ERB's Tarzan

[Finarvyn]

I used to own the whole set of Tarzan books in paperback. The black covers with Boris (?) artwork. Sadly, I didn't read most of them and got rid of the books in one of my many bookshelf purges.

Recently, I found an omnibus of books 1-3 through Barnes & Noble. Read them. Enjoyed them.

Now I am pondering if I want to re-acquire the series, but I'm worried about the thought that Tarzan may be sort of repetitive after 20+ books. Barsoom is awesome, but only for half as many volumes (#11 is just strange).

Has anyone read the whole series of Tarzan? Worth my time, or should I just read some and ignore the rest?

[raymond]

I remember reading all of them in a compilation about 25 years ago. I don't remember many specifics from the stories but I do remember enjoying them the one time through. I did the same with Sherlock Holmes too. I found the original Conan stories too. Those were fun. The sword & sorcery era is a bit different than the post-Tolkien influenced writings. I'm getting off track now.... I haven't read the John Carter series, just the first book which I thought was good but didn't interest me enough to check out the rest of that series.

[stevemitchell]

I've read all the Tarzan books, most of them multiple times. Tarzan's Africa is not as "fantastic" as Barsoom or Amtor, but I think Tarzan is a more interesting character, psychologically speaking, than John Carter, Carthoris, Vad Varo, etc. Fin, at the very least, you should go on and read Tarzan the Untamed and Tarzan the Terrible, which comprise the Tarzan family's epic adventures in World War I Africa. Two of ERB's finest novels!