Before You Begin

Before you begin.

In the royal gardens of Ptarth, on a Mars of ochre sea-bottoms and violet skies, a princess spurns a prince — and that single refusal sets two mighty nations sliding toward war. Thuvia of Ptarth, who can bend the fierce banths of Barsoom to her will with a word, is carried off by treachery; and the blame is laid, by design, upon Carthoris of Helium, the grey-eyed prince who loves her and who alone can leap the deserts fast enough to save her.

Edgar Rice Burroughs published Thuvia, Maid of Mars in 1920, the fourth of his Barsoom romances, and it moves at the headlong pace of the best of them: an abduction, a pursuit across a dead sea-bottom, a captivity among the four-armed green hordes of Torquas, and — strangest of all — the hidden city of Lothar, whose last decadent people conjure armies of phantom bowmen out of thin air, one of whom refuses to fade away.

It is a story to be enjoyed first as sheer adventure — the banth-charmer among her fawning man-eaters, the ghostly archers pouring from the gate, the bowman Kar Komak willed into flesh, the sky-battle of ornate fliers over the dead city of Aaanthor — and treasured after for the wonder of the world it opens.

This illustrated edition opens with a gallery of the cast, the map of Barsoom's scarlet reaches, and its great scenes; and as you read, the story unfolds in six visual movements — recap plates you unlock along the way, each gathering together the tale so far, with never a glimpse of what lies ahead. Turn the page, and step onto the dying, deathless world of Barsoom.