Swords of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel,
the eighth of his famous Barsoom series. It was first published in
the magazine Blue Book Magazine as a six-part serial in the issues
for November, 1934-April, 1935. The first book edition was
published by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. in February, 1936.
Swords of Mars begins as a cloak and dagger thriller and ends as
an interplanetary odyssey. In this novel John Carter, transplanted
Earthman, returns to his status of protagonist and first-person
narrator for the first time since the third Martian novel, The
Warlord of Mars.
Carter relates an adventure commencing with a private war he and
his picked followers have been waging against the resurgent Guild
of Assassins, led by Ur Jan. Hoping to cut off the threat at the
root, he travels undercover to the Assassins' base, the restive
city of Zodanga, still smarting from its defeat and sack by the
Empire of Helium and the horde of Tharks in A Princess of Mars.
There Carter passes himself off in the underworld as Vandor, a
freelance bravo, cultivating small-time criminal Rapas the Ulsio
and attempting the penetrate the ranks of the Guild.
Simultaneously, he becomes embroiled in the affairs of two rival
scientists, Fal Sivas and Gar Nal, who are competing against each
other to create a viable "synthetic brain"-controlled spacecraft.
Complications ensue as the two threads of the plot become
entangled, and the Guild, in its own attempt at a preemptive strike
against Carter, kidnaps his wife, the princess Dejah Thoris of
Helium. For the first time the action of the series goes
off-planet, as Ur Jan and Gar Nal flee with Dejah to the Martian
moon Thuria (Phobos) in one of the spacecraft, pursued by Carter
and his allies Jat Or and Zanda in the other. Shrinking down
through some bizarre quirk of pseudo-scientific relativistic hocus
pocus until to them the tiny moon is the size of a planet and
captured by the sun-worshiping Tarids, white-skinned and
blue-haired natives of Thuria (which they call Ladan) whose mental
powers render them invisible to the spacefarers, the antagonists
must join forces with each other and another captive, the one-eyed
and two-mouthed chameleon-like "cat-man" Umka, to win free of their
jeweled prison. Amid betrayal and heroic sacrifice the parties from
Mars eventually return to their home planet with Carter and Dejah
still separated and the latter believed still captive on Thuria. In
a final twist she is revealed as still in the hands of Gar Nal,
whom Ur Jan, honoring his earlier pledge of fealty to Carter,
redeems himself by dispatching.
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