The Gods of Mars

The Gods of Mars is a science fantasy novel by the American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, first published as a five-part serial in The All-Story in 1913 and as a book in 1918. It is the second of his Barsoom novels.

At the end of the first book, John Carter was sent back to Earth against his will. Ten years later he arrives on Barsoom again, but materialises in the Valley Dor, the destination of the pilgrimage along the River Iss and the place from which no traveller is allowed to return. A boat of Green Martians is attacked on the river by creatures previously unknown, and Carter saves Tars Tarkas, the Jeddak of Thark, who has come looking for him. Together they learn what the pilgrimage really is: the Therns, a white-skinned race who call themselves gods, have told the peoples of Mars for ages that the journey ends in paradise, while most of the travellers are killed on the river and the rest are enslaved or eaten.

Burroughs frames the novel as a manuscript that came into his hands, and the rescue of the slave girl Thuvia is caught up in an assault on the Therns by the Black Pirates of Barsoom.