A Princess of Mars
- 176
- Pages
- about 3 h
- Reading time
- Film 2012 +1
- On screen
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Our view
“A Princess of Mars” is pulp adventure in its original form: swordplay, feats of daring and a dying desert planet in under two hundred pages. The first Barsoom novel cares little for scientific plausibility and much for momentum, and some readers are unexpectedly moved by the hero’s bond with his pet. Others tire of a protagonist who excels at everything on his new world, or of formal, wordy prose.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
A Princess of Mars is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of his Barsoom series. It was first serialized in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine from February–July, 1912. Full of swordplay and daring feats, the novel is considered a classic example of 20th-century pulp fiction. It is also a seminal instance of the planetary romance, a subgenre of science fantasy that became highly popular in the decades following its publication. Its early chapters also contain elements of the Western. The story is set on Mars, imagined as a dying planet with a harsh desert environment. This vision of Mars was based on the work of the astronomer Percival Lowell, whose ideas were widely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Reading order · Barsoom
Full order & progress →- A Princess of MarsThis book
7.47.4 / 10 - The Gods of Mars
7.87.8 / 10 - The Warlord of Mars
7.87.8 / 10 - Thuvia, Maid of Mars
–Not ranked yet - The Chessmen of Mars
–Not ranked yet - The Master Mind of Mars
–Not ranked yet - A Fighting Man of Mars
–Not ranked yet - Swords of Mars
–Not ranked yet - Synthetic Men of Mars
–Not ranked yet - Llana of Gathol
–Not ranked yet - John Carter of Mars
–Not ranked yet
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 2 times — from 2009 to 2012.
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 301 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 67% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Classics average of 7.7. That is how 7.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.8 | 48 | 16% |
| Hardcover | 7.1 | 253 | 84% |
Frequently asked
How long is A Princess of Mars?
It has 176 pages — shorter than 98% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 7.5 and 8.1, closest to this book.
