The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Believe me, no one is more surprised than I am that I actually LIKE the Barsoom books so far and I'm warming even more to them.

Have no doubts. It's a PURE adventure. If the first book was more cowboy meets indians, the second is lambasting the elites in usual old-school American take-no-shit from anyone.

Of course, the action progresses nicely from exploration to getting entangled with "godlike" "noble" aliens (with plenty of commentaries) to grand escapes, an even grander WAR that was frankly kind of awesome.

The one thing I kept noticing as I read this quite old SF tale was how well it pulled off ALL the grand Steampunk ideals. Of course, the opposite is more true. The entire movement of Steampunk owes almost ALL of its thanks to Burroughs.

If any of you folks out there need to top off the steam in your tanks, you REALLY ought to go to the real source. :)

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