He then becomes embroiled in the affairs of Bertha Kircher, a woman he has seen in both the German and British camps, and believes to be a German spy, particularly after he learns she possesses his mother's locket, which he had given as a gift to Jane. His efforts to retrieve it lead him to a rendezvous between Kircher and Captain Fritz Schneider, brother of the major Tarzan threw to the lion previously, and the actual commander of the force that burned the estate. Killing Schneider, Tarzan believes his vengeance complete. Abandoning his vendetta against the Germans he departs for the jungle, swearing off all company with mankind.

Seeking a band of Mangani, the apes among whom he had been raised, Tarzan crosses a desert, undergoing great privations. Indeed, the desert is almost his undoing. He only survives by feigning death to lure a vulture (Ska in the ape language) following him into his reach; he then catches and devours the vulture, which gives him the strength to go on. The scene is a powerful one, a highlight both of the novel and of the Tarzan series as a whole.

On the other side of the desert Tarzan locates the ape band. While with them he once again encounters Bertha Kircher, who has just escaped from Sergeant Usanga, leader a troop of native deserters from the German army, by whom she had been taken captive. Despite his suspicion of Bertha, Tarzan's natural chivalry leads him to grant her shelter and protection among the apes. Later he himself falls captive to the tribe of cannibals the deserters have sheltered among, along with Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, a British aviator who has been forced down in the jungle. Learning of Tarzan's plight, Bertha heroically leads the apes against the natives and frees them both.

Smith-Oldwick becomes infatuated with Bertha, and they search for his downed plane. They find it, but are captured again by Usanga, who attempts to fly off in it with Bertha. Tarzan arrives in time to board the plane as it takes off and throw Usanga from the plane. Smith-Oldwick and Bertha Kircher then try to pilot it back across the desert to civilization, but fail to make it. Seeing the plane go down, Tarzan once more sets out to rescue them. On the way he encounters another Numa, this one an unusual black lion caught in a pit trap, and frees it. He, the two lovers and the lion are soon reunited, but attacked by warriors from the lost city of Xuja, hidden in a secret desert valley. Tarzan is left for dead and Bertha and Smith-Oldwick taken prisoner. The Xujans are masters of the local lions and worshippers of parrots and monkeys. They are also completely insane as a consequence of long inbreeding. Recovering, Tarzan once more comes to the rescue of his companions, aided by the lion he had saved earlier. But the Xujans pursue them and they turn at bay to make one last stand. The day is saved by a search party from Smith-Oldwick's unit, who turn the tide. Afterward, Tarzan and Smith-Oldwick find out that Bertha is a double agent who has actually been working for the British. Tarzan also learns from the diary of the deceased Fritz Schneider that Jane might still be alive.

With the speed of the great apes, Tarzan rushed through the jungle toward his home and family. But he was already too late. The marauders had been there before him. His farm was in shambles and no one was left alive. Of his beloved wife there was only a charred, blackened corpse, still wearing the rings he had given her. Silently, he buried the body and swore his terrible vengeance against those who had done this terrible deed. Then he set out grimly to track them --through warring armies -- across a vast desert that no man had ever crossed -- and to a strange valley where only madmen lived. 

I. Murder and Pillage
II. The Lion's Cove
III. In the German Lines
IV. When the Lion Fed
V. The Golden Locket
VI. Vengeance and Mercy
VII. When Blood Told
VIII. Tarzan and the Great Apes
IX. Dropped from the Sky
X. In the Hands of Savages
XI. Finding the Airplane
XII. The Black Flier
XIII. Usanga's Reward
XIV. The Black Lion
XV. Mysterious Footprints
XVI. The Night Attack
XVII. The Walled City
XVIII. Among the Maniacs
XIX. The Queen's Story
XX. Came Tarzan
XXI. In the Alcove
XXII. Out of the Niche
XXIII. The Flight from Xuja
XXIV. The Tommies

Hauptmann Fritz Schneider: German officer
Leutnant Obegatz: German officer under Schneider 
Unterleutnant von Goss: German officer under Obegatz 
Lady Greystoke: Jane Clayton, wife of Tarzan 
Tarzan of the Apes: John Clayton, Lord Greystoke 
Wasimbu: Muviro's son, Jane's bodyguard
Muviro: chief of Tarzan's Waziri warriors 
Fräulein Bertha Kirchner: German spy - aka Patricia Canby 
General Kraut: chief of German operations in East Africa 
Colonel Capell: British commander of the 2nd Rhodesians 
Major Preswick: British officer who knew Tarzan in London 
Major Schneider: brother of Fritz Schneider 
Usanga: Sergeant over the German East African blacks 
Naratu: Usanga's woman 
Go-Lat: king of an ape tribe 
Zu-Tag: Go-Lat's young rival 
Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick: Lt. flier in the Royal Air Service
Numabo: Chief of the Wamabo 
Xanila: sixty-year-old woman, captive in Xuja 
Herog: present king to Xuja 
Metak: Prince of Xuja, son of Hergo 
Lt. Thompson: Royal Air Service flier who finds Xuja 
Otobu: Wamabo slave in Xuja who befriends Tarzan 

TARZAN THE UNTAMED 
A Review Submitted by Doc Hermes This comics cover captures the essence of 
TARZAN THE UNTAMED
better than most of the book covers I found.
This is really two separate Tarzan novels. The first has some of Edgar Rice Burroughs' most energetic and vivid writing, as Tarzan avenges the killing of Jane and burning of his plantation by slaughtering Germans in all directions. Continuing on from there, the second half (actually much longer than half) is okay but not up to the level of the first, as the Apeman rescues a young couple from a lost city of psychotics. I thought some of the impact of the German-killing rampage was weakened by the way the book then shifts direction and keeps going into more prosaic Tarzan themes for the bulk of the book. By the time everything is wrapped up on page 254, there has been so much hectic activity and drama that the massacre back at the Greystoke estate seems almost forgotten in the past. 

TARZAN THE UNTAMED was first serialized in RED BOOK from March to August 1919, while "Tarzan and the Valley of Luna" appeared in ALL-STORY WEEKLY in March and April 1920, thereafter being combined into the seventh book of the Tarzan saga. It`s been documented in a number of sources that Burroughs originally intended for Jane to be actually and permanently bumped off in this tale, but he was persuaded to spare her (her apparent death was a cruel hoax by the Germans) and learning that she is still in fact alive leads Tarzan off in pursuit in the next book, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE (one of the best in the series). 

Most commentary on this book has centered on the first part, where Tarzan finds his estate burned to the ground, the Waziri slaughtered and a charred body he thinks is Jane`s; out for revenge, the Apeman uses a hungry lion to help kill dozens of German soldiers, but he`s not above picking them off with a rifle from concealment. Burroughs doesn`t detest just the German war machine or Army, though; he grimly condemns the entire country and everyone in it ("It was Hate - and it brought to him a measure of solace and comfort, for it was a sublime hate that ennobled him as it has ennobled countless thousands since - hatred for Germany and Germans... it included everything German, animate or inanimate.")

Throughout the story, Tarzan finds himself reluctantly rescuing and assisting a beautiful young woman he knows as Bertha Kircher. He thinks she`s a German spy and deserves to be killed, but his innate chivalry keeps troubling him until he goes back and gets her out of danger. As it turns out, she`s not what she seems and his mixed feelings about her are vindicated. If Burroughs had been a bit more enlightened, he might have shown Tarzan gradually warming up to Bertha despite her Germanity (err, her Germanness?) and slowly concluding that there could be good people in any culture. No such luck. Actually, Burroughs always seemed to despise the human race in general, and a few sympathetic American or English characters are all he could muster up. If it wasn`t for his formula requiring a young couple falling in love in each book, we wouldn`t have even that many likeable people in the series. 

The second part usually gets glossed over, as the Apeman tracks Bertha and a young English pilot (inevitably, they will tumble for each other and become engaged before THE END) to an unknown civilization deep in the wilderness. There is a classic scene where Tarzan, near death and lying weakly in the desert, has a vulture land on him; he quickly bites the vile bird to death and eats it. That`s a tough hero! Compared to Opar or the city of talking gorillas or the city of crusaders, Xuja isn`t an impressive creation. Its origin is never revealed or even hinted at, and the fact none of the protagonists get to learn the language limits any discussion with the inhabitants, keeping them undeveloped. The Xujans worship parrots and have domesticated lions, which they use as guard dogs. Lions are also their diet, the only food they like. Colorfully enough. the men and women of Xuja are literally a race of insane people. Their erratic behavior and mood swings keep Tarzan and his companions on their toes, and certainly make it easy to move the story along; the Xujans can be placid or homicidal or amorous as the plotting requires. 

There are so many doubtful aspects of Xuja that you have to crank your suspension of disbelief up as far it will go and even that may not work. They eat lion meat every day, which means they have to maintain a huge number of herd animals to feed the lions ("boar, deer and antelope") which also means they have to cultivate vast areas (in this valley in the desert) to support those herds. Is this practical? The Xujans don`t keep a minimum number of lions around for dinner, either; the darn big cats are all over the place. Raising crops to feed the herds to feed the lions to feed the Xujans... don`t count on any free time if you live there. 

The universal insanity of the Xuja population is given away by the fact that they look like lunatics. Burroughs has always mentioned that a well-shaped head (whatever he means by that) reveals a person`s intelligence and moral character, and here he reveals the opposite. ("They have all the earmarks [of madmen]. Whites of the eyes showing all around the irises, hair growing stiffly erect from the scalp and low down upon the forehead... even their mannerisms and their carriage are those of maniacs.") I never realized so sharply how long ago it was that Burroughs wrote. He mentions theories and fads that have been discredited for so many decades that I have never heard of them, like this idea that insanity shows in the way your eyes are proportioned. (I also remember his unsettling proposal that, if you just execute the families of criminals, crime would entirely disappear for good. Glad he never ran for office.) 

 Burroughs still reminds us that, no matter what you may see on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic, lions, rhinos and elephants live in dense forests and make their ways along trails (fairly large ones, I would imagine). Also, a World War I bi-plane, with a wooden propeller and flimsy canvas wings, is perfectly capable of plowing through fifty grown men, cutting them to scattered streamers, and then taking off again without any need for repairs. My car should be so sturdy. 

Tarzan himself is presented here as the complicated union of opposites he is. This is where we see most clearly how the Apeman is a unique creature, part of two worlds but not completely belonging to either. Enraged by the massacre of his wife and retainers, he vows to never again have anything to do with people after he kills all the Germans he can find; but, almost immediately, the Apeman starts offering his help to the English forces in the area and he adopts the young man and woman who would die in the jungle without his help. Despite his sermons about how civilization produces only evil, in fact it is that side of his heritage that makes him heroic ("Tarzan`s conscience was troubling him, which accounted for the fact he compared himself to a weak, old woman, for the ape-man, reared in savagery and inured to hardships and cruelty, disliked to admit any of the gentler traitws that in reality were his birthright.") 

 As much as he rants about the evils of civilization, our hero soon is planning how to lead a tribe of apes to build storehouses for putting food away for hard times. ("He would try to teach them some of the better things that he had learned from man...") And although he intrudes on a Dum-Dum dance and tackles the leader of a tribe of Mangani to be accepted as one of the boys, err apes, he is not too proud to use "a jujutsu hold that Tarzan had learned among civilized men" to get an advantage on the big guy. Although he claims to have only grudgingly learned a little bit of civilized ways to please Jane, you notice he speaks fluent German and has read classics in the original Latin on his own. Our boy likes to think of himself as pure Tarmangani, not a cursed human, but he doesn`t fool himself for long. Tarzan is complex, conflicted, yin and yang in one person, more than a little mixed-up. It`s what makes him such a fascinating creation. 

Review from the MANAPOP Site Tarzan declares war on Germany. That could have been an alternate title to this book as a good portion of it has Tarzan go all Rambo on the invading German forces during World War I. This story was released in serialized form as two separate stories in two different pulp magazines; “Tarzan the Untamed” (AKA “Tarzan and the Huns“) for Redbook Magazine in 1919, and as “Tarzan and the Valley of Luna” in All-Story Weekly in 1920. This is a grimmer and more brutal Tarzan than we have seen in the past books, and for a very good reason, his wife is murdered. If one was to make a list of things not to do I’m betting killing Jane, Tarzan’s most beloved wife, would probably appear near the top. There are certainly easier ways of killing yourself.

The book begins with a group of German soldiers, and their native porters, approaching the Greystoke estate in British East Africa. The “War to End all Wars” has broken out but unfortunately that information had not yet reached Tarzan or Jane. Tarzan is away doing Tarzan stuff so it is Jane who welcomes these Germans in with open arms. Things do not go well. When Tarzan learns of the outbreak of war he ditches his civilian garb and races across the land with the speed and manner only Tarzan could accomplish, but he is too late. Much of the estate is burned to the ground; he finds one of his most trusted Waziri warriors crucified, but worst of all he finds the charred remains of Jane. Tarzan declares a silent oath that the men responsible for this will pay, and pay dearly.

The first half of the book is pretty much all about a wrath filled Ape Man wreaking holy hell on the German forces while he tries to locate the men directly responsible for the atrocities he found at his home. He would grab a native porter for interrogation, scarring the living crap out of him, and then once he has gained what information he can get Tarzan would then crush the life out of the man. One German officer is left stuck in a tree with a hungry lion waiting for a meal, while others meet brutal if not as sadistic ends. At one point Tarzan takes the aforementioned lion, which he has leashed and beaten into submission, and forced him into the German trenches. When the hapless German soldiers flee the trenches Tarzan is there waiting for them, with a machine gun, and he rakes them with a deadly hail of bullets.

His hunt for Captain Fritz Schneider runs into a few snags when he learns that the Schneider he left for lion chow in a tree was actually just the brother of the man who led the attack on the Greystoke estate. His continued hunt for the correct Schneider leads Tarzan to cross paths with Bertha Kircher, a woman he has seen in both the German and British camps, and who he believes to be a German spy. When Tarzan discovers that Kircher has in her possession his mother’s locket, which he had given as a gift to Jane, he is less than impressed with her. He decides to take her back to British headquarters, where he assumes that she will be executed for being a spy, but she manages to escape. This is not one of Tarzan’s finer moments. He basically told Bertha Kircher that he was going to personally escort her to her doom.   Yet for some unearthly reason he lets her walk behind him, and with her still in possession of her gun. I know grief can make you do stupid things but that is a bit ridiculous. The only reason she doesn’t shoot him in the back of the head as she can’t bear the idea of killing such a magnificent specimen of manhood. So she just coldcocks him with the butt of her pistol.

It’s at this point that Tarzan decides he has had about enough of civilization and will spend the remainder of his days deep in the jungle, living as he did as a young man, and far away from the supposed civilized world. What is strangely never mentioned is anything to do with John Clayton, Tarzan and Jane’s son. We know he went off to live with Miriam but wouldn’t it have been nice of Tarzan to maybe send his kid a letter, “Dear Son, going back to live with the apes. PS Your mom is dead.” I believe the death of Jane, and the lack of their son’s appearance in this book, has more to do with Burroughs’ desire to have Tarzan free to run off and have adventures than it is about his bestial nature. A tied down Lord of the Jungle isn’t as fun as one that can rush off to investigate the latest lost city.

And this book does have a lost city. In the first six books we’ve only had a couple of short visits to Opar, the lost outpost of Atlantis, but following this book lost cities will become so numerous one will start to question if there is enough jungle in Africa to hide them all. The second half of the book has to do with Tarzan trying to make a life with a new group of Apes, and maybe venturing to the coast and the cabin his father built, but his attempt at ditching civilization is constantly interrupted by the Bertha Kircher, the German spy. She is captured by black deserters and Tarzan is forced to rescue her. He is complete and utter hatred of her wars with his inability to leave a white woman in danger. He even lets her live with him and the apes. Yeah, that’s swell of him. Eventually another character enters the picture in the form of downed British pilot Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick. One of the great moments in the book consists of Tarzan and Percy about to be burnt at the stake by a group of cannibals when Bertha leads a rescue attempt consisting of the Great Apes. Tarzan repeated tells himself that he hates Bertha with every fibre of his being, but he also can’t help but acknowledge his growing respect for her.

Poor Percy falls almost immediately in love with Bertha, even after Tarzan informs the British aviator that she is a German spy, but Berth does not return his love, she has eyes for another. You get three guesses as to who that person is, and the first two don’t count. This is a sprawling epic with Tarzan wiping out German soldiers, traveling desert wastes, battling cannibals, befriending lions (two of them in this book), and of course he finds a lost city. Only the inclusion of Bertha and Percy in the second half of the book, which is mostly jungle adventure and lost city finding, connects it to the first half, which is all about war and revenge.

As I’ve mentioned this book does have a lost city, and it’s a doozy. The lost city of Xuja, hidden in a secret desert valley, is populated by inbred madmen who use lions for cattle and security, and worship parrots and monkeys. Bertha and Percy are of course captured by Xujans so it is up to Tarzan to stage another rescue. Will the Ape Man be able to sneak into a city of madmen, can Percy win the love of Bertha, will Tarzan actually desert civilization for good, and most importantly of all, “Is Jane really dead?”

Tarzan the Untamed is bit lopsided at times and Tarzan constantly going on about how much he hates the German’s gets a bit grating. He did write this during the war so the anti-German sentiment is not surprising, but what he didn’t quite take into account was how sales of his books in Germany were going to suddenly plummet. I guess some people can’t handle being called cowardly, vile, despicable and evil. I mean seriously, who could possibly take that personally?

In the book The Beasts of Tarzan Burroughs allowed us to spend more time with characters other than Tarzan, and Tarzan the Untamed is really where that element of the series kicks into high gear. Following the adventures of people like Bertha and Percy bring a fresh to the story, and of course this allows Burroughs to get in some fresh love interests as it’s hard to make that work with a married Ape Man. Overall Tarzan the Untamed is a fun if uneven story, but made a little extra awesome by having Tarzan going on a rampage. Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.