52 in 25: #27 - Son of Tarzan

When I was a teenager, I read a bunch of the Tarzan books.  I loved them.  Edgar Rice Burroughs has a great way of having multiple stories occurring concurrently and in the end they all come together.  A couple of years ago I started to reread them, but then put them down to read others things.  I decided I wanted to tread back into Tarzan.

The next up for me was Son of Tarzan, which I know I read before, but I didn’t remember at all.  This was the 4^th of the 24 Tarzan books, published in 1915.  Of course, the funny thing of wanting to return to Tarzan is that I picked up with the only novel where he is not the main character.

Essentially, one of the apes from the previous story, Akut, is brought to London and Tarzan’s son Jack (who is around 11) befriends him.  He helps Akut escape to Africa, and then reluctantly joins Akut in the jungles of Africa until he becomes Korak, or The Killer.  Then, the story really gets going when he rescues a young Arab girl named Meriem.  By the end of the story, Korak has been in the jungle for 5-6 years.

While the story is fun, my biggest problem with it is that Tarzan and Jane (we find out towards the end of the story) have been in Africa for years but never went looking for their son.  I have a hard time believing, knowing his character, that Tarzan would not have hunted him down relatively early on.  But it has to be that way for the story to happen, so you just kind of have to go with it.

It's not the best of the Tarzan novels, but it’s still pretty good.  It definitely keeps the reader engaged and is fun, which is what it’s supposed to do.  Tarzan isn’t for everyone, but for those who like Burroughs, it’s hard to go wrong.