by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs picks up the story about a year after the end of Return of Tarzan and features the same villains that plagued the first book. It’s a solid, but imperfect, continuation of the series, and worth reading.
This is the first Tarzan book where Jane is more than a MacGuffin and actually gets to show a little backbone. I mean, she’s only a girl, so she doesn’t manage to do much, but she tries. In this book, baby Jack plays the part of the MacGuffin and is mostly offscreen. There is a very sad subplot about a baby that is handled fairly well considering the era and nature of the book. I remember even as a teenager being bothered by Tarzan’s handling of Sheeta, the panther, and as an adult it makes zero sense. Beating someone with clubs is not a tried and true way to make them an ally. Don’t try it, just take my word for it. Wait, I’ve never done it, I’m just saying… don’t. Just don’t.
This being Tarzan, the intelligent ape Akut and the almost as intelligent native Mugambi, are treated as equals. When your adoptive mom is an ape, it has a tendency to make you see things from a slightly different perspective. There are dangerous animals and even more dangerous people and a lot of running around and getting in and out of trouble.
I blame Tarzan for my innate cynicism. It always seems like everyone in his books is either very noble – and those are rare as hen’s teeth, or dastardly and treacherous. This one follows the same pattern. There is one Swede who is not quite what he appears, but most of the people fall cleanly into hero or villain, which makes it a lot easier to know who to root for, anyway.
I adore these books, but the quality has slipped already from the first two. You should read it, though, because it leads directly into my second favorite book of the Tarzan series – Son of Tarzan – coming up next.
5 Tarzan-Makes-Everything-Better Stars
