ERB inserts himself directly into the frame story. Much of the plot is an immensely tedious exercise in which Tanar (the characterless protagonist) and Stellara (the obligatory love interest) misunderstand each other in elementary, repetitive ways. The end of Chapter XIV has a nice description of the two suns at the polar entrance. Chapter XV figures an evocative crashed balloon. Everything ends due to a bit of light cross-dressing.

review of
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tanar of Pellucidar
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 8, 2012

I've pretty much explained my reasons for rereading any of the E. R. Burroughs "Pellucidar" series in my review of Back to the Stone Age ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2352328.Back_to_the_Stone_Age ). An additional reason not mentioned in that review is that I have hundreds of bks in piles in my bedroom awaiting reading & reviewing & reading a Pellucidar novel is an easy way to knock one more out & work in the direction of having the place be less messy. NOW, isn't that a 'bad' reason for reading something?! Just to get it out of the way?!

Tanar of Pellucidar was the 3rd in the series, Back to the Stone Age was the 5th. Despite the easy sensationalist plot basis of having the story revolve around the effects of outer-Earth technology on inner-Earth 'stone age' coupled w/ a painfully manipulative romance, I found myself enjoying this. Rereading my review of Back to the Stone Age, I was surprised to find myself making similar observations about that one - even tho I don't really remember what I read in it a mere 11 mnths later.

In the framing "Prologue": to this one, the author is sitting around w/ an inventor friend listening to a newly invented type of radio when they receive a compelling adventure story as told in something akin to Morse Code. The inventor, skeptical, is told by the author, Burroughs:

""You know, of course," he said, "that there really has been a theory of an inner world for many years."

""Yes," I replied, "I have read works expounding and defending such a theory."

""It supposes polar openings leading into the interior of the earth," said Jason.

""And it is substantiated by many seemingly irrefutable scientific facts," I reminded him - "open polar sea, warmer water farthest north, tropical vegetation floating southward from the polar regions, the northern lights, the magnetic pole, the persistent stories of the Eskimos that they are descended from a race that came from a warm country far to the north."" (p 8)

Now this bk was written in 1928 & the 1st of the series, At the Earth's Core was written in 1914. A Journey to the Earth's Interior or Have the Poles Really been Discovered by Marshall B. Gardner was written in 1913. Therefore, I have to wonder did Burroughs read Gardner's bk & was it the inspiration for the "Pellucidar" series?

In the early 1980s I was interested in Hollow Earth theories & was somewhat surprised to find that there were at least two small magazines dedicated to such things: "The Hollow Hassle" & "Shavertron" (if I remember correctly. I then organized the "Sinnit-Nut Hollow Earth Symposium" & published an audio tape from it. You can find more info about that under the "K7H" entry here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/WdmUCatalog.html . This latter was a collaboration w/ "Blaster" Al Ackerman. "Blaster" was also the one who sent me the Gardner bk.

A Journey to the Earth's Interior or Have the Poles Really been Discovered was written as a serious questioning of whether Peary actually reached the North Pole in 1909, as had been claimed. I read the Gardner bk w/ an open mind & found it to be reasonably argued. That didn't lead me to conclude that the Earth is hollow but it did lead me to like Gardner's critical & inquisitive thinking.

Back to the Burroughs bk: after the framing beginning where we're told that the story is being told thru patient & detailed key-tapping it doesn't seem to bother the author one whit that this tedious method of communication is then presented as producing 214pp of text. No matter.

Given the romance under-running the entire Pellucidar portion of the bk & the ways in wch this romance is written to frustrate the reader, it was relief for me when there was an unexpected touch of Jonathan Swift. Viz: the contrasting social philosophies & consequent social conditions between the peoples of the 2 nearby islands: Amiocap & Hime. The people of Amiocap practice free love & the people of Hime are hateful. Take this example fro the narrative of the latter:

"Tanar crossed the ledge and sat down beside her. "Do your people always quarrel like thus?" he asked.

""Always," replied Gura.

""Why?" he asked.

""I do not know," she replied. "They take their mates for life and are permitted but one and though both men and women have a choice in the selection of their mates they never seem satisfied with one another and are always quarreling, usually because neither one nor the other is faithful. [..]"" (p 143)

All in all, this was a good enuf tale & maybe someday I'll revisit the Tarzan movies that were also important to me as a child (as was Kipling's Jungle Book). Perhaps the worst part about this particular Pellucidar story was the way Burroughs rushed the ending & set up his readership for the sequel. ( )

"Tanar of Pellucidar" is the third of the seven Pellucidar novels by Burroughs. It was written many years (in fact decades) after the first two books and thus it is clear that Burroughs originally intended the Pellucidar series to only consist of two books. Pellucidar is Burroughs' inner-earth world, five hundred miles inside the earth's crust, where there is a perpetual noon-day sun and the land area is much greater than the outer earth's atmosphere. Men in the inner-earth are at the cavemen level except for those who David Innes and Perry enlightened with information they brought back in the prospector. The empire they constructed having rid themselves of the Mahars has progressed in relative peace for many years, but for the advent of someone else who has come from the outer crust and its no one you would suspect. Apparently, hundreds of years earlier, mighty pirates by accident sailed into the inner earth through a polar opening and never found their way out again. They set up a pirate or Korsair kingdom on a distant continent and loot and riot wherever they go.

In a raid upon the shoreline of the Empire, Ghak's son, Tanar, is seized among with many others and taken to Korsair City, where Tanar falls for the daughter of the Cid, the king of the pirates and must escape or rot in prison for life, knowing that the Korsairs are bent on taking on the Empire. It is yet another fabulous Burroughs adventure and written and plotted quite brilliantly. The advent of the Korsairs - a power to rival the Empire set up by Innes and Perry - is totally unexpected and simply brilliant on Burroughs' part. Who would have thought a pirate ship would be sailing upon the oceans of Pellucidar?
Highly recommended. Terrific adventure story. ( )

instead of david innes and queen diann, the two in this book are tanar and stelluva (sp). they are cqptured by the Korsairs (big, burly, whiskered men who look a lot like Vikings). A storm comes up and sets them free and they go to Stelluva's people. Then they are fighting Korsairs again, captured, then escape; fighting, capture, escape. Finally a happy ending wrapup in three pages. David Innes is there, but he is in the back, back, background. On the last page, he is in a pitch black, smelly, concrete room with a bunch of snakes. Of course, the next book will rescue him. I've read three of these in a row and it's getting old. Think I'll take a break. ( )