Tarzan and the Lost Empire C.H.A.S.E.R. (original) (raw)

For detailed information, see Robert B. Zeuschner's
Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Bibliography (ERB, Inc., 2016).
Click on www.erbbooks.comor call 214-405-6741 to order a copy.

TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE
A Review Submitted by Doc Hermes

From BLUE BOOK, where it was published in five parts from October 1928 to February 1929, this is pretty good stuff. The book has the same basic premise as the one before it, TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE (two eternally warring cities of white people deep inside Africa, Tarzan getting tangling up in local politics, a struggling romance between a local couple), but Edgar Rice Burroughs tells his tale with such energy, attention to detail and broad characterization, that it`s a lot of fun. The action n the gladiator scenes is brisk and bloody, the melodrama of the scheming conspirators works well, and there`s even some humour that`s not overdone as one villain tries to impress the ingenue with an unsuccessful dive into the public baths.

I don`t think much of Burroughs` theory that crime is entirely hereditary and that if you simply kill all criminals and their families (!?), there won`t be any more lawbreakers. Good thing he didn`t have a brother convicted of manslaughter, he`d come up with a new philosophy in a hurry.

This is a sort of transitional book in the series. My favorite group of stories start around TARZAN THE UNTAMED and end around TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN. The Apeman as portrayed there is a complicated mixture of wild beast and English lord, he has a supporting cast and family he loves, and there is enough action and surprises in each book to make them enjoyable even if you had never heard of Tarzan. By TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE, our hero is starting to drift down into a simpler characterization. He still patrols his territory with the fighting Waziri and his friend Muviro, there is a reference to his bungalow home and estates... but his wife and son (and grandson) are not even mentioned in a passing thought. Some sort of marital difficulties there, Lord Greystoke?

After TARZAN AT THE EARTH`S CORE, the Apeman seems to decisively abandon his family and estates to wander carefree through the jungle with only his chums Jad-Bal-Ja and Nkima (who don`t place any responsibilities on him). He also seems much more sour and unpleasant in the later stories, with ongoing sermons about how awful the human race is. In this book, though, Tarzan still likes people enough to have friends he is glad to see, to go on a dangerous quest to rescue Erich von Harben, a young man he doesn`t know, and he is perfectly happy to stay with a family in the Lost Empire for weeks while learning the language and history. His strong curiosity is one of the things I llike best about the early Tarzan; he is always asking questions and snooping around for its own sake. We find that he went to the trouble on his own to learn how to read Latin and has read Virgil and Caesar`s Commnentaries. Pretty impressive, considering no one was making him do it.

Yet the British peer who sat up at night in his srtudy with dictionaries and reference books about Roman history is the same man who kills yet another full-grown lion with only a knife. "The savage personal combat, the blood, the contact with the mighty body of the carnivore, had stripped from him the last vestige of the thin veneer of civilization. It was no English lord who stood there with one foot upon his kill and through narrowed lids glared about him at the roaring populace. It was no man, but a wild beast, that raised its head and voiced the savage victory cry of the bull ape, a cry that stilled the multitude and froze its blood."

There`s that dual nature that makes Tarzan so interesting. He`s not a literal split personality; the wild beast side is much stronger and more the "real" Tarzan, but the sophisticated aristocrat who sat in the House of Lords and enjoyed Parisan art galleries and museums is not just an empty pose either.

Oddly, there`s some talk at the beginning of the mysterious city as being a survival of the fabled lost tribes of Biblical history but this is quickly dropped. Instead, we`re dealing here with the surviving outpost of a Roman incursion into Africa, still keeping its society and customs amost completely unchanged after a thousand years with only slight influences from the native cultures (prettty darn unlikely, if you ask me). They still think there`s a Caesar ruling in Rome, they still have senators and patricians and all that. In effect, this is Tarzan dropping into a gladiator movie for an adventure. (Of COURSE, he ends up fighting in the Colisseum, it`s mandatory for an action hero to have at least on a Coliseeum scene in his career.) Long ago, a civil war resulted in a breakaway faction founding its own city, and now there is ongoing feuding between Castrum Mare and Castrum Sanguinarus.

The pair of enemy outposts is part of the successful formula but it seriously weakens this particular story. There`s really no reason why Erich von Harben couldn`t be trapped in the same city as Tarzan without running into him, and the hopping back and forth between two very similar settings (complete with two pairs of struggling young lovers) is a bit confusing. Also, the exciting climax (which is vividly presented) with the oppressed populace marching in a bloody uprising, grim legionnaires slaughtering crowds, half a dozen of Tarzan`s great apes as a hairy commando squad (despite "their disposition to attack friend as well as foe"), the heroic Waziri doing their calvary charge... whew. All that big finale is diffused by having to then go back to the other city and see how von Harben is doing with his own lesser troubles.

TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE introduces Nkima, the little monkey who takes on the traditional sidekick role for the remainder of the series. (Does Tarzan ever mention that he, like the rest of the great apes, used to eat tailed monkeys when they could catch them? Might dampen the friendship.) I like Nkima, he`s as much of a troublemaker as he is a help but he saves the day enough times to make his simpleminded chatter forgiveable. Every hero can use a bumbling pal to help with the plotting now and then. It`s interesting that except for Jad-Bal-Ja and NKima (and good ol` Tantor when they run into each other), Tarzan isn`t really friends with the wild animals. Despite his speeches about how admirable and noble the beasts are, he pretty much ignores them until he`s hungry.