Tanar of Pellucidar, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Rating: 2
Pages: 250

Tanar of Pellucidar is another perfunctory Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, which is to say it's exciting but forgettable. In the hollow inner-Earth world of Pellucidar, David Innes rules over a savage empire. His empire is attacked by mysterious pirates called Korsars. Tanar is taken captive. He wins a reprieve from death by promising to teach his captors the secret to gunpowder.

Tanar has no intention of teaching them to make gunpowder. Instead, he escapes with the lady Stellara, an Amiocapan woman who grew up among the Korsars. They have numerous adventures, are recaptured, escape again, are recapture, escape again, etc. As so often happens to ERB's characters, Tanar and Stellara fall in love but don't realize it until it's nearly too late.

The most interesting villains are the Coripies, known in Amiocap as the Buried People. These subhuman fiends live underground and feast on human flesh. No one captured by the Coripies has ever escaped--until now, of course.

Tanar of Pellucidar doesn't hold a candle to any of the Barsoom stories.