Jan of the Jungle Paperback – 1 Jan. 2009

Enjoyed the tarzan like story. With the lost world woven into it.Many incrediencemixed into an entertaining story.Including an acceptable end

Fast moving pulp novel. This book contains a little bit of everything: A kidnapped child -- raised in a cage -- who believes his mother is a chimpanzee, an evil doctor bent on revenge against a beautiful woman who rejected him, Tarzanesque jungle adventures in South America, prehistoric animals, the remnants of the civilizations of Mu, Lemuria and Atlantis, and a young princess who does know her true identity. Oddly enough these disparate plot elements hold together and yield a surprisingly good tale. Recommended.

Back in the Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback Boom in the Sixties, I read everybody who wrote in his Tradition. Lin Carter. Gardner Fox. Leigh Brackett. Otis Adelbert Kline was his best follower. Mars. Venus. I read them all. But somehow I didn't bother with JAN OF THE JUNGLE until now. Thanks to Kindle eBooks.I've never wanted to read Tarzan pastiches, and thought that was all to JAN. It isn't. At his best, Kline not only wrote good pulp fiction, he wove in moments of gentle humour -- almost satirizing Burroughs. So the whole backstory to Jan: that of being imprisoned as a child with a chimpanzee who he was supposed to believe was his mother -- was just the first of a few satirical jabs. Add in an original Lost World and you've got a pulp story at its best.

While I love most of Burroughs' writing, on the jungle adventure series I will pick Kline's over ERB because it is faster paced and free from the moralizing about men and animals. It's just all against all in this crazy series ... well, not quite. Alliances form, and integrity shows its merit. But the villains don't always stay dead, and that keeps the plot cooking. Amazing romance entwined in there, and it looks like Jan might wind up king of a lot more than just jungle. Kline mixes in a dose of lost world and lost other things. I loved it!

Interesting, seems to have a great knowledge about animals from the past, and good writing skills, minor spelling problems, easy read, no cliff hangers