A review by topdragon
Tarzan and the Ant Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

4.0

The tenth Tarzan novel revolves around another lost civilization that Tarzan discovers, this time after he crash lands an airplane. Actually, there are two lost civilizations. One is a race of large female-dominated people and one is the titular ant-men consisting of small pygmy-like folks. These are not small villages but rather cities of thousands of people. Tarzan has plenty of adventure among both groups including getting captured, escaping, leading battles, and even encountering his own look-alike from previous books, Esteban Miranda. Jane puts in a cameo appearance, being in England at the beginning of the story.

For fans of this series, it’s a pretty decent Tarzan yarn but you will have to wade through a fairly large amount of world building and corresponding info dumps. ERB obviously spent some time working out the two cultures and especially the complex system of buildings and structures that make up the ant people’s city. Also complicating matters are the long, complicated names of the characters such as Veltopismakus, Komodoflorensal, Trohanadalmakus, and Elkomoelhago. If ERB was getting paid by the word, then he certainly did himself a disservice with these long names.

So yes, a decent Tarzan entry for veterans but not the place to start for readers curious about Tarzan novels.