According to Wikipedia, this book represents Burroughs at the height of his writing powers and is one of the strongest in the Tarzan series. I'd half agree with that -- part of this book was a tight and interesting adventure with a well-developed sci-fi aspect, but the other half was a dragging and predictable trudge with some pretty ugly views on gender roles.
Our adventure starts when Tarzan (in full Lord Greystoke mode) insists on flying the small plane his son taught him how to pilot on a mega-solo adventure over the African plains. His son protests that he should at least bring a mechanic with him, but Tarzan is pretty stubborn and goes up by himself. He loses track of time and space and ends up crash-landing in an isolated part of the country that is surrounded by an impenetrable ring of thorn bushes (this set up really reminded me of the Oz books!).
Within this ring, two separate races had evolved: the Alali and the Minunians. Tarzan first meets with the Alali, a race of non-verbal Neanderthals where the women are strong and aggressive and the men are scared weaklings who hide alone in the jungle eating roots and waiting for a woman to capture them for some violent mating.
As Burroughs puts it: "The hideous life of the Alalus was the natural result of the unnatural reversal of sex dominance. It is the province of the male to initiate love and by his masterfulness to inspire first respect, then admiration in the breast of the female he seeks to attract. Love itself developed after these other emotions. The gradually increasing ascendency of the female Alalus over the male eventually prevented the emotions of respect and admiration for the male from being aroused, with the result that love never followed.
"Having no love for her mate and having become a more powerful brute, the savage Alalus woman soon came to treat the members of the opposite sex with contempt and brutality with the result that the power, or at least the desire, to initiate love ceased to exist in the heart of the male—he could not love a creature he feared and hated, he could not respect or admire the unsexed creatures that the Alali women had become, and so he fled into the forests and the jungles and there the dominant females hunted him lest their race perish from the earth." (Chapter 3)
Sigh.
Tarzan is captured by an Alali woman while he is unconscious from the plane crash, but ends up escaping from her cave with one of her sons, who he teaches to use a bow and arrow and generally stand up for himself around jungle animals.
One day, when wandering around and exploring on his own, Tarzan comes across an Alali woman attacking a small group of very small men (about 1/4 the size of a regular human) riding little antelopes. He saves the men, including Prince Komodoflorensal of the Trohanadalmakus (the names!) and is taken back to their city and treated as a hero. He gets to know and admire their structured and war-like (and ant-like) society and truly enjoys the company of the prince and the king.
One day, during a raid from a rival group of Minunians, Tarzan is overwhelmed by the small warriors, taken prisoner, and made into a slave back in their town. This second group of small people happen to have a scientist in their ranks who is trying to learn the secret of making small men big, but who so far has only succeeded in making big men small, which he proceeds to do to Tarzan. There are some pretty great adventure sequences as Tarzan and the prince (who was also captured) escape from slavery and take a sweet slave girl with them.
Sprinkled through the detailed descriptions of the Minunians and their society is some prohibition / WWI enhanced political debate:
"'In theory, but not in fact,' replied Gefasto. 'It is true that the rich pay the bulk of the taxes into the treasury of the king, but first they collect it from the poor in higher prices and other forms of extortion, in the proportion of two jetaks for every one that they pay to the tax collector. The cost of collecting this tax added to the loss in revenue to the government by the abolition of wine and the cost of preventing the unscrupulous from making and selling wine illicitly would, if turned back into the coffers of the government, reduce our taxes so materially that they would fall as a burden upon none.'
"'And that, you think, would solve our problems and restore happiness to Veltopismakus?' asked Gofoloso.
"'No,' replied his fellow prince. 'We must have war. As we have found that there is no enduring happiness in peace or virtue, let us have a little war and a little sin. A pudding that is all of one ingredient is nauseating —it must be seasoned, it must be spiced, and before we can enjoy the eating of it to the fullest we must be forced to strive for it. War and work, the two most distasteful things in the world, are, nevertheless, the most essential to the happiness and the existence of a people. Peace reduces the necessity for labor, and induces slothfulness. War compels labor, that her ravages may be effaced. Peace turns us into fat worms. War makes men of us.'" (Chapter 10)
Eventually, Tarzan heads back to the real world, but before he crosses the thorny barrier, he meets up with his Alalus friend. Things have really changed for their society since Tarzan entered the picture:
"Very proud, the son of The First Woman explained to Tarzan as best he could the great change that had come upon the Alali since the ape-man had given the men weapons and the son of The First Woman had discovered what a proper use of them would mean to the males of his kind. Now each male had a woman cooking for him—at least one, and some of them—the stronger—had more than one.
"To entertain Tarzan and to show him what great strides civilization had taken in the land of the Zertalacolols, the son of The First Woman seized a female by the hair and dragging her to him struck her heavily about the head and face with his clenched fist, and the woman fell upon her knees and fondled his legs, looking wistfully into his face, her own glowing with love and admiration." (Chapter 21)
Double sigh.
I love Burroughs and I can accept that my modern eyes are going to be stung a bit by the casual racism and sexism that trots through all his books (and particularly his Tarzan books), but the sub-plot of the Alali was a little too much, even for a mega-fan. Still, the good stuff is super good and if you can power through the cringeworthy parts, this is a pretty great example of the power of Burroughs.
[Want to read the whole thing but weren't the lucky friend who got my duplicate copy? No prob, Bob, check it out here for free.]
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