The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice BurroughsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Evidently Burroughs wrote this as a metaphorical response to American Communists, which he abhorred, although I wasn’t able to figure out the connection. Set in the not-too-distant future USA astronauts on a mission to Mars are maliciously crash landed into a crater on the moon by saboteur Orthis, a sociopath with a vendetta for hero Julian. Discovering a vast lost civilization Julian gets involved is several capture/escape set pieces, meeting the beautiful titular Moon Maid in the process and culminating in a massive battle between warring cities – and the return of Orthis. This is a fairly typical Burroughs pulp space opera/romance with an emphasis on world building and adventure. It didn’t leave me with much enthusiasm for reading the next two entries in the three book series, so it was just reliably serviceable in the ERB scale. I give it three stars.
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Hi, Moon Maid is kind of a lead up to the next two stories which are much better. I think it might be worth your time just to check them out.
ReplyDeleteI totally missed the anti-American Communist connection in this, and now I'm not sure if I want to re-read it with that viewpoint. No sense making it less enjoyable. That said, I do remember the follow-ups being better.
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