In the previous book, At The Earth's Core, David Innes has been tricked. He ends up back on the surface of our own world, his beloved wife Dian replaced by a vile, winged-crocodile like Mahar. Determined to once again return to the underground world of Pellucidar and get his wife back, he turns his digging machine downward, to dig back through the hundred miles of Earth's crust, to land once more in Pellucidar. He finds himself lost, miles away from any recognizable landmark. Soon he encounters his old friend Perry, who tells him that Hooja the Sly One has told Dian that David has left their land for good, that he has another wife and that he never meant to take Dian with him. The empire that Innes built, peaceful and solid, is crushed by infighting and the determination of the Mahar people to do away with humanity for good. Innes and Perry set off on foot, well-armed, to find Dian, and then, to reforge Innes' empire.Pellucidar is short partially because Edgar Rice Burroughs often skims over events."I shall not weary you with the repetition of the countless adventures of our long search. Encounters with wild beasts of gigantic size were of almost daily occurrence..."Rather than being a negative -- how many times can you describe killing a wild beast? -- it works well with the story, giving you a sense that a great deal is happening, a lot of ground and time being covered, without having to suffer through it all. This method of writing works particularly well because of the framing Burroughs uses. In the beginning, we start not with Innes, but with the writer who set down Innes' previous story for our enjoyment, and a self-styled world wanderer who had found -- of all things -- a buried yet active telegraph key in the Sahara desert. They meet there and immediately the telegraph operator, Downes, finds out that they're talking to David Innes himself, and thus, through a telegraph wires suspended through the Earth's crust, they manage to get the whole of his story, "Practically in his own words." So it is little wonder that he, in his autobiographical narrative, is more than eager to skim the traveling and skip to the good stuff.There is plenty of that. Pellucidar is a realm of incredible imagination. The horizon curves up, and, save for in one very special place, the sun is always high. Even further down, beneath the surface of Pellucidar, the winged Mahar live in intricate social groups, while above them human kind tries to rise above its -- literally -- stone age attitudes. The landscape is beautiful and exotic, and constantly changing. A favorite place for me was the Land of Awful Shadow, with its hauntingly beautiful pendant moon.The story is never slow as Innes and his friends travel through these places, fighting savage animals and savage humans, often meeting up with friends at just the right time. Sometimes Innes' luck is too good. I find it hard to imagine Perry whipping up an ocean fleet out of hardly any materials with the ease you or I would cook a TV dinner, but it's so well conceived, so fast paced that your doubts disappear almost before you can conceive them.This actual edition of Pellucidar has some high points. I found the forward, by Jack McDevitt and the afterward Phillip R. Burger to be quite illuminating, and the pictures were lovely. J. Allen St. John's style is wonderful, like Boris Vallejo with a Victorian feel.Originally posted at the SF Site: http://www.sfsite.com/04b/pl150.htm
"Ikuisen päivän maa" on suoraan jatkoa "Maan uumenissa" kirjalle. Näissä seikkailukirjoissa on taukoamatta toimintaa ja kaikki ”turhat” suvantovaiheet on jätetty pois. Lyhyisiin kirjoihin on mahdutettu uskomaton määrä tapahtumia. Sännätään kriisistä toiseen kuin päättömät kanat ja vihollisia tapetaan hymyssä suin ja tunnontuskista kärsimättä. Naiskuva Pellucidar sarjassa ei ole tyystin avuton tyttönen vaan sankarin rakastettu on puolivilli taistelija, jota sankari David Innes palvoo. Siltikin sankari joutuu tavan tästä vaimoaan pelastamaan. Tekstiin heijastuva kirjoitusajankohdan maailmankuva, joka poikkeaa melkoisesti nykyisestä, pistää välillä hymyilyttämään. Syvällisyyttähän näistä tarinoista on turha hakea, mutta jonkun näköisen opetuksen poikasen ne sisältävät. Kirjat sopivat luettavaksi hyvin sellaiseen ajankohtaan, kun ei jaksa mitään haastavampaa lukea. Oma viehätyksensä näissä vanhoissa tarinoissa on ja niitä lukee ihan mielellään.
What do You think about Pellucidar (2002)?
Pellucidar is a “Journey to the Center of the Earth” style pulp novel featuring the American explorer David Innes who battles cave men and lizard creatures to rescue his love interest, the beautiful Dian (who seems incapable of preventing being captured by enemies again and again).Burroughs is a master of the cheesy, pulp, serialized genre. The book has most of the elements you’d expect from it's day – battles, cliff hangers, cultural insensitivity, misogyny, violence, action, tight jams and escapes. Basically, it has everything you'd expect, except for a good story-line. The result comes off as a ho-hum, formulaic, here-we-go-again, arbitrary conflict, all-to-predictable resolution, silly mess that would only be made bearable if coupled with the sarcastic commentary of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 robots (if only they reviewed books).
—Todd Martin
Really not sure about this one. I'm pretty lukewarm on Burroughs much of the time, and on this one I'm more luke than warm. I love Hollow Earth stuff but here it's just all kind of dull and blockheaded. It feels like more of the same, after reading some of the Mars books and other Burroughs works.My biggest problem with Burroughs, though, is that it's all tell-don't-show. I don't mind it that much some of the time, but when the telling is his weird wonky worldbuilding stuff that doesn't really make any sense, it kinda leaves me cold.I love it for history's sake, but I'm left rolling my eyes a lot.
—Thomas
Like all Edgar Rice Burroughs books this story revolved around a normal earth man in a bizarre world trying to rescue a kidnapped princess. You would think the premise would bore me by now, but sadly, it doesn't. However this book gets a two star rating because of it's horrendously bad coincidental plot devices and conflicts that take a chapter or three to resolve but one sentence to create. And one more thing, you would think Burroughs heroes would learn to leave a night watch for as often as they get captured, kidnapped, or robbed for the lack there of.
—Nicholas Hansen
