Mars Read: The Chessmen of Mars (1922)

One thing I know about Edgar Rice Burroughs - he is very certain women get kidnapped every 20 minutes.  

We're here in the Fifth of the Barsoom novels.  The Chessmen of Mars (1922) takes place a few years after Thuvia, Maid of Mars.  For the first time in a few books, John Carter returns to Earth - but now appearing ageless and in his Martian harness and weaponry.  He sits to share a story with ERB, this time about his daughter, Tara of Helium.

This book feels better constructed than Thuvia, which had a sort of improvisational quality to it, like ERB was just stitching ideas together.  The Chessmen of Mars reads less like combined installments reprinted into a single volume.  Instead, the book seems to have better considered foreshadowing, laying foundations for later actions, etc... in a way that shows growth in ERB's writing.  

This book essentially breaks into a few sections.  There's some business in Helium at the beginning where we first meet John Carter's daughter, Tara, who seems to be described as astoundingly beautiful - just not as beautiful as Dejah Thoris (I appreciate ERB's own loyalty to Dejah Thoris).  She's got the fire of her parents, but is never described to have inherited her father's great strength the way her brother, Carthoris, did. 

When the story opens, she's understood to be betrothed to a young man of Helium - but the two aren't clicking.  At a party, she meets Gahan of Gathol, who she sees in the finery of his people, and decides he's a showy fancy-lad.  

The next day a rare storm blows through Helium, and she boards her personal flyer to try herself against the weather, but is blown far from Helium, out of control.  

The first major section finds Tara landing among the Kaldanes, a Martian race that are heads with crab legs, having given up their bodies to concentrate on logic and the power of the mind.  For mounts, they use Rykors, which resemble headless human bodies.  

Arguably, this is ERB flexing the notion that a life entirely of the mind and of logic and contemplation is a hollow existence.  It's a curiosity of Mars that we are seeing a post-post-apocalyptic vision.  The Kaldanes live in subterranean caverns and have forgotten there's a worlds outside - if they ever knew of the other Martian races at all.  

That said, the king of the Kaldanes seems torn between "dishonoring" Tara and eating her, so...  quite an endpoint for a species that believes itself everyone's superior.

Gathan, meanwhile, has gone in pursuit of Tara, only to wind up in the same place.

Tara befriends her captor, Ghek, and with the timely arrival of Gathan, who does not reveal himself as Gahan, posing as a sort of Martian ronin, a Panthan, he aids in their escape.

The majority of the novel takes place in a sort of lost, insular Martian kingdom of Manator.  

We're now on our third lost kingdom in two books, who likewise see themselves as superior because they don't *know* anybody else, or interact with them beyond pillaging for slaves from time to time.  One gets the feeling ERB is editorializing, and I'd be curious to read a bit more about his life and experiences, but it almost reads as satire from time to time.   But it also feels entirely modern.  There's those strong vibes of us Americans who've never left the US and keep insisting "this is the best country on Earth!" while knowing absolutely nothing about anyone else, from anywhere else.  And what little exposure they've had to other people are the usual poorly considered observations and conclusions based on nonsense.

While Tara is a damsel in distress through the book - and I swear, she gets kidnapped at least four or five times (it's insane and unnecessary) - I appreciate that ERB makes it clear, for a 1922 adventure story, you can see the evolution of the feisty romantic interest on the page.  She's portrayed as intelligent but at maybe hasn't been terribly worldly yet, living in the palace.  But she's also got the same iron we saw in Dejah Thoris in the first books, but in this one, Tara also has a hidden knife, and has no problem getting stabby when things get dire.

As a hero, Gathan is a bit of a blank slate.  He's an ERB manly man, prone to oaths and letting every glance from Tara dictate his emotional well-being.  But as a sort of fiction-suit for the reader to navigate the two cities of the book, he's pretty good.  Clever enough, but still interfacing with people who help him out of jams as well as the problematic folks of both kingdoms.

The world of Manator is an interesting reflection of Barsoom - not as alien as Bantoom, but with some interesting notions by ERB that seem to never get fully described, which maybe good taste of the idea dictated they not.  But the culture is one of intense ancestor worship, and so the noble dead are basically taxidermied and put on display in private homes and the halls of the Jeddak.  And, I think, there's a suggestion that they shrink some down.

The "Chessmen" refers to Manator's pre-occupation with Jetan, a chess-derivative game.  Citizens play the game quite often, but their Super Bowl is an annual game in which real humans are used as pieces on a huge board to play for the entertainment of the masses.

I have, of course, now looked for a Jetan set, and found some, but will keep looking til a I find a really swell version at some point.  The one I wanted was sold out.

This book also contains a bit of epilogue.  Thuvia and Warlord of Mars both end abruptly, and while you can assume you know what's happening, Thuvia, Maid of Mars, for example, still has a war waging that hinges on Thuvia's seeming disappearance when the curtain comes down.  It would have been nice to hear how that war was ended.  But this book remembers "oh, yeah, Ghek" at the end and adds in what becomes of him.  Less so other characters.  But what it does do is brings the navy of Helium to Manator, which you so desperately want to happen early on (man, does the main villain, O-Tar, suck and you want all the bad things to happen to him).

I am going to take a break before my next Barsoom book, but it's been fun.