edgar rice burroughs, you have such a good imagination but you're such a bad writer. the first "of mars" book, princess of mars, floats on the fact that a genuinely interesting world is being sketched around john carter's ridiculous acts of derring-do. plus, after the reader's worked out that one character is another's child, she only has to wait a single chapter before the book tells her what she already knows.

gods of mars opens with a ridiculous battle in an interesting setting, but as the book goes on and on and on one feels like eddie b. is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, inventing conflicts that aren't super interesting in and of themselves and not taking us anywhere we havn't seen already. and by the GODS OF MARS, e.r.b., we figured out that the dude was john carter's son as soon as you said he was from helium, has a missing father and looks exactly like john carter.