Tarzan And The Valley Of Gold!

I have been wanting to read Fritz Leiber's Tarzan and the Valley of Gold for many decades. Back in the early 1990's I took it upon myself to read as much of the Edgar Rice Burroughs canon as I could get my mitts on. I read about Barsoom, Caspak, Pellucidar, Amtor, and other distant worlds. I followed Tarzan as he trekked across a mythical Africa finding lost fragments of ancient civilizations and dinosaurs to boot. But at the end of that expansive Tarzan saga, some of it published after ERB's demise, I still had another "official" Tarzan tale to read and that was Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, written by Justin Leiber in conjunction with the Sy Weintraub production of the same name starring the freshly minted Mike Henry as the Ape Man. I'd seen the movie, but I'd head that the novel was so much more. The trouble was I couldn't find a copy in those pre-internet days as it had never been reprinted since its initial appearance as the twenty-fifth Tarzan novel from Ballantine Books. I looked a bit but found nothing, so I nursed my disappointment and moved on to other interests. 

Then I ran across the information that the folks officially tending to ERB's creations were putting out new authorized editions of the novels as well as the entirety of ERB's prodigious output and as part of that at long last Tarzan and the Valley of Gold would be reprinted. I snatched up a copy as soon as I was able but then it lingered awaiting the ideal time for me to crack its covers. That time has come and I'm happy to report it's a compelling narrative starring our favorite King of the Jungle. It captures the glories of a robust ERB tale but still has that singular Fritz Leiber flavor. 

The movie presents the bare bones of the story that Leiber tells in the novel. Tarzan is sent for to come to Brazil to help protect an ancient Incan civilization from a properly crazed villain named Vinaro. Tarzan attempts to save a young boy from that culture who has penetrated the mountain perimeter and has been captured by the bad guys. Tarzan saves him and finds the lost city and is able to turn aside the villains despite their advanced hardware. The movie is an attempt to give Tarzan a little of the James Bond glamour and it does so well enough. But the novel attempts to do so much more. 

There are several scenes in the novel not in the movie such as a wild gun fight in a car wash and an entire chapter dedicated to a bullfight, one which Tarzan performs in a style more akin ancient Crete than modern Spain. In the movie this is replaced by a giant Coke prop which is dropped on a baddie. In the novel we get much about the philosophy of the lost people and how they hold life so sacred that they'd prefer to die than to kill. They almost get their wish, but Leiber is adept at keeping a nice depth to the contending attitudes. The novel took me a few moments to get into, not uncommon for a Leiber novel I've found. I have to get my mind in a particular zone but once that's accomplished, I found the story began to run at an exceedingly comfortable pace. If you've seen the movie, the final battles to protect the valley are much different in the novel and much more satisfying. The villains are badder and more complex and the motivations of everyone, Tarzan included, have deft angles to them. 

I highly recommend Tarzan and the Valley of Gold for all Tarzan fans, and I'm delighted that it lived up to my expectations after so many years. 

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