Tarzan the Magnificent

Tarzan the Magnificent was published in 1939 and is a fix-up of two earlier magazine novellas. The first half, originally Tarzan and the Magic Men, involves the kingdoms of Kaji and Zuli, two warring African states ruled by women, both descended from the same original European explorers. The women of each kingdom have inherited racially marked features from the original founders. Tarzan stumbles into the conflict and is taken captive by both sides in turn.

The second half, originally Tarzan and the Elephant Men, follows Tarzan and a young woman named Stanley Wood (yes, the same name as a different character in Tarzan and the City of Gold; Burroughs occasionally reused names without continuity) into the country of the elephant-riding Onthar warriors. The two halves are loosely stitched together by Tarzan’s continuing journey. Burroughs’s late-career fix-up novels are sometimes uneven, but this one has some of the more imaginative African inventions of the entire series.