The Return of Tarzan, Vol. 2

In a way, Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Return Of Tarzan is his most exemplary work. That is to say, it contains the best examples of what works and what doesn't in Burroughs' fiction.
First, what doesn't:
1) If you have a problem with ridiculous coincidences, The Return Of Tarzan is probably not for you. I sometimes think "Serendipity" is Burroughs' real middle name. For example: in ROT, Tarzan is thrown overboard and swims ashore to the same spot on the west coast of Africa where he was born. A little later, Jane Porter, the love of Tarzan's life, is shipwrecked at the EXACT SAME SPOT.
(Wait, it gets better.)
Finallly, Paul D'Arnot, Tarzan's best friend, JUST HAPPENS to be patroling that same strech of African coast and JUST HAPPENS to decide to investigate Tarzan's birthplace AT THE SAME TIME that Tarzan and Jane are there.
I mean, come ON.
2) As Gore Vidal has pointed out, Burroughs couldn't write dialogue to save his life. For example, in ROT he has Rokoff, the novel's heavy, exclaim, "Name of a name!". Does anyone talk like this? Has anyone EVER talked like this?
Next, what does:
1) Burroughs is, as much if not more so than any writer of his generation, a natural born yarn-spinner. If I had to pick any writer, living or dead, to sit around the campfire with my friends and I and keep us entertained, Burroughs would probably be the one.
2) Burroughs was absolutely gifted in describing action, fight scenes in particular. I think the great Robert E. Howard may have been his only peer in this regard.
3) Burroughs probably gets more mileage out of the "fish-out-of-water" scenario than any writer I've ever read. My favorite example of this is a scene in which Tarzan, wild man of Africa, is depicted haunting the libraries and museums of Paris by day, and sipping absinthe(!) and smoking cigarettes at Parisian clubs by night. What a picture! Did he ever run into Ernest Hemingway? Now THERE'S an idea for a story!
Upon reading The Return Of Tarzan, many would say it's a fairy tale, pure escapism.
Well, thank goodness for that. Burroughs may not have been a peer of the Vidals and Hemingways of the world; nonetheless, we need him just as much.

When I was a kid (thirty years ago) my dad had an old beaten copy of this book that my three brothers and I readr, reread and probably took worse care of than we should have. I remember the cover vividly- Tarzan fighting a lion, but dressed in what would be considered traditional Arab garb. Every chapter had it's own illustration- THE TREASURE VAULTS OF OPAR featuring Tarzan leaping across a wide chasm!

I reread these books again in my teenage years and found this one to be my favorite. I think I enjoyed it even more than TARZAN OF THE APES.

The story begins with Tarzan crossing the Atlantic after leaving Jane and her family on a train platform in northern Wisconsin (a region of the world I call home) and meeting, not for the last time Rokoff and Paulvitch, two Russian spies who make it their life's goal to humiliate and destroy the Ape Man. Their first meeting includes Tarzan spoiling a plan to blackmail a Count and Countess who quickly become Tarzan's friends.

Later, in Paris, Rokoff and Paulvitch manipulate the Count into challenging Tarzan into a pistol duel, which Tarzan both wins and loses.

Tarzan arrives in Africa again later, ignominiously tossed off a liner by the two mad Russians. He swims ashore and is immediately in his element again.

Meanwhile, Jane and her father, along with Cecil Clayton (Jane's fiance') arrive ashore in Africa following a harrowing period on the ocean in a rowboat when their yacht founders.

Tarzan visits Opar, the fabled city of Atlantians where he dukes it out with savage men and the beautiful high priest, La.

How he and Jane reunite and Cecil's fate, as well as Tarzan claiming his birthright are all part of a story that you need to read to enjoy.

Is Burroughs the greatest writer of the 20th Century? Maybe not, but he is one of the premiere storytellers. This book is one of the most satisfying of the series. It also sets up many adventures in the next dozen, or so, books. La, Opar, Paulvitch and Rokoff are all revisited.

Take the trip- it's worth every second.

This is, to my mind, the best of the Tarzan series. If you like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" then you'll love this sequel to "Tarzan of the Apes." Like "Raiders," "The Return" is chalk full of adventure. You name it, it's got it: desert adventure, ocean cruises, spy stuff, lost cities, beautiful women, Paris, jungle adventure (naturally), evil Russian villians, etc., etc. Okay, I admit that some of the coincidences in the story are quite unbelievable, but the writing and story are so captivating that you tend to pay it no mind. "The Return" is definitive proof of why Tarzan is perhaps the greatest adventure hero of all time! I would love to see this story made into a movie!

Tarzan is back in an adventure more in tone with the remainder of the series than the original Tarzan novel. Sinister villains, lost races and beautiful priestesses are a mainstay of the series and this book introduces the best of all. Sinister villain-Nikolai Rokoff who would compromise his own sister's honor for money. Lost City-Opar, the remnant of sunken Atlantis. Beautiful priestess-La of Opar, who passionately chases our man Tarzan through several adventures.
Tarzan is marooned near his jungle home and gravitates from civilized man to savage man to ape man over the course of the story. His realization that not all Arabs are sneering villains and not all blacks are cannibalistic headhunters is a welcome relief from the stereotypes that are usual in the series.

The commercial success of E. R. Burroughs' TARZAN OF THE APES in 1914 inevitably led to what was the first in a long line of sequels, THE RETURN OF TARZAN. The first book introduced the forest god who is described so often in biological superlatives that generations of readers and critics have either thrilled to his near superhuman feats or have villified Burroughs for racist attitudes that if expressed today in a new work of fiction would be immediately classified as politically incorrect.
Burroughs' strong point as a writer was to place his hero in a series of exotic locales, then watch him interact with the natives. In TARZAN OF THE APES, this exotic locale was Africa. In THE RETURN OF TARZAN it was first Paris, then the Sahara, then a lifeboat, finally culminating in a personal favorite of Burroughs, a lost city. By the start of this sequel, Tarzan knows his lineage as an English lord, but is determined to hide that since he truly believes that his cousin, William Cecil Clayton, would make a better lord and husband for his beloved Jane. Tarzan immediately gets involved with a married Russian countess and her issues with her criminal brother and her older husband. Partly as a consequence of his interaction with the villainous brother, Nicholas Rokoff, Tarzan is lured into a room where he is attacked by a dozen Paris muggers. The scene that details this mugging is one of the great chapters in literature that focus on this topic. Tarzan is described as a jungle Hercules that fights like some impossible combination of a raging gorilla with the speed of a panther. The muggers are quickly dispatched in a manner that has since become a trademark of his. The rest of the book shows Burroughs both at his best and worst. Burroughs simply has no ear for dialogue. His characters, with Tarzan being the worst offender, speak in the courtly pseudo-dialect that Burroughs thought all lower classes believed that all upper class folk used. Tarzan fondly recalls his childhood and his foster ape mother with a friend, D'Arnot: "To you my friend, she (his foster mother) would have appeared a hideous and ugly creature, but to me she was beautiful--so gloriously does love transfigure its object." Further, readers are often annoyed at Burroughs' oversuse of coincindence to keep the plot moving. Then there is the racist element. His villains are invariably dark, swarthy, or black.
In the lost city of Opar, the women priestesses are lovely, erudite, and white. The men are deformed, apelike, and black. The high priestess, La, tells Tarzan that only the most eugenically perfect men are selected to be mates for her priestesses. In this book, as in many others, Burroughs often has some high priestess tell Tarzan that he would make a suitable choice. Clearly, Burroughs' Tarzan series was meant to be entertaining, and any potentially disturbing polemics that do not ring as politically correct today can be dismissed as the style of a man whose books have had more of an impact on nearly every culture on this planet than any other author.

If you read Tarzan of the Apes, you have to read this sequel. The first book ends with too many plot lines unresolved not to find out what happens to them.
However, that is probably the only good reason to read this book.
Burroughs is inconsistent: William Cecil Clayton, known as Cecil in the first book, is suddenly known as William in this one. Characters simply drop out of the narrative. Olga de Coude, Alexis Paulvitch, Kadour ben Saden and his daughter, the faithful Abdul: All of these characters take a central role at one point or another to simply disappear without explanation.
As for Tarzan himself, his dialogue is jarringly incongruous: "'Civilized ways, forsooth,' scoffed Tarzan. 'Jungle standards do not countenance wanton atrocities'" (p. 31). Tarzan seems to spend half the book soliloquizing and the other half getting elected king of something or other, only to go off and abandon his subjects without a word.
The Return of Tarzan is not nearly as successful as its predecessor. If you read the first book, you'll want to read this one as well to find out how things turn out. However, based on the quality of this book, I would not delve any further into the series.

That's not the whole story of course but it's an impressive part of it. Tarz renounces his family name,fortune and the woman he loves, giving it all to his cousin, and he does it all in Wisconsin! Yup, Wisconsin. Hurting from the ordeal, he heads off to Paris to forget about Jane. Wow, the Apeman in the City of Lights! So he spends time in Paris, almost has an affair with a Russian noblewoman, whups on her brother(an evil Russian spy), hangs out in art galleries and operas and eventually joins the French Secret Service out of boredom. All this is just the set-up for the rest of the novel. The book does seem to end too quickly but I think that has more to do with the serial/pulp nature of the story's publication deadline than any fault of the author. Tarzan and The Return of... are an entertaining 0ne-Two punch. Anyone who reads #1 should finish the experience by reading #2. I wish someone would make a film of this book, it's more interesting than the first one.

It’s fun to journey into the final days of the British empire and Burroughs shows you the way they saw the world. The book opens with Tarzan in Europe learning about the strange world of Europeans. He mastered English and French in a few months. Burroughs contrasts the natural dignity and honor of the Ape Man with the venality and corruption of modern man. Tarzan yearns for the natural purity and dignity of the jungle and the pure thrill of a fresh kill and raw flesh. The book tells the tale of his remarkable journey back to Eden and his incredible reunion with Jane. It’s a great anthropological expedition into the glory days of the Empire and the Noble Savage myth, told in beautiful ornate British English. Warning: suspend disbelief before embarking!

Ape Man! In this, the second book in the Tarzan series, we find Jean C. Tarzan...and, Yes, he is almost an honorary Frenchman...in Paris after rescuing Jane from a Wisconsin forest fire (TARZAN OF THE APES). While he does enjoy the nightlife there, drinking absinthe and smoking French cigarettes, there still beats the heart of a savage. This is most evident when he is attacked by apaches...violent members of the French underworld...and turns into a dangerous beast before their very eyes. There's nothing more than a good fight, except for the tender touch of Jane, to get Tarzan's blood flowing to all the necessary parts of his extremely muscular body.

From Paris, he travels to the Sahara, where he learns to speak passable Arabic (which comes in handy later on), back to his beloved African jungle, searches for gold in the ruins of the fabled Lost City of Opar, and finally returns to the small house where he was born on the coast of Darkest Africa. Along the way he encounters more villains and blood thirsty humans than you can shake a spear at. Oh, and he does manage to once again save Jane from death, and fates worse than, along the way.

Some here have said there were too many coincidences in this book for their liking. I rather enjoyed them as they took Tarzan from one perilous adventure to another seamlessly, while the reader is carried along with the Ape Man from cliffhanger to cliffhanger. This is escapist entertainment at its outrageous best. 5 Stars

This is the book in which Tarzan gets Jane. (No, he didn't get her in the first book...only in the movie.)

Interesting love triangle, made all the more interesting by Tarzan's wild adventures, some of them believable, some of them totally unbelievable, all of them capivating, exciting,and filled with action.

You always know Tarzan, as other "good guys" of this age and genre, will win in the end, but sometimes you wonder how and if he will ever get there.

Every chapter is like reading/watching one of the old serials movie theaters used to run between shows in the double featue on Satudays.

Fun read. Good read. Go for it. You will feel like a kid again---and take it from this old man---that ain't all bad!!!!!