THE READING RHEUM: PELLUCIDAR (1915)

 I didn't mention in my review of AT THE EARTH'S CORE that the book ended with a cliffhanger in which hero David Innes ends up back on the surface, separated from the primitive interior world of Pellucidar. But compared to the suspenseful ending of A PRINCESS OF MARS, both the concept and the resolution of CORE's cliffhanger in the sequel seems lazy by comparison. It's my unsupported opinion that ERB wasn't nearly as invested in Pellucidar as he was in Barsoom and even Caspak. Certainly, throughout the remainder of PELLUCIDAR the author doesn't expand much on this pocket prehistoric cosmos.                                             

Though the sequel is just as episodic as CORE was, ERB no longer has to devote time to explaining his world, so overall there are more action set-pieces. David Innes still seems like a cypher, an incarnation of Manifest Destiny, eager to convert all the primitives to 20th-century progress. Admittedly he does this to liberate the humans from the ravening Mahars, though these ruthless reptiles only appear a couple of times in PELLUCIDAR. Dian the Beautiful isn't improved by more narrative-time either. She almost gets a Xena-moment as seen in the Roy Krenkel cover above, but exigent circumstances sideline her potential as a heroine. Her best character-moment may be indirectly explaining how she never got raped during her captivity by the villainous Hooja, revealing to Innes that she still has on her person a poison that would have prevented "the fate worse than death." The novel holds a smattering of okay character moments for the various humans Innes encounters. Still, the most involving scenes in the book involve Innes taming a savage hyenanodon as if it were a surface-dog. When a book is more interested in the hero's dog than in his lady love, there's a problem.                                                   

   I must admit that I forgot what a threat Hooja was since I last read this novel. He and Innes share no scenes here, and Hooja was mostly offstage throughout the first book after Innes beat him up for getting grabby with Dian. But compared to a lot of weakling villains in ERB, Hooja does his enemy a lot of damage. He's not any better characterized than Innes and Dian, and his being offstage lessens his impact. But he's smart enough (unlike most humans of the pocket world) to recognize the nature of the science-marvels that Innes and his elderly buddy Abner Perry bring to Pellucidar, and to copy those marvels to garner power for himself. Hooja is apparently slain at the end of this book, but I guess I won't know if ERB really knocked off one of his better villains until I finish the PELLUCIDAR series.                             

  Due to his prolonged absence since the end of the first novel, Innes spends most of this book trying to unite all the human tribes against the Mahars, though ERB's idea of diplomatic relations always a consists of saving this or that tribal member from peril. After lots of episodic dangers, Innes gets the chance to consolidate his empire in the last twenty pages, though the author is smart enough to let some of the evil reptiles escape capture/death. From peeking at the next book in the series, I know that Innes' empire gets torn down almost as quickly, though he's restored to his throne at the end of the fourth in the series, TARZAN AT THE EARTH'S CORE. I suspect the other three books may be more one-offs than part of a greater continuity.               

   In my review of CORE I speculated that ERB probably wouldn't re-use the tailed Black monkey-men, and PELLUCIDAR shows I was half-right. The monkey-men never come on stage again, but when Innes runs into a tribe of hairy white men whose eyes are supposedly like those of sheep (?), ERB has Innes compare the two tribes in his mind. The hero notes that the Black people didn't seem to have a real language, but they did have civilized habits not seen in any of the White tribes, like building huts and holding livestock. The sheep-eyed people have a language, but they seem pretty dumb otherwise. They occupy the top of an escarpment, and when their tribe is attacked by invaders coming up the mountainside, Innes has to point out that the sheep-guys ought to toss rocks down onto their enemies' heads. Clearly ERB had no agenda in describing all of his imaginary evolutionary quirks. His approach would be best likened to the fantasists of Marco Polo's day, who would spin stories of tribes in Asia with all sorts of bizarre nonhuman aspects. In these books, it seems that ERB only wanted to divert his audience-- though I'll only be sure when I make my way through the last three in the series.