The Cave Girl

Oh boy, i was not looking forward to this after my last Burroughs experience but you know what, it was pretty damn good.
A posh nerdy bookworm gets washed up on an island full of cavemen. He's helped by a girl who teaches him to survive and he eventually becomes the great warrior she already mistakenly beleives him to be.
Its good solid stuff with surprisingly strong characterization for a Burroughs story.

The Cave Man, the sequel or continuation of Cave Girl depending on your point of view or edition, is a real mixed bag. There's some great dramatic turns in the plot but its marred by many last minute rescues and Deux Ex Machina's.
Also the author clearly didn't reread Cave Girl before writing this as there are a number of elements show more which contradict the previous story.
Luckily all the investment in the characters garnered in Cave Girl kept me interested despite the flaws. show less

The Cave Girl introduces us to the ERB theme of the transformed man. In At the Earth’s Core, we meet David Innes, a character that steps away from the earlier Burroughs super men. By super i mean beyond normal. Tarzan is raised by Apes exhibiting extraordinary abilities, John Carter is possibly immortal, Prince Richard in Outlaw of Torn seems to be born with an innate ability to use weapons but Innes is just a well rounded fellow who is thrown into a fantastic situation. Innes transforms slightly in At the Earth’s Core but it is the first half of The Cave Girl that we see a full character transformation.
Waldo Smith-Jones is a Boston blue blood who eschews physical endeavors in favor of being a learned momma’s boy. He is thrust show more into a primitive world by a rogue wave washing him overboard. He meets Nadara who guides him in his transformation from Waldo Smith-Jones to Thandar the killer. In the romance of Waldo/Thandar and Nadara, Burroughs mines his prevalent theme of the two protagonists miscommunicating as they fall in love with the other.
The first half of the book is whimsical in tone more towards Minidoka than Burrough’s other works. It isn’t as frivolous but the narrator is poking fun at Smith-Jones upbringing and the inadequacies of such an upbringing outside of Boston.
I would speculate that there was a period of time between the writing of the Cave Girl and the writing of second part “The Cave Man”. Mainly the speculation is based on the change in tone with the latter being a more straightforward telling of the adventure with less reflection on the inadequacies of Waldo’s upbringing.The change in tone also could have been editorial. ERB’s theme of refinement vs. the primitive is still explored but with less humor.
Personally I enjoyed the romp even though it has one of those ERB ironic tropes. In a section he describes the vastness of the ocean, detailing how Smith-Jones has no concept of the impossibility of finding Nadara or anyone else. Yet the impossible happens and all the players end up together on another island after a storm. At the end Burroughs does my favorite conceit which is to connect the written story to the ‘real world”. With no introduction as with his Barsoom or Tarzan books, I found I missed that piece so it was a pleasant surprise to read the last paragraph. show less

"The Cave Girl" was published only a year after "Tarzan" and it has so many of the same plot elements, differently distributed. As with every other Burroughs novel I have ever read, I enjoyed it very much. Since the audio of "The Cave Girl" includes "The Cave Man", in which our heroes settle back into civilization with no evident trouble, there is no promise of a sequel. Tarzan was the more original invention.

One of ERB's non-Tarzan adventures, in which a young spoiled fop named Waldo Emerson Smythe-Jones finds himself trapped in a primeval land and forced to adapt to survive. Over time he transforms himself from a cowardly stripling to a capable and confident he-man who conquers the denizens of the jungla and wins the love and admiration of the cave-girl he rescues. Decent adventure.

This is a small zine about exploring a cave.

Read as the Cave Girl, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1154027816 .