Tarzan the Untamed

Tarzan the Untamed was published in 1920 and is the seventh book in the sequence. The novel was written during and immediately after the First World War, and the war provides the entire setting. German colonial soldiers attack Tarzan’s plantation, kill or appear to kill Jane, and burn the place down. Tarzan, in a state of grief and rage that the book treats seriously, declares war on the German East African colonial forces and spends most of the novel hunting them through the African bush.

The revenge plot is more violent than the earlier Tarzan books, and Burroughs’s depiction of the German antagonists has not aged well. The second half of the novel turns into a more conventional lost-civilization adventure, with Tarzan stumbling into the previously unknown city of Xuja, populated by sun-worshipping descendants of refugees from somewhere ancient and lost. The discovery that Jane may not actually be dead resolves the revenge arc by the end. A grim but well-paced entry. One of the most action-driven Tarzan books.