The Son of Tarzan

Rating:
Summary: The son of Tarzan becomes Korak the Killer
Review: In the previous novel "The Beast of Tarzan," Jane and her infant son Jack were kidnapped by Tarzan's enemy Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. Of course, Tarzan tracks down his wife and son and finally dispatches Rokoff. However, in this fourth Tarzan novel, "The Son of Tarzan," Edgar Rice Burroughs provides an adventure whose key point is: like father, like son. Paulvitch had survived the vengeance of Tarzan and now wants to even the score by luring young Jack Clayton away from London. However, his plan is foiled when Jack escapes with the help of Akut, the great ape. The pair flee to the same African jungle where Tarzan was raised a generation before. It there that young Jack Clayton establishes his own reputation as Korak the Killer. Not only does he find Korak find his own place in the jungle and amidst the great apes, he also rescues Meriem, a beautiful young woman, from a band of Arab raiders. Meriem turns out to be the daughter of Armand Jacot, a Foreign Legion Captain who is also the Prince de Cadrenet, and therefore a fitting mate for the son of Lord Greystoke.

On the one hand, "The Son of Tarzan" is a ERB adventure yarn that closely parallels many of the key elements of the original "Tarzan of the Apes." In that sense this is a fairly predictable story (almost from the moment we hear about "My Dear" we know who she will turn out to be in the end), but given all the speculation about what the Tarzan novels were saying about human society and evolution, it is interesting to note that we have the same relationship between "The Son of Tarzan" and the original "Tarzan of the Apes" that you find between Jack London's "White Fang" and "The Call of the Wild." In each we have the creature of the wild become civilized and then reverse the process in the second. Of course, London's novels have received a lot more consideration along these lines in terms of Darwinism and the whole nature versus nuture debate (effectively canceling the question out by taking it both ways in his two novels), but it is interesting to see Burroughs do essentially the same thing with his own two novels. Final Note: This particular edition features the art of J. St. John Allen, which is always a big plus for any ERB fan.