A Fighting Man of Mars

The seventh Barsoom novel follows Tan Hadron of Gathol, a low-ranking officer who must navigate green men, mad scientists, cannibals, and worse in a quest to rescue the woman he loves across a dying Mars. Burroughs keeps the pulp formula tight, piling obstacle on obstacle in a narrative that moves at the unrelenting pace that made the Barsoom series the defining adventure fiction of its era.

Tom Weiss narrates with a storytelling energy that honors the novel's serial origins, keeping the forward momentum brisk across the eight-and-a-half-hour runtime. The various antagonists, rendered in the broad strokes of golden-age science fiction, are given distinct enough voices to remain entertaining rather than interchangeable, and Weiss's enthusiasm for the material is evident without tipping into self-parody.