TITLE: Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar (Swords of Eternity Super-Arc #2, Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe)
AUTHOR: Win Scott Eckert
312 pages, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., ISBN 978194562269 (paperback, hardcover, limited hardcover, ebook)
DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Tarzan of the Apes, Jason Gridley, and the crew of the airship O-220 return to Pellucidar, the world at the Earth’s core, on a wartime mission to stop the Nazis from obtaining a powerful superweapon. But when the Lord of the Jungle’s murderous adversaries partner with the Mahars—Pellucidar’s routed reptilian overlords—and his adventurous granddaughter Suzanne goes missing on a reconnaissance mission, can Tarzan prevent the conquest and enslavement of all humanity in both the inner and outer worlds?
Bonus Novelette: “Victory Harben: Clash on Caspak” by Mike Wolfer: Hurled through time and space from her homeworld of Pellucidar, Victory Harben plummets into peril when she finds herself on the island continent of Caspak, the Land That Time Forgot. Using skills learned from her friend Tarzan and the Stone Age land of her birth, Victory fights for her very survival against savage beasts and uncanny Wieroos, the winged humanoid terrors of Caspak. But that is only the beginning of her trials, as a strange visitor arrives with an omen of Victory’s role in the machinations of the Swords of Eternity super-arc!
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS:
Note: I reviewed this book via an electronic Advance Review Copy. The book will be published in October by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote 24 Tarzan novels (25 if we include Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins, which would now be considered a “middle grade” novel, I think, or 26 if we include Tarzan: The Lost Adventure, which Joe Lansdale completed from a manuscript started by Burroughs), and six Pellucidar novels. Burroughs virtually created the idea of fictional universes, linking his various series in ever-inventive ways to create a consistent whole. (See for instance the novel Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, in which the Jungle Lord visits the Hollow Earth for the first time.) Over the years since Burroughs’ passing, the Burroughs Estate has “authorized” quite a lot of novels featuring Tarzan, John Carter, Carson Napier, and other Burroughs creations. But only recently has the estate, through Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., decided to issue new works tied intimately enough to the detailed chronology and characterizations of the original books to be considered “canonical” (as compared to merely “authorized.”)
So how does one approach reading a new canonical novel that once again ties two of Burroughs’ most well-known series together, especially if that book is also the second title in a new “super-arc” connecting even more of Burroughs’ original creations? Must one read all of the Tarzan and Pellucidar novels before opening the cover of Win Scott Eckert’s Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar?
I am happy to report the answer to that question is “no.” I have read only a small handful of the original Tarzan novels and none of the Pellucidar series. Tarzan at the Earth’s Core is not one of the handful of Tarzan novels I have read. Despite these holes in my Burroughsian reading history, I loved this book and was fully engaged with the characters and plot throughout.
Win Scott Eckert has not only crafted a novel that is true to the character of Tarzan as detailed by Burroughs in the original novels (versus what we see in most movie/television versions), he’s given us a novel that is an excellent jumping-on point for readers who are new to Tarzan, to Pellucidar, or to both. There was not a moment in this book where I felt like I was missing out on vital information by not having read the originals. And even though this is the second book in the new Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe “Swords of Eternity super-arc,” one does not have to have read the preceding release (Carson of Venus: The Edge of All Worlds, written by Matt Betts) to jump into this one. Like Burroughs himself, the new ERBU writers are working hard to make every book accessible on its own. Eckert does this by having characters reminisce about previous exploits in just enough detail to fill new readers in without derailing the momentum of the current story, supplemented by footnotes letting the reader know where to go to read the original stories.
Eckert gives us the Tarzan I remember from the few novels I’ve read and from the DC and Marvel comics of the late 70s: imposing, multi-lingual, a strategist when called for and a brute force when appropriate, a man who loves his family and will do anything to protect them, a man who can fit with “polite society” but who always has “the beast” simmering under the surface. Here, he is the focal point around whom everything else orbits, the most compelling character in a cast of compelling characters. The best Tarzan writers understand how to use the Jungle Lord’s personal dichotomies to propel a story, and Eckert proves here that he is among the best.
Eckert also does a wonderful job incorporating the setting of Pellucidar into the novel almost as another character. I’m intrigued by the way time does/doesn’t move in the “hollow Earth,” and how the landscape and stationary sun and moon influence the way characters think and react. I really cannot wait to go back and read the Burroughs originals as well as the soon-to-be-rereleased (by ERB, Inc.) authorized sequels by John Eric Holmes, and all credit for that goes to Win Eckert. (Okay, perhaps a little bit of credit should also go to Mike Grell, whose hidden world of Skartaris in DC Comics’ The Warlord was my first and most beloved exposure to the “hollow Earth” concept and which was clearly inspired by Pellucidar.)
Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar is also as fast-paced as one would expect from a Burroughs novel. There’s a bit of slow set-up in the first few chapters as Eckert moves all of his chess pieces into place, but after that the action is pretty much non-stop. As with Burroughs, Eckert expresses characterization as much through action as through internal monologue. I read the second half of the book in one sitting. Burroughs wrote several books in which Tarzan and Korak fight in World War One, so it’s a natural extension of the brand that a still fighting-fit Lord John Clayton and his family members would be tapped to help protect England from the Nazi menace of the Second World War. Especially when the Nazis are on the verge of discovering Pellucidar and the mind-controlling abilities of the native Mahars.
Much has been made of the “Swords of Eternity” super-arc introducing a new lead character, Victory Harben, into the ERBU. In Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar, we get to see Victory at a much younger age and see the experience that transforms her life and brings her under the care of Tarzan and Jane in England. But Victory isn’t the only “next generation” character being added to Burroughs’ family trees. In Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar, Eckert introduces us to Suzanne Clayton (Tarzan’s grand-daughter, the second child of Tarzan’s son Korak and daughter-in-law Meriem) and to Janson Gridley (son of Jason Gridley and Pellucidarian native Jana). Suzanne follows closely in her father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, plunging into adventure without so much as a backwards glance, equally at home in the jungle as in a city. Janson doesn’t see much action but I loved the almost-sibling interplay between him and Victory (who is Jason Gridley’s god-daughter). I hope that as the new ERBU progresses, we’ll see more of both of these younger characters alongside Victory and Korak and Meriem’s son Jackie Clayton. While it has been well-established by Burroughs himself that Tarzan and his immediate family are very long-lived and essentially immortal (something the Jungle Lord ruminates about a lot in this book, which takes place during World War II), injecting new characters into the ERBU also follows Burroughs’ own tradition.
The main novel is followed by a bonus novelette, “Clash on Caspak,” which connects the current super-arc to yet another of Burroughs’ original on-going series: “The Land That Time Forgot.” I’ve never read the Caspak books, although I remember the movies based on them. Mike Wolfer does a great job relaying what makes Caspak similar to and yet unique from Pellucidar through Victory Harben’s eyes. The novelette advances Victory’s storyline that started in Christopher Paul Carey’s novelette “Dark Heart of the Sun,” giving us more hints about why Victory is being bounced through time and space and what role her mysterious tattoo might play. As I may have mentioned, I find Victory an intriguing character and can’t wait for her to star in her own novel (titled Fires of Halos and due out sometime in 2021, I believe).