cases entire paragraphs connect with a setting from Star Wars.
—Robert Saunders

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