Not as good as ERB, and I probably should only give it a 3 rating, but I just enjoyed it too much. Call it a guilty pleasure. I liked it in spite of itself. I wish Amazon had a separate category for the genre of "planetary romance" or "sword and planet", as they are my favorite type of story. Even more than zombies. :) ( )

I had known of Otis Adelbert Kline as a rival for the pulp mantle of exotic adventure accorded to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and was for some years interested to read his Martian sword-and-planet contributions. I expected them to seem derivative from ERB. What I discovered instead is that they appear to have been a significant model for the early Flash Gordon stories. There is a non-trivial extraterrestrial "yellow peril" element (although the yellow Ma Gongi aliens are shown in the cover art of my copy as green), and romantic intrigue with the daughter of the evil despot. (The chronology fits, with Swordsman of Mars published throughout 1933 and the earliest Flash Gordon strips appearing in 1934.)

The voyage to Mars is of the esoteric mind-transfer sort, additionally including time travel, so that like the Martian adventures of Leigh Brackett, it is set in the planet's past. Kline surprisingly makes no mention of the lower Martian gravity, which even serves as a plot point for ERB's John Carter. Martian fauna here include a lot of oversized insects, but also some strange vertebrates that I often found difficult to picture. There are giant birds used for mounts, a staple of the sword-and-planet subgenre, here called gawrs.

The book is a fast read, with frequent cliff-hanger chapter endings reflecting its genesis as a pulp serial. The prose is serviceable. I feel I have done my duty by including this book in my readings of Martian tales, and I'd read its sequel to kill some time, but it's not something I'll be in a hurry to seek out. I would recommend it to those who are fond of the old Flash Gordon stories.

My new 2and favorite pulp writer behind Robert E Howard whom he served as editor for. Otis A Kline's Mars is better than Burroughs' Barsoom. To be fair this is because in my mind the main character Harry Thorne is presented as a complete far more likable person than John Carter. Thorne is a hardy adventurer but far from some mutant superman. He gets hurt and does not always reach the right conclusion. The logical, within it's own terms, action filled plot moves as fast as the hero's sword trust. I was surprised by how well the supporting cast were presented. This is a must have far any fan of pulp /planetary romance. ( )

Not a bad story but also not a great one either. It is extremely fast paced so much so that it felt like there was stuff missing. There was a number of errors in the wording that made me actually stop and reread them a number of times, this to me seriously detracts from a story. The world he was creating in the story had a great deal of potential to be built upon though. ( )

Harry Thorn's failed suicide attempt has landed him in a cell, but not a padded one strangely enough. His saviour is a Doctor Morgan who needs Harry for a very particular mission: to swap bodies, or to be more exact minds, with his doppelgänger on the planet Mars - a Martian named Borgen Takkor - and of noble blood no less. His mission to confront and likely have to kill in the process a rogue agent from Earth named Richard Boyd who has been sent ahead of Harry to Mars in the body of one Sel Han.

Once on the planet, some one million years in the past Harry is stung by a giant blood sucking bug and in this weekend state manages to practically faint into the arms of the man he has been sent to kill - thus bringing shame and dishonour upon himself. To make things worse; around the same time his Martian father dies.

On his way to his ancestral homeland to claim his lands (albeit stained with his own shame and dishonour) Harry's or rather Borgen's aerial convoy is attacked by flying assassins and he is hit and takes a death role into the marshes and is lost!

Surviving the fall was nothing to escaping the various swamp monsters now after his blood! but Harry is rescued by a beautiful Amazon named Thain who also knew Borgen Takkor from childhood and is not fooled by this guise. After explaining the whole story to Thain they set out to reclaim Takkor's kingdom and restore Thain's father's territories from the Kamud who have seized power.

Thain and Takkor are accosted by some spindly yellow refugees named Ma Gongi formally of Earth's own Moon who where marooned on Mars after failing to conquer the planet years earlier.

The next morning after being pointed in the right direction, Harry sets off to claim his birthright; but before that can happen he will be declared dead and accused of being a fraud then imprisoned; made to fight for his life, brought before the local Dixtar and pardoned - only to be rewarded with the unenviable task of guarding the Dixtar's nymphet daughter; which in tern lands him a death sentence at the Baridium mines from which he will escape and end up in a desert adventure during which he will form alliances with other Martian races; Just as well as during this time Richard Boyd has been in cahoots with the Ma Gongi and taken over as Dixter before imprisoning all his remaining enemies in castle Takkor!
Thorn now has to figure out a way to save all his friends, escape, kill Boyd and restore the empire!

I loved this book - and I've only read the cut-down ACE version! ( )