Customer Reviews

Tarzan and the Lost Empire: (#12)

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This adventure into a small lost civilisation of the past is a lot more fun than Lord of the Jungle. Tarzan is much more the focal character in this book, rather than a sideline character, so that helps.

Running around with his simian sidekick provides some comic relief, as he comes up against a couple of tinpot Caesars, manhandles one, overcomes in the arena, survives a siege, and topples some government.

Definitely entertaining.

"He rose from the throne and raised his hand for silence. The hum of voices ceased. "Caesar is dead, but upon someone of you must fall the
mantle of Caesar."

"Long live Tarzan! Long live the new Caesar!" cried one of the gladiators, and instantly every Sanguinarian in the room took up the cry."

Tarzan doesn't really fancy the job, so makes a suggestion that one of his martial Roman friends would fill the void nicely.

"Tarzan and the Lost Empire" is a typical Edgar Rice Burroughs story about the Lord of the Jungle where somebody disappears and Tarzan goes off into some uncharted part of Africa to rescue them from a lost city. This basic plot describes most Tarzan novels starting with the lost Atlantis colony of Opar in "The Return of Tarzan." What makes "Tarzan and the Lost Empire" rather different from the rest is that the lost city this time around happens to be a couple of outposts from the Roman Empire, still up and running almost two thousand years later.

The person who needs to be rescued in this 12th Tarzan novel is Erich von Harben, the son of a German medical missionary who is one of the Ape Man's old friends. Tarzan tracks Erich to a lost valley where he discovers the Roman outposts. Castra Sanguinarius is ruled by Sublatus, the cruel Emperor of the West, while Castrum Mare is ruled by the tyrant Validus Augustus, the Emperor of the East. Of course Tarzan ends up in the arena of Castra Sanguinarius fighting for his life, while young Erich faces a similar fate in the arena of Castrum Mare. the ape-man was seeking to rescue him. This is standard ERB fare but the idea that all Roman outposts set up despotic emperors is laying it on a bit thick. Still, there are a few noble Romans running around for Tarzan to bond with during this adventure.

Burroughs did write a few historical adventures along with those set on exotic worlds or lost lands, so it would have been interesting to see him do a tale set in Ancient Rome, but this was as close as he got. As always with these pot-boilers, the principle is that the less of them you have read the more likely you are to be impressed by this one (and visa versa).

This volume in the Tarzan series appealed to me because I've got a soft spot for lost civilization tales.

The jungle lord is approached by one of his civilized (European) friends, and asked to search a vast canyon where the guy's son, Erich Von Harben, is believed to have disappeared in search of a "lost tribe of Israel." What Von Harben found instead were two rival Roman city-states, perfectly preserved since the canyon was colonized in the 1st Century. Not a bad find, actually, and Von Harben also discovers love at first sight with a noble Roman girl, as can only happen in a classic pulp. But alas, not everything is sunshine and puppies in this anachronistic canyon, and Von Harben finds himself in prison due to corrupt politicians and their paranoia.

Tarzan, who entered the other end of the canyon, has also suffered a mishap that landed him in prison in the rival city-state (one is Castra Sanguinarious and one is Castrum Mare). Both Tarzan and Von Harben find allies among the political prisoners in their respective cities, but time is running out for the Ape Man to rescue Von Harben before the tyrannical Caesar has the suspicious outsider killed for sport in the arena.

Burroughs was fairly enlightened for the time in which he wrote (the first edition of Lost Empire was printed in the 1920s), but I still cringed a bit at the underlying attitude toward black Africans. You've got to take those factors into account when you read something this old. Something else I struggled with were the names. So many characters had authentic-sounding Roman names my head was swimming trying to keep track of them. Another annoyance was due, I think, to the fact that this book was originally written as serialized pulp--each episode a given length according to the requirements of the periodical it was written for, with a cliffhanger ending to be continued next issue: Tarzan came off almost skitzophrenic due to his changing opinions about whether he could escape and when he should attempt escape, etc. And one final criticism I'll offer is that for a pulp tale about a feral savage raised by gorillas, in an adversarial position vis-a-vis hordes of sword-wielding legionaires, there wasn't nearly as much action as you might expect. And what action there was disappointed me a bit--particularly in the arena.

I must give credit where it's due, though: when Tarzan is paired against a gladiator, his goose is cooked until the fortuitous intervention of a newfound Roman friend. Tarzan is a bad dude, but not invincible. He can't match up against a master of single combat who lives or dies by the sword just because he is the hero of the story, knife or no knife; ape-like agility or no ape-like agility. Weapons and all other factors being equal, the only individual who could have stood a chance against an experienced gladiator was another experienced gladiator, and Burroughs knew this. Thank-you, Edgar. No eye-rolling from me on this aspect.

This concept had heaps of potential, but fell a bit short in my opinion. I still hope to read Tarzan and the Ant Men some day.

Henry Brown is the author of the heroic fantasies Tales of the Honor Triad, as well as the military thriller Hell and Gone. He is the columns editor at New Pulp Fiction, and does some blogging of his own at the Two-Fisted Blogger.