The Guardian is offering a free extract from The New Adventures of Tarzan by Andy Briggs
Andy Brigg’s “The New Adventures of Tarzan” is a modern day Tarzan tale authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc, and The Guardian is now offering a free extract which is well worth a read. Here is the link to the Guardian’s chapter. Also, Andy has put a post up on his site which talks about why the book was delayed in getting to America … interesting.
2 comments
Fun story! The dynamics between Tarzan and the mangani feel very familiar and ERB-esque. As a modernization, it is not surprising that the Great Apes have been changed from a fantasy species to their closest real-world equivalent, gorillas.
Apparently either the author hasn’t bothered to read the original Burroughs stories, or he is writing a story based on the Disney animated movies. The Mangani, or great apes, who adopted and raised Tarzan are not and never have been gorillas. They were portrayed as being much larger, more powerful, and more intelligent and manlike than gorillas. In fact, in the original stories, gorillas, or Bolgani and Tarzan’s great apes were described as natural enemies. The Mangani ATE the smaller and less powerful Bolgani. Tarzan’s first use of his dead father’s hunting knife was, at the age of 12, to kill an attacking gorilla in self defense, and he later used it to cut off a portion of another gorilla that the great apes were eating.
I’ll be willing to bet that Mr Briggs either portrays his version of Tarzan as being primarily a vegetarian or cooking any game that he takes for food, and swinging on vines like Johnny Weissmuller.
Apparently, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc is more interested in royalties than in maintaining the integrity of their founder’s most well known character.