The Son of Tarzan

It's not clear what is so appealing about Burroughs' writing. He uses the same stock phrases over and over and they sound equally good each time. There are so many characters meeting up in the "trackless jungle" that it might as well be a central station on the London Underground. Troublesome characters conveniently succumb to their injuries. A simple shave is an impenetrable disguise. In the end the characters all return happily to London, even though they obviously belong in the jungle. The racism is strange...involving some complicated classifications. White men are always superior, even when wicked. Every man she meets becomes immediately consumed with the desire to "possess" Merriam. Everybody important lives happily ever after show more until the next book.

The fantasy of a man so superhuman that he can be a flawless English gentleman and also Lord of the Jungle is the wildest superhero fantasy ever imagined.

The cover illustration from Tantor audiobooks is powerful and evocative. show less

This one's mostly about Tarzan's son, Jack, aka Korak the Killer. He too becomes a wild ape man. He also gets a girl who is way tougher and smarter than Jane. Of course, Burroughs has to go through incredible plot convolutions to make sure that he can find a wild girl of European stock in deepest Africa. No interracial romances for Burroughs!

While this fourth in the series was full of adventure, much of it felt recycled from adventures Tarzan had himself. And while I know it is all fantasy, I somehow had an easier time believing Tarzan as a superhero but his son, not so much. Somehow the fact that Tarzan had been raised by apes gave some cause for his super powers but I couldn't buy a proper English school boy somehow acquiring all those abilities simply because he landed on African shores.

Another good yarn if you can ignore some of the casual racism in the book. Thankfully that is not prevalent throughout the book and is, unfortunately, representative of the times. The book was somewhat slow to start for me and dragged out a bit longer than necessary, but when the action was on, it was on and fun. Prepare to suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride.

Jack Clayton, the teenage son of Tarzan and Jane, is kidnapped by his father's old enemy, Paulvitch. Jack escapes into the African jungle, where he adopts the name Korak, the Killer, befriends an ape, and rescues a young girl named Meriem.

Raised in London, Jack feels the pull of his wild heritage and flees to the jungle, mirroring his father’s origins. Korak grows to manhood in the wild, rescues an orphan girl named Meriem, and matures into a skilled, powerful warrior. After years in the wild, Korak and Meriem are reunited with Tarzan and Jane, and they become married.

this may be the most interesting burroughs' tarzan story, since it only involves tarzan as a strong and civilized englishman. his son, however, voluntarily leaves for africa to be with his love who he rescues from an evil sheik. Burroughs obviously did not blacks or browns a whole lot. For him and his readers, racism isn't an issue. One is white or one is black (brown, red, or otherwise). White is good. Anything else bad. Kinda like Tarzan, eh?

This edition, published by 1stWorld, is full of grammar and spelling and usage errors, which sometimes mangle the storyline.

That said, this was a great romp in the jungle with Tarzan's son, starting and ending in England, but full of wild adventures with heroes and villains worthy of the challenge.