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Kidnapping, rites of passage, mystical treasures, the lost city of Atlantis—Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, the fifth book-length entry in the Tarzan series, is brimming with the kind of fast-paced excitement that will engage every reader's imagination. A must-read for true action and adventure fans..
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Member Reviews
You couldn’t find a finer collection of Tarzan cliches than in this tale - it’s got everything: lost cities dripping in treasure ruled by a beautiful priestess, gangs of marauding slave traders, duplicitous foreigners, an amnesiac Tarzan reverting to full on ape-man mode, Jane being a serial kidnap victim, and jungle treks and battles galore. It’s a mess of too many interwoven sub-plots and ridiculously implausible coincidences - yet it was still a fun summer read. Pure pulp adventure.
In the forgotten city of Opar, the bloodied sacrificial altar of the Flaming God stood above vaults piled high with the gold destined for fabled, lost Atlantis. There La, the beautiful high priestess, still dreamed of Tarzan, who had escaped her knife before. Around her, the hideous priests vowed that he should never escape again. For now Tarzan was returning, and they were waiting for him. Tarzan planned to avoid La and the priests. But he could not avoid the earthquake that struck him down in the vaults and left him without memory of his wife or home - only with what memory he had had as a child among the savage apes who reared him.
Not nearly as good as some of his earlier Tarzan books. The plot felt very repetitive as it mainly consisted of different factions chasing each other back and forth ad nauseum. I'm working through all of the Tarzan books, but if this is representative of his later works, I may not make it.
Love triangle! Passionate priestess! Gold! Jewels! Human sacrifice! Amnesia! Jane gets kidnapped (again)! Ravenous lions! People chasing after each other all over Africa!
It's a Tarzan book. Good stuff.
It's a Tarzan book. Good stuff.
Burroughs uses formulaeic plots too mujch for my comfort, but read anything he writes once in awhile and yoiiu will be glad you did. He uses an active voice and pinball machine-like twists and turns, and can paint characterization in a chiaroscuric manner such as the Belgian Werper in this book.
A good adventure in which Tarzan returns to Opar to replenish his gold reserves, and discovers the fabulous Jewels of Opar. Along the way he suffers a head injury which reverts him to the mental status of the beast he used to be. All is well at the end, of course.
Tarzan is injured and loses his memory. Poor Jane is captured, escapes, captured, escapes over and over.
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Author Information
768+ Works 65,049 Members
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago. His father, George Tyler was a distiller and a battery manufacturer. Early in life Burroughs attempted to support his family in a variety of occupations, including railroad policeman, business partner, and miner. None of these proved successful. However, Burroughs had always enjoyed show more reading adventure fiction and decided to try his hand at writing. His first attempt, written under the pseudonym Normal Bean, sold very quickly and Burroughs' career took off. Although critics and educators have not always been supportive of Burroughs' writing, the characters in his stories have entertained readers for many years. Tarzan was the most popular, earning Burroughs enough money to start his own publishing house and a motion picture company. Another character, John Carter, is the hero of Burroughs' Mars adventure series. The continuing popularity of these characters has led some critics to reconsider the value of Burroughs' writing and to acknowledge significant themes in his stories. Burroughs died on March 19, 1950. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Corticelli [Mursia] (208)
A Big Little Book (1495)
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
- Original title
- Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
- Alternate titles
- Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
- Original publication date
- 1916-11-16; 1918-04-20
- People/Characters
- La of Opar; Tarzan; Jane Porter Clayton (Lady Greystoke)
- Important places
- Opar
- Related movies
- Tarzan the Tiger (1929 | IMDb)
- Epigraph
- [None]
- Dedication
- [None]
- First words
- Lieutenant Albert Werper had only the prestige of the name he had dishonored to thank for his narrow escape from being cashiered.
- Quotations
- It were easier to question a man first and kill him afterward, than kill him first and then question him.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Even in death he has made restitution—let his sins lie with his bones."
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 1,087
- Popularity
- 23,387
- Reviews
- 13
- Rating
- (3.47)
- Languages
- 17 — Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 129
- ASINs
- 75