The Swordsman of Mars

By Otis Adelbert Kline

For the first time in book form comes the complete text of this sci-fi novel. Harry Thorne is transferred to Mars and takes the place of a Martian. His job is to kill another Earthman who had been sent earlier and who was trying to take over the red planet. Follow Thorne's amazing adventures on this distant world as he attempts to fulfil his obligations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781257234875

Reviews for The Swordsman of Mars

[ogrezed · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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. :)

[loptsson_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sylak_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Review contains spoilers!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!

[karlstar_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a Burroughs style Mars story, and nothing else. If you like those sorts of stories, you'll like this one, as it is well written, and the plot is decent. Its a bit more complex than a typical Mars swordsman tale, and well written. This is a reprint of a story from the 1940's, so this is not 'modern' fantasy, but the old fashioned kind. Its really a fantasy/sci-fi crossover (ray gun wielding goblins!) but more of a fantasy than scifi.