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.