Customer Reviews

Masters Of The Pit (Planet Stories Library)

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Better than the middle book, and a little longer. Kane has perfected his Martian matter transmitter, so can travel at will. Something he is pleased about.

Some primitive species has opened a biological weapon that the ancient alien super race has left behind. This is turning people into monomaniacal half-zombie types, and eventually killing them.

Many adventures happen to try and solve this, with an amusing twist at the end.

Much of it accompanied by his friend Hool Hadj.

Oh, and a few jokes thrown in, in passing through a certain area, some of the geographical features are S'sdla, Nosirrah and Golana, not to mention Modnaf.

Not that I would have ever used this technique to name places in a game, or anything! :)

Written under a pen-name, this grade-C adventure SF takes place on Mars. It feels like a by-the-numbers imitation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books-- though you may be amused by his references to other authors (their names are spelled backwards) in the first ten pages. Moorcock has written dozens of books worth reading-- this is at the bottom of the heap.

This trilogy, of which Masters of the Pit is the third book, are just fun reading. I have always like Burroughs John Carter series on old Mars. Moorcock's series which takes place on mars in the distant past is just awesome. If you like these types of sword and adventure stories then I recommend all of the Michael Moorcock Mars stories and the Planet Stories Series that have brought them back to print. To the publisher I have one word for you, Kindle.

Book 1 - City of the Beast
Book 2 - Lord of the Spiders
Book 3 - Masters of the Pit

Enjoy.

Michael Moorcock's Masters of the Pit is the third and final book featuring modern-day American Michael Kane traveling to ancient Mars. It's very much in line with the first two books in the series, and by this point the cardboard nature of the characters and repetitive action scenes start to become quite noticeable. The plot is somewhat original, as a plague has affected a distant city in a strange way: its inhabitants decide to dehumanize themselves by acting as mechanically and unemotionless as possible. Kane, along with his reliable blue giant friend Hool Haji, sets off to find a cure by rummaging the abandoned technology of an ancient culture. It's all a competent but not particularly memorable mix of sword-and-sorcery fantasy with a little sci-fi. Keep a close eye fun in Chapter One, as Moorcock uses thinly-disguised character and location names to attack Analog magazine and some of the big names in the field.

This is the final volume in the Kane trilogy, originally known as "Barbarians of Mars". And written by "Edward P Bradbury", too, but its unlikely you have the novel already sitting on your shelf under that name. But I digress. Masters of the Pit is, once again, Michael Kane telling a tall story - or rather a series of them - involving swords, science and a Mars that was old when the Earth was young.

Our Hero is this time seeking out ancient machines to cure a deadly plague, and fights bearded barbarians, dog-men, weird demonic flying men, and sea monsters (in pretty much that order). Once again Hool Haji is at his side. For the first two-thirds of the book it is indistinguishable from the previous volumes of the trilogy, with "boys own" battles and feats of strength and skill. In the last part of the book Moorcock lost what little interest he had in the tale, however, and it drifts off into wordy philosophy only hinted at previously, about the dangers of religion, anarchism, corporatism and probably a number of things I overlooked. You can probably interpret what is there in whatever way you wish - it's a bit of self-help for the 60's. To an extent, this clashes with what has come before so that the book is probably the least satisfying of the Kane of Old Mars trilogy, which is a little disappointing. Despite the epilogue, no more tales of Kane were written: these three short books are all there are.

Originally published under the pen-name of Edward P. Bradbury as Barbarians of Mars. Now called Masters of the Pit.
"The green-death started in Cend-Amrid, turning that once-lovely city into a plague spot, source of a deadly infection that swept Mars and turned men into mindless automatons. And Michael Kane had to find the cure-or perish along with the rest of the adopted planet he loved!"