The Chessmen of Mars Author:Edgar, Rice Burroughs Presently Ghek pushed aside a door that opened from the stairway, and before them Tara saw the moonlight flooding the walled court where the headless rykors lay beside their feeding-troughs. She saw the perfect bodies, muscled as the best of her father's fighting men, and the females whose figures would have been the envy of many of Helium's mos... more »t beautiful women. Ah, if she could but endow them with the power to act! ~ ~ ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most iconic figures in American pop culture, Tarzan of the Apes, and it is impossible to overstate his influence on entire genres of popular literature in the decades after his enormously winning pulp novels stormed the public's imagination. The Chessmen of Mars, first published in 1922, is the fifth book in Burroughs' Mars series, about the adventures of Earthman John Carter on the Red Planet. Here, Carter's daughter, Tara of Helium (aka Kansas), is caught up in a deadly game played by the bizarre creatures of the alien world... while also finding herself under the sway of the nameless warrior sent to rescue her.« less
Throughout the novel, Gahan is forced to prove himself in the approved heroic manner of all Burroughsian protagonists in his effort to win Tara's heart. As always, the heroine must be rescued from numerous perils and sticky situations.