Dark Tides of Mars

A Novel of Barsoom

By: Chris L. Adams

Narrated by: John McLain

Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

For more than a century fans have been entranced by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ arid red planet of Barsoom, with its valiant city states and hordes of four-armed green Martians inhabiting the dead sea bottoms, all pitted against one another in a deadly fight for survival. But what was ancient Barsoom like in its prime, before the oceans evaporated and its proud peoples were forced to construct an atmosphere factory to keep themselves alive on a dying world? Find out the answer in Dark Tides of Mars: A Novel of Barsoom by Chris L Adams, the newest volume in the Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs series!

Barsoom is dying, its atmosphere thinning with each passing year, the seas that once flourished upon its surface dried up eons ago. When warrior-scientist Dat Voga is asked to become Helium’s ambassador to distant cities that may provide a desperate chance at life for the people of Barsoom, he leaps at the opportunity. But even as this new hope dangles on a thread, a madman seeks to hasten the Red Planet’s doom—and Dat Voga is hurled headlong upon an odyssey across the chasm of Time itself!

THE WILD ADVENTURES OF EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
In the Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs series, today’s authors innovate and expand upon Burroughs’ classic tales of wonder in truly wild fashion, even moving his characters and storylines outside the bounds of canon to alternate universes!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Trademarks Barsoom®, The Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs™, and Edgar Rice Burroughs® Owned by ERB, Inc. Associated logos, characters, names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of ERB, Inc. Used by Permission. (P)2023 Oasis Audio

A Barsoom story with a twist

The first half of this book reads like any other Barsoom novel with fighting men, John Carter, political intrigue, a desperate mission that must not fail, mad science, and adventures aplenty. Then we detour to the crux of the story as two "modern day" Barsoomians are sent a million years into the past to when oceans still existed on the red planet. Now we move into the modern people adapting to live in a primitive world storyline.

If I am painting this book as disjointed and derivative, I don't mean to. The author understands Edgar Rice Burroughs storytelling style and mimics it well. In short, it's a fun read. My only issues with the book are some of the contortions that the author goes through to explain the "science" used in the time travel.... I would have been fine with less pseudo science and more getting on with the story. The bigger issue I had was realizing that this was not a complete story but that it ends on, essentially, a cliffhanger. These types of stories do best, in my opinion, as complete adventures, even if elements span several books... the main story feels best when it gets resolved. Still, I recommend this book as highly entertaining and wish the author all the best luck and speed with the next volume.

This Could Be a Lost ERB Manuscript!

This book reads like a lost manuscript of Edgar Rice Burroughs has surfaced seventy-three years after the great man passed. It embodies the flavor of ERB’s work from the narrative style, to the brilliant action scenes, to the tense little political intrigues and dialogues. It opens with the rulers of Helium having uncovered a threat to the existence of all life on Mars. The stores of radium which power all of their advanced technology are depleting and unless they find new sources to mine, Barsoomian civilization will grind to a halt. Yet, while there is life, there is hope, and Helium decides to send Dat Voga, a young scientist-warrior, as an ambassador to a distant city which historically had been a major producer of radium to work out an alliance. But as Dat Voga is about to learn, this city has problems of its own—problems that the emissaries from Helium cannot help but become involved in. Soon Dat Voga is fighting for his life, tiptoeing around a mad scientist, and—most importantly—visiting a place that not even John Carter has been—the ancient seas and civilizations of the red planet. And while the reader discovers wonder after wonder, the action never stops.

This is a remarkable book which I just couldn’t put down. Dat Voga is a hero ERB could have created, on an adventure that feels like a remarkably fresh product of the master-writer’s mind. Rumor has it that more books are coming and I can’t wait to read them.