So entertained with Tarzan of the Apes, I put it down and immediately picked up Return to continue the story. Written in 1915, it is a direct sequel that answers many questions, so it's best to have read the first book.
Return begins in surprising way. Tarzan, now in his early twenties, is on a boat back to Paris when he gets involved with a gambling and blackmail ring complete with a pretty young Countess and a villain swearing vengeance. Back in Paris he enlists the help of his lieutenant friend, and challenges the fiend to a duel. Tarzan then takes a job as a special agent in Algeria(!) with several sequences of him rescuing enslaved women and even being taken out into the desert to be killed! Exciting desert adventures, but this wasn't what I expected and I longed to get back to the jungle.
After 100 pages of that however, the story kicks into high gear as Tarzan accidentally meets up with the French villain on a ship bound for Cape Town and is thrown overboard in the night and left for dead. Jane has also returned to Cape Town, and is on a cruise with her father when her ship goes down. All the characters are dispersed but oddly end up in the same jungle area where they met many years ago.
Return is filled with crossed storylines and cliffhangers, a real adventure. How they all find one another involves Tarzan fighting ivory poachers with the Waziri tribe and even becoming their leader, the discovery of Opar - the legendary lost city of gold, both Tarzan and Jane being kidnapped by beast men for sacrifice on a bloody altar by the High Priestess of the Sun, and the return to Opar to loot the gold vaults. Shall I go on?
The Return of Tarzan is jam-packed with action. After a slow beginning, it is a terrific finale to the story started in the first novel, with Tarzan and Jane finally free to get together, a reunion of old friends and the nasty villain from Paris - still bothering Tarzan - getting his cumuppance.
The fifth book in the series is Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, written in 1916, so it looks like we are going back to the mysterious temples of the Sun worshippers again to fight the beast people sometime in the future. Exciting stuff.
Highly entertaining and recommended.
1915 / Hardcover / 365 pages
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