Thuvia, Maid of Mars

Thuvia, Maid of Mars was serialized in 1916 and published in book form in 1920, and it represents Burroughs’s first attempt to step away from John Carter himself and focus on a different generation of Martian characters. The protagonist is Carthoris, son of John Carter and Dejah Thoris, who is in love with the Princess Thuvia of Ptarth, who is engaged against her will to a prince of another city.

When Thuvia is kidnapped, presumably by Carthoris’s rival Astok of Dusar, the prince of Helium follows her trail across Barsoom. The journey leads to the lost city of Lothar, populated by ancient yellow-haired Martians whose entire civilization is sustained by hypnotic phantom warriors. The Lothario chapters are some of Burroughs’s most genuinely strange writing, with whole armies that exist only because someone is concentrating hard enough. The book is shorter than the original trilogy and runs more as a self-contained adventure than as part of a larger arc. A solid entry point for the middle stretch of the Barsoom series.