Mahars of Pellucidar
A pastiche set in Burroughs' Pellucidar featuring intelligent flying reptiles.
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Mahars of Pellucidar is a novel by American writer John Eric Holmes, the first of his Pellucidar pastiches. Published by Ace Books in 1976 and later reissued by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. in 2022, it is set in Edgar Rice Burroughs' imaginary interior world of Pellucidar. The book features a species of intelligent flying reptiles called Mahars, originally invented by Burroughs in his first Pellucidar novel, At the Earth's Core.
Plot
Christopher West, an associate of Dr. Kinsley, observes via a teleportation beam that can see events 200 miles below the surface a group about to sacrifice a beautiful woman. Armed with a pocket knife and a red fire axe, West has himself beamed down to rescue her.
His unusual weapon earns him the name Red Axe among the stone-age humans of Pellucidar. The story follows his efforts to free his new friends from the tyranny of the Mahars. The region West visits is apparently different from that in Burroughs' stories, where the Mahars were driven out; here the reptiles remain dominant, and West encounters none of Burroughs' human characters.
Sequel
Holmes followed up Mahars of Pellucidar with a sequel, Red Axe of Pellucidar, which was set for publication in 1980. The Burroughs estate, despite having greenlit the first book, blocked its release.
It eventually appeared as a limited private edition in 1993. In 2022, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. officially re-released both Holmes Pellucidar novels in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audio CD as part of its Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe series. A third novel, Swordsmen of Pellucidar, was planned but never written.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Mahars of Pellucidar (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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