I first experienced Alessandro Cima’s narrative abilities back in 2005. Back then podcasting was barely a toddler – still wobbly legged, with novel length podcasts being few an far between. Cima was reading his own young adult Pirate Jack.Here’s the “Pirate Jack” pitch:
Young Jack Spencer sees his father’s boat-building business destroyed by a powerful land developer. Then Jack unearths three ancient scrolls that propel him on a dangerous adventure through time in search of a pirate treasure. When Jack finds himself aboard the pirate ship Revenge he enters a life or death world of ship battles, jungle islands, prison escapes, gold, and treachery.
It was and is a compelling pirate adventure story (with some fantastic elements). If you’ haven’t heard it you can check it out through the same podcast feed as his latest project. He’s about a third of the way through this novel…
A Princess Of Mars
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Alessandro Cima
Podcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Candlelight Stories
Podcast: 2009
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre. The story concerns soldier John Carter who is mysteriously transported to the red planet where he fights to protect his princess against impossible odds and many peculiar creatures. The book is very much a product of its time, with outdated ideas about the red planet and outdated social ideas. But if you can just go along for the adventurous ride, you are in for a sci-fi space opera swashbuckling treat.
Podcast feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/CandlelightStoriesAudio
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Posted by Jesse Willis
First published as Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, in 1905, this novel is a precursor to, and the likely inspiration for, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s classic A Princess of Mars (1911). Despite my not having heard of it before now the novel has a long history of adaptation. Ace Books reprinted Arnold’s novel in paperback in 1964, retitling it Gulliver of Mars [sic]. A more recent 
