This is the eleventh, and final book featuring John Carter, Prince of Helium, Warlord of Barsoom. It was published after Burrough's death, and consists of two completely unrelated stories.

The first, The Giant of Mars, is so different than most of the rest of Burroughs' work that when published, that many people believed that it could not have been written by him. It contains numerous elements that don't show up in other Barsoom tales, and the style of writing is very different from anything else Burroughs ever wrote. The best guess appears to be that the tale was written for a proposed illustrated children's book, although it is hard to think of Barsoom, with naked princesses, warriors killing each other in bloody sword fights, and a host of other very pulpy adult elements as a children's book. The Giant of Mars is pretty gruesome at points: rats feeding on dead flesh surrounded by piles of human bones, decapitations, women sexually attacked by apes and so on, so I can only imagine what the illustrations would have been like.

The second half of the book, titled The Skeleton Men of Jupiter moves John Carter from Barsoom to Sasoom, or Jupiter after he is kidnapped by the titular skeleton men who plan to invade Barsoom and want to torture him into giving them information to aid their conquest. The story involves the usual elements of a John Carter story: Dejah Thoris is placed in danger, Carter secures her escape, is captured, has to fight in an arena, manages a daring escape, and then seeks out his princess. The story seems to end abruptly, and there is some thought that Burroughs had planned to write a series of stories set on Jupiter: Mars having apparently been thoroughly explored in the previous stories. Unfortunately Burroughs died before he could give us anything besides this one story.

It is kind of sad to leave behind John Carter. He is definitely a pulpy character, but he is pulpy in all the good ways: bold, courageous, chivalrous, and more than a little lucky. The story that began in A Princess of Mars is well worth following through the series, even if this final book seems a little disjointed. ( )

Volume 11 of the John Carter of Mars series. ( )