best Tarzan novels?


Which should one read besides the first one?

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[deleted]

Here's my list of the best, the average, and the worst:

Best:

1) Tarzan of the Apes
2) The Return of Tarzan
3) Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
4) Tarzan the Untamed
5) Tarzan and the Golden Lion
6) Tarzan and the Ant Men
7) Tarzan at the Earth's Core
8) Tarzan the Invincible
9) Tarzan and the City of Gold
10) Tarzan's Quest

Average:

1) The Beasts of Tarzan
2) The Son of Tarzan
3) Jungle tales of Tarzan
4) Tarzan the Terrible (I really wanted to rate this one higher, but ERB blew the ending.)
5) Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
6) Tarzan and the Lost Empire
7) Tarzan the Magnificent
8) Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
9) Tarzan and the Mad Man
10) Tarzan and the Castaways

Worst:

1) Tarzan Triumphant
2) Tarzan and the Lion Man (Because Balza the wild girl is in it, I wanted to rate it higher, but the story doesn't merit that.)
3) Tarzan and the Leopard Men
4) Tarzan and the Forbidden City

I don't regard Joe Jusko's Tarzan: the Lost Adventure to be canonical because Jusko heavily rewrote ERB's manuscript and completely missed the feel of the series; ergo, I put it nowhere on my list. The Tarzan Twins and Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion are moderately interesting stories tangentially connected to the main series, and The Eternal Savage--one of ERB's best minor works--features Tarzan in a fairly prominent role as well as the first appearance of Tarzan's son. Anything not written by Burroughs about Tarzan isn't worth the time to read.

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