Joseph’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2012)

Joseph’s comments from the Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" group.

I finished Flight to Opar and found it (and the preceding volume), eh, fine, but decided I didn't need to continue on with the series at this point. (I don't know the precise story, but the third volume, The Song of Kwasin, was partially written by Farmer, then completed with his blessing by Christopher Paul Carey, who's gone on to write several more volumes in the series.)

I admit I've never read any of the Wold-Newton stuff, so was a bit surprised when (view spoiler)[Tarzan, having traveled back in time (hide spoiler)] turned up as a two thousand year old immortal in the first Opar book.

The thing that interests me most is that two of the volumes were written by Charles de Lint, which seems pretty far from the sort of thing he usually writes. But especially after that review, I'm probably not interested enough to actually read them.

Another Humble Bundle with another tranche of Drizzt Do'Urden books, most of which were not included in the first bundle.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/sa...

Me!

And on to Flight to Opar, which I assume will take place (unlike the first book) at least partially within the city of Opar.

Me! They're lovely, lovely things.

And, having prepared by reading the first several Tarzan books, I'm now beginning Hadon of Ancient Opar.

My Tarzan journey has taken me to Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, which strikes me as a good stopping point -- these days, four or five Tarzans in a row starts to approach overload, although I'm still enjoying them.

Phil wrote: "A great pity about the removal of those introductory materials in the books - some of them were wonderfully eerie and really added to the Carter mystique."

Yeah, I'd say they were actually pretty integral to the stories, and were probably removed by someone who didn't actually read them, but just made assumptions based on the fact that they were called "forewords" -- other books kept the framing devices if they were just included as part of the first numbered chapter or something. Hoping that ERB, Inc., will give us good versions of the Barsoom books as well as the Tarzan books.

Speaking of which, finished The Return of Tarzan last night and will be starting The Beasts of Tarzan today.

I had a complete set (a mishmash of various editions) and then lost most? all? of them (along with the bottom couple shelves from all of my bookcases) when my parents' sump pump failed in the floods in 1993 and they got a foot of water in the basement (where my room and most of my stuff was, although I personally was off in grad school at the time). I did manage to replace them all eventually.

The one that I really regret was one of those 1950s Grossett & Dunlap hardcovers



although it didn't have a dust jacket or anything and was pretty beat up.

Happily, all of my Barsoom books survived -- I think they were on a shelf just above the waterline? Or maybe they were part of the books I'd taken with me to grad school?

Oh, and if anyone is interested, the first four volumes in the Authorized Library edition of Tarzan are now available for preorder on Kindle at a mere $3.95 each, supposed to be released next Tuesday.

Which yes, I know that most or all of Burroughs' stuff is floating around in an assortment of free or inexpensive eBook editions already, but these should be less error-ridden than your average "we ripped this from Gutenberg" editions on Amazon.

And it'll be the first good official Burroughs eBooks -- when the John Carter movie came out, Disney did a three-volume compilation of all 11 Barsoom books, but they were fatally flawed because some ignoramus decided they didn't need to include all of Burroughs' Introductions and Forewords, which are actually integral parts of the framing story of how ERB first laid hands on Carter's manuscripts.

(Yes, I'm still upset about that.)

You could probably fix the whole thing if you assumed 1888 was a typo for 1868, but I don't know what other parts of the story that would invalidate -- it nothing else, Monsieur Jean Tarzan could not be driving a powerful motorcar across Wisconsin at the end of the first book.

The Beasts of Tarzan is one I don't remember as vividly as some of the others, possibly because it wasn't one of the ones they had at the public library when I was young, so I didn't read it as much? For me, the standouts are Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, Tarzan the Terrible (dinosaurs!), Tarzan and the Golden Lion (Jal-Bad-Ja!), and Tarzan and the Lost Empire (Romans!). Plus that lengthy sequence in which every book involved either Tarzan getting conked on the head and getting amnesia, or someone else getting conked on the head and thinking he was Tarzan.

Which isn't to say it's not a great read if you just don't pay too much attention to the dates.

Well, per the original book, Tarzan was born in 1888 or 1889 and he met Jane in 1908 or 1909, and I think it was another year or two before they actually tied the knot; and in Son of Tarzan (published around 1915), their son is born, runs away at age ... 10? and is not reunited with his parents until he's fully grown; and in later books he's mentioned as spending time on the front lines in the Great War. So there was something wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey going on there.

Cindy wrote: "The Son of Tarzan is a cracking read."

Yep! Although it's also the one that breaks the timeline irreparably.

And blew through Tarzan of the Apes in about 24 hours and immediately progressed to The Return of Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs Authorized Library #2 .

Same! So many Alan Dean Foster paperbacks ...

And these two in particular were extremely influential on me:

The Joy of Erudition wrote: "So you're doing what I considered too daunting, and you're even starting from the beginning. I already read the first Tarzan book earlier this year, but I thought reading four more of them to prope..."

Yeah, it's not entirely inconceivable that I'll give up earlier than that; and there's no way that I'd ever try to read all 24 Tarzan novels straight through these days, but I did reread all 11 Barsoom books last fall.

S.wagenaar wrote: "I recently purchased a mint, compete run of the Tarzan novels; the black Ballantine editions with cover art by Boris and Neal Adams..."

Nice! I do have them all in paperback, but it's a mishmash of different, mostly Ballantine, editions, mostly the black covers.

When I was growing up, I had to content myself with whatever random titles I could find on the shelves at the library. Particular favorites were Tarzan and the Golden Lion and Tarzan and the Lost Empire. Tarzan at the Earth's Core (Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, #13) was always kind of a white whale -- I think it had spotty availability because Ace had publishing rights for Pellucidar.

(And then, years later, when I did get a copy, it was complicated to figure out how to read it -- I ended up reading all of the preceding Tarzan books, then switching gears to Pellucidar. Even harder to deal with than Michael Moorcock's occasional Eternal Champion crossovers.)

Since ERB, Inc. is reissuing all of Burroughs' books in new, uniform hardcovers and since I'm planning on reading Farmer's Opar books for the current group read, I decided to begin with Tarzan of the Apes and, assuming all goes well, continue on to Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar just to kind of set the stage.

First time I've read Tarzan in 30 years, plus or minus. This should be ... interesting.