I probably read this originally when I was 13 or so when I read 17 Edgar Rice Burroughs bks back-to-back. Then I stopped reading his work b/c I thought it was too unsophisticated & trashy. When I 1st posted this to GoodReads I gave it a 3 star rating. Now I've reread it & I've lowered that to a 2 star rating. Despite that, I have to admit that I enjoyed reading it, I just wdn't make much of a claim for it as highly imaginative or great writing. It took me a few hrs to read & when I was younger & had more time for such things I may've read as much as 3 bks a day to 3 bks a wk - so reading 17 E. R. Burroughs bks wdn't've been much of an extraordinary accomplishment.

I've recently had the desire to reread bks that were important to me as a kid b/c my friend Alan Davies interviewed me & asked me about what bks influenced me in those days & it got me to thinking about them again. I'll probably reread some Hardy Boys too. What interests me the most about such rereadings is the rediscovery of what I can still identify w/ in these bks. Burroughs' protagonist, Lieutenant von Horst, has a sense of humor in a world where his type of humor makes no sense to the general barbarity. Reading this conflict of mindsets was one of the bigger delights of reading this for me.

Burroughs uses the barbarity of Pellucidar as a context in wch the protagonist's ethics can shine forth as desirable. "Von", as the protagonist comes to be known, is constantly putting the good of others above simple self-servingness. Instead of just escaping slavery alone, he leads all the slaves to escape. In Pellucidar, the tribal norm is to murder anyone not of the same tribe. Von works counter to this by making friends from various tribes - who, eventually, work for his own good as well. Von's befriending of a woolly mammoth is the most spectacular instance of this.

Now that I've written this brief review, I've upped the star rating to 3 again! My fascination w/ stories of the Hollow Earth no doubt originated w/ the Pellucidar series & w/ Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. For that alone, at least, I thank Edgar Rice Burroughs. ( )

Pellucidar series # 5 ( )

During the events of Tarzan At The Earth's Core, the German Von Horst is seperated from the Tarzan's party by a stampede of prehistoric animals. On his own, Von Horst is captured by a flying reptile, paralyzed and left for a hatchling's first meal. Escaping the nest and rescuing a fellow captive, the german makes his way across Pellucidar finding unrequited love and adventure (It is a Burroughs novel). ( )

Seems all Mister Burroughs does is change the names of the hero and heroine in each book, dreams up a few more strange creatures and does the steady page-turning stories of being attacked, being rescued or saved by the breath of a zanth, and the develope of "true love." I'd like to have met La-Ja, the heroine in this one. She has spunk, and of course, is the perfect mate for Helmit Von Horst, the Aryan German of the tale. (One wonders if Burroughs was a secretive Nazi sympathizer in WWII?) ( )

A young man is stranded in Pellucidar, the savage land at the earth's core.

This is a fairly typical Burroughs offering. It features many of his usual tricks: a talented hero trapped in a strange land, an episodic plot, lots of action, a strange creature that befriends the hero, and an otherworldly young woman who seems to loathe the man who loves her. Essentially, it's A Princess of Mars in Pellucidar.

Unfortunately, it's not nearly as good as Princess. It's fun, make no mistake, but it falls rather flat. The characters aren't too engaging. Burroughs's usually elegant prose, (always a bit more stilted when he's working in third person rather than first), doesn't add much to the tale. The episodic plot gets a little old after a while.

On the bright side, this is largely a stand-alone story, despite its connection to the rest of the Pellucidar series. Other than two brief points at the very beginning and at the end, this has little to do with the core series of books. The world is fully fleshed out and is introduced in such a way that the reader can pick up everything she needs to know as the story progresses. There's no reason that you'd need to read the rest of the Pellucidar books before tackling this one... but really, I can't imagine why you'd want to jump in right here. This is far from ERB's best work. You'd be better off starting with Tarzan of the Apes, A Princess of Mars or, if you're really into journeys to the centre of the earth, At the Earth's Core.

Recommended for hardcore ERB fans and those who've enjoyed the rest of the Pellucidar books. Others, look elsewhere in his bibliography for something of better quality. ( )