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3.0 out of 5 stars
David explores stereotype reversals in Pellucidar, Nov 28 2003
"The Land of Terror" was the sixth of seven novels in the Pellucidar series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and is rather unique in that it was never published in magazine form having been rejected by all of ERB's publishers. Instead ERB, Inc. published the book in 1944, although clearly there are five "parts" to the novel that would have worked as a magazine serial. The result is one of the most disjointed Burroughs novels and the low point in the Pellucidar series. In "The Land of Terror" the focus returns to David Innes, who is rather surprised to learn that he has been living in Pellucidar for 36 years, although he still looks like a young man of about 20. In all that time Abner Perry has brought such wonders of civilization as gunpowder and sailing ships, and now he is working on poison gas. The first adventure has Innes being captured by the women of the village of Oog, who have reversed the traditional gender stereotypes. The second takes Innes to the land of the Jukans, where he is captured by this most bizarre race and forced to make mud pies (no idea what point ERB is making with these crazy society, especially when David declares his name is Napoleon Bonaparte). The third deals with the love story between David's companion, Zor, and Zeeto, while David is off trying to rescue Dian the Beautiful (again) and makes friends with a mastodon. The fourth part of the story has David captured by the giant 6-foot long ants. The final story takes place on Ruva, the Floating Island, where, once again, David ends up a slave. The people of Ruva are black and have white slaves, so there is a racial flip that bookends the opening gender flip. The point this time is that the black masters treat their white slaves better than what happened in human history in the outer world. The lake of a comprehensive narrative and the repetitive capturing of David Innes easily explain why ERB's usual publishers were not interested in this Pellucidar novel, which is the weakest of the series. There are some philosophical sections to "The Land of Terror," where Innes thinks deep thoughts about how 20th century inventions are making human beings so dependent that they are becoming more helpless than their ancestors. But there are also sections where Burroughs gets caught up in describing the animal life of Pellucidar while he comes up with the next place for David Innes to be held captor. Actually, Dina the Beautiful comes out better in her brief appearance in the early part of the story, before she also becomes an unwilling captor.
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