In the minority

I seem to be in the minority reviewing this book, but it was just too much - too much violence, too much blood, too much swearing, too much killing, etc. I enjoyed the first book but not this one. I also have never read Princess of Mars so I wasn't able to get the parody others have talked about.

6 people found this helpful

More of the raunchy bad mouthed biker girl

Jane misses her beloved and needs to find her way back to Waar. Of course, she can't keep herself out of trouble no matter where she is, so we find ourselves on another journey with the raunchy bad mouthed biker girl. It's a fun ride if you enjoyed the first of the series, being more of the same. I enjoyed it, but was ready for it to end too, as I grew tired of listening to Jane's nonstop swearing comical routine. Dina Pearlman is spot-on as Jane.

4 people found this helpful

Nathan Long nails it again

This is the second of the Jane Carver of Waar books, and it is just as engaging as the first. The narration is perfect for all the characters, but particularly for Jane, the red-headed biker chick who falls in love with a purple guy from another planet.

7 people found this helpful

She's Baaaaack!

Jane was determined to return to Waar and find her purple-skinned alien lover. She manages to find her way back (barely), but finding him isn't easy. Then when she does find him, she's not sure she wants him after all! This sequel to Jane of Waar is just as good. This tough babe isn't one to let aliens with purple skin push her around, so she sets out to change the world - by finding and freeing up all the water that was stolen by....oh wait, sorry, no spoilers, you'll have to read it to find out!

9 people found this helpful

Superbly read

The author and the narrator were made for each other! Extremely well read! Will there be another?

2 people found this helpful

Good sequel.

Tied up most loose ends. Stupid word minimum! a a a a a a a

2 people found this helpful

Jane's back on Waar

This is a sequel to Jane Carver of Waar, which brought a six-foot redheaded foul-mouthed biker chick name Jane to a planet called Waar, a feudal world populated by purple-skinned princes and princesses, tiger-centaur warriors, airships, sky pirates, lost technology, and lots of swordfighting. It's a straight-up send-up of Barsoom, of course, with Jane upending all the classic Burroughs tropes by bringing her modern Earth sensibilities to a planet stuck in a pseudo-chivalrous past. The first book was an affectionate tribute with enough adventure to make it fun to read in its own right, and in the second book, Jane returns to Waar and her purple lover-boy Lan, just as John Carter always managed to find a way back to Mars.

Having spent all of the first book figuring out the way things work on Waar, Jane spends the second book continuing to be shocked and disgusted that Waar is so unmodern and unegalitarian. While swapping John Carter, chivalrous 19th century Southern gentleman, with a 21st century badass babe who drops f-bombs in every sentence, was funny enough in the first book that there was no need to turn it into an explicit critique of the original Barsoomian tales, in Swords of Waar Jane becomes a lot more explicitly feminist and populist, as the plot involves uncovering a conspiracy among the church that has reigned supreme over Waar for centuries, controlling the remnants of its ancient technology, and its dwindling water reserves. As Jane and her Waarian nobleman swashbuckle their way across Waar, meeting old friends and making new enemies and cutting down platoons of priests and paladins, she struggles with his sexist chivalric code and he struggles with the fact that his alien lover is bigger, stronger, and a more formidable warrior than him and not content to sit at home playing the pampered, adoring damsel.

Well enough, but at times Jane's obtuseness was grating (she is repeatedly gobsmacked that a pre-industrial society ruled by noblemen and priests has not yet gotten around to democracy and equal rights), and the climax, in which a chief villain who has been hinted at since the first book emerges, just seemed a little too on-the-nose, and less a tribute to ERB than a repudiation.

That said, I enjoyed this swords-and-sky-pirates adventure as much as I did the first one. Jane is a lusty, entertaining bad girl even if she does become a bit strident at times, and she stands out by very much not being much of a thinker. She just charges into trouble with her six-foot sword and her "demoness" reputation and lays about her.

Recommended for fans of the Barsoom series, of course, who will appreciate all the references and probably not find Jane to be too terrible an antithesis of John Carter. For those who are not particularly fond of classic planetary romances, you may still enjoy Swords of Waar as a dissection of the tropes, but it works much better read as a kind of fan fiction than as critique. Should Nathan Long write more books in this series? Well, I'd probably read them, but I think they'd quickly become as repetitive as the Barsoom books did.

2 people found this helpful

As good as the first

Would you listen to Swords of Waar again? Why?

Probably. It is a wonderful performance of a good book.

Which character – as performed by Dina Pearlman – was your favorite?

Dina plays Jane perfectly.

Any additional comments?

This was a good squeal to Jane Carver of Waar: Waar, Book 1

2 people found this helpful

A Great, Unique Listen

What made the experience of listening to Swords of Waar the most enjoyable?

Take a bad ass biker chick with a foolish sense of honor that gets her into trouble *way* too often, drop her on an alien planet where the gravity gives her super strength and narrate the whole thing with a little bit of southern flair. This might be the best thing I've "read" all year.

Any additional comments?

Disclaimer: I might have just a little bit of a crush on Jane. ;)

2 people found this helpful

Beyond just a parody

Any additional comments?

Here’s my theory about parodies: we like getting the joke by that I mean getting the reference that the oeuvre is referring to or making fun of. I’ll admit that I am part of the vain lot that prides himself with the books that are lining by bookshelves. And whenever I encounter a book that parodies one of my favourite childhood stories, well… I get all tingly inside because I get it.

So, when I stumbled upon the first Jane Carver book, there I was with my index in the air going: haha! I get this! It’s a parody of Edgar Rice Burrough’s A Princess of Mars. Interestingly, Nathan Long swapped the immortal Virginian Captain for a big redhaired “biker chick”, a foul mouth, no nonsense gale that has tough as with her fist as with her words, named Jane Carver. In the first book, we follow Jane working out how gravity works on the world of Waar and putting up with the macho custom of it’s purple inhabitants. Mr. Long dives in Burrough’s world, turning it upside-down and seeing it at every angle. Thought there is an obvious annoyance with Burrough’s flowery style and the lofty speeches that the Purple men of Waar have a penchant for to which Jane constantly undercuts with her narrative there is also a love for the adventures that Burrough’s created. Let’s face it, Edgard Rice Bourroughs did write some exciting adventures.

In Jane Carver Swords of Waar, we find our heroine stranded on the rock called earth. She keeps thinking about Waar and the purple lover she left behind. She finally manages to hitch a ride, with the help of a humming crystal that teleports her all the way back to Waar, wherever that is. Once on Waar, Jane manages to make enemy with the church but also manages to find her purple lover. They both spend the rest of the book on the run, narrowly escaping the church’s grip, fighting air pirates and manage to involuntarily change the status quo of Waar.

The first book, Jane Carver of Waar, was a straight up parody, put in Jane in the stead of John Carter and change Carter’s flowery narrative for Jane’s foulmouthed and hilarious narrative and voilà le tour est joué! Simple right? So, you’d expect Nathan Long to repeat the same formula, take ERB’s second John Carter book and do a copy and paste of the plot. Nope! Not even. Mr. Long, based on the groundwork in his first novel, decides to create something new. And in the mist of all this exiting adventure, the author does address some of the issues, such as the damsels in distress, human rights (or in this case purple people rights), that younger audience would have with something that was published over a hundred years ago.

Sadly, Night Shade the publishers of the two Jane Carver books have been making news about how they’ve been have financial difficulties. Does this mean that there won’t be a third novel in the Waar world? I hope not. Because Nathan Long created an interesting world with vibrant characters and an edgy heroine that I would most definitely would fallow through another adventure.

8 people found this helpful