Customer Reviews

Tarzan At the Earth's Core (Pellucidar Series #4)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a number of series. Some series consisted of as few as two or three novellas. The Tarzan series stretched to 24 volumes. Almost all of the series were interrelated in some way or another. Clark A. Brady maps out the complex interrelationships in Appendix C to his "Burroughs Cyclopaedia" (available from Amazon.com). "Tarzan at the Earth's Core" makes the clearest connection between two Burroughs series. It is the 13th Tarzan novel and the 4th Pellucidar novel.

The Tarzan stories represent some of Burroughs' best work. The Pellucidar stories do not. Burroughs stretches credulity in all his stories, but he takes it to the limit in the Pellucidar stories. In the Pellucidar seriest Burroughs employs a preposterous concept (a hollow Earth with an inner world where time stands still) and adds insult to injury with highly improbable plot twists. This makes the quality of "Tarzan at the Earth's Core" all the more surprising. It stands as the absolute best Pellucidar story and one of the best Tarzan stories. Ironically it stands near the middle of both series.

David Innes, the hero of the Pellucidar stories, is in trouble. Jason Gridley, inventor of the Gridley Wave, hears the radio distress signal from the center of the Earth, and organizes a rescue party. Many stalwart adventurers, including Tarzan of the Apes, enlist in the expedition. Where Innes got to the Earth's core in a mechanical mole, Gridley's party travels there in an airship. Read the book to find out how they fly an airship to the center of the Earth and confront the many perils of the savage world they find.

I found myself less tolerant of the Red Flower of Zoram this time around, perhaps because by forty I had myself been in relationships where you never know if she loves you or thinks you are a jalok. And there seems little reason for it. When David Innes insulted Dian or John Carter insulted Dejah Thoris, those were some heavy insults, for all that the heroes didn't intend them. Jason's crime seems rather minor. I actually found myself wishing she'd just get over herself.

OK, now that that's out of the way...

This is a wonderful adventure story. Pellucidar is it's old horizonless, timeless self, and we see new areas and new peoples. Tarzan is in fine form, and has to deal with a problem he's never had before: he gets lost in the jungle! There are savages, pirates, reptile-men, pterodactyls, and ape-men whom the Lord of the Jungle finds strangely familiar. There are a few many coincidences near the end, but all in all, you can do worse, but might not do better.

In this book, Burroughs had an interesting conceit of crossing his most famous creation into one of his other worlds, thus establishing a patchwork universe where Mars, Venus, Pellucidar, Caspak, Tarzan, and almost all ERB's other stories take place. This book is exciting and colorful but suffers from a single glaring flaw. While in almost every ERB books there is a love interest, in this one, it seems merely perfunctory. Jana and Jason never establish any chemistry during their brief time together, and Jana is a resourceful and blandly attractive if also vapid and petulant heroine. Given the fact that the love story does little but weigh the story down--Jana at one point reflects Jason would not have abandoned her as Tarzan seemed to, though there is no reason she should think this--it probably would have been best to remove it altogether. Probably her uninteresting presentation is why Jana is never mentioned again after this book. In At the Earth's Core, Pellucidar, Tanar of Pellucidar, Back to the Stone Age, and Savage Pellucidar, ERB has his Inner World heroes romance and succeed through sheer determination with their love interests. Here the love story is just dead weight that gets in the way of an otherwise enjoyable adventure story. That said, though, the book is engaging and at least partially makes up for an otherwise unsatisfying romance at its core.

Tarzan at the Earth's Core by Burroughs is a heart warming tale of loyalty, romance, and adventure set in the hollow earth setting of Pellucidar. Like all of the other tales set in this world it is full of prehistoric creatures of the various periods and peopled by the most anachronistic cast of characters ever assembled. There are pirates, Vikings, cavemen, and intelligent apes as well as some wonderful made up races such as the evolved reptilian race that enjoy feasting on human flesh. Tarzan, of course, finds himself at home in the jungles of this world, and the supporting characters are heroic and delightful to become acquainted with. Even if you have never read a novel set in this world, a fan of pulp should do oneself a favor and pick this one up. It may not be the best place to start on your journey into hollow earth, but it is at least a start.

"Tarzan at the Earth's Core" is unique in the Edgar Rice Burroughs ouvre because it is a crossover novel. This was the 13th Tarzan novel and the 4th Pellucidar story and not surprisingly ends up being one of the better offerings in both series. Originally published as a seven-part serial in "The Blue Book Magazine" in 1929-30. The story fits better into the Pellucidar series, where it works mainly as a sequel to "Tanar of Pellucidar," and it is Tarzan fans who would be more lost in this one than readers of the Pellucidar books. The plot is standard fare for a ERB novel, involving a rescue mission, with the key difference between not so much Tarzan's involvement as the idea that the person who needs to be rescued is not a damsel in distress but David Innes, first Emperor of Pellucidar.

Innes is being held in the dungeons of the Korsars, and Jason Gridley (inventor of the Gridley wave that allowed ERB to "receive" the Martian stories from John Carter, which accounts for the other major ERB series) persuades Tarzan to come along fr the fun. Gridley builds a zeppelin and uses it to descend into the land of Pellucidar (do not get me started on the physics involved in a lighter than air ship descending to the Earth's core. Once in Pellucidar Tarzan and Gridley have their separate adventures, and ERB seems to go out of his way to come up with new races of people (e.g., the Horibs) and prehistoric type creatures to beleaguer both of the book's heroes. The romance, of course, happens with Gridley, who meets Jana, the Red Flower of Zoram. Even everybody gets back together and they remember why they came to Pellucidar in the first place.

"Tarzan at the Earth's Core" is a solid ERB pulp fiction yarn all things considered. What makes it work is that Tarzan has some competition for the role of hero in the story. He is more of a major supporting character than the lead, because Gridley is the leader of the expedition and even disadvantaged in the jungles of Pellucidar, where Tarzan finds himself quite at home, even with that weird burning sun in the sky that never sets, manages to hold his own for the most part. Burroughs also includes the set up for the next Pellucidar novel, when Lieutenant Wilhelm Von Horst, the mate of the zeppelin, vanishes. Unfortunately he would have to wait until 1935 to be rescued in "Back to the Stone Age." Meanwhile, Tarzan would go back to his usual run of episodes back in Africa.

The author's literary style is well developed and he set up and interesting story line in which for the first time Tarzan is lost. An American name Jason Gridley is set on rescuing David Innes from a lost world that lies under ours. A world with its own sun that never sets and the author can play with his ideas of evolution with the introduction of the snake people. And as in other "Lost Worlds" we have read about Tarzan has to fight prehistoric animals that the author claims are the ancestors to the creatures of Tarzan's jungle up above. With what seems like an entire world bent on the destruction of this intruder, Tarzan must persevere if he is to be successful in his rescue.

PAGES WERE VERY YELLOW MAKING IT HARDER TO READ.

I have been an ERB fan since I was a kid in the 50s. I thought it was time to reread some of my old friends from way back when. This book had disapeared from my collection.

unless you count the inexplicably underrated "Back to the Stone Age" which features his best and most colorful characters, compared to whom Tarzan seems a bit wooden, and a picaresque storyline which rivals Cervantes.

An Urgent message from Pellucidar, that world of primitive men and primeval jungles that lies inside the crust of the Earth, called on Tarzan of the Apes for assistance. Tarzan, used to the dangers of darkest Africa, heeded the call to Pellucidar, where all his skill in the jungle, all his talents with beasts and primitive men, would but to the extreme test.

Edgar Rice started a brilliant series with energy, but in this fourth installment, he fails to capture the full mystery and awe presented in his first three installments of the Pellucidar Series. By "Tarzan at the Earth's Core", you can tell the Pellucidar Series is starting to lose steam.