Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Review of At the Earth's Core

First off, sorry about no update yesterday. My time didn't go the way I had hoped it would. Well, I'll do one of the blogs I promised, and that blog is about the book At the Earth's Core.Most people know Edgar Rice Burroughs for his Tarzan stories, but he wrote many other books besides Tarzan. At the Earth's Core is the first of his Pellucidar series, which takes place in a world hidden beneath the Earth's crust (kind of like Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth).
The story beginnings with David Innes, an heir to a miner's fortune, who goes with a friend, named Perry, in an invention of his called the Iron Mole. He plans to dig really deep into the Earth's crust to disprove a scientific theory. Things go according to plan, except for one problem: They find themselves unable to turn around!
The Iron Mole keeps digging into the Earth until they finally come out in something that's impossible. David and Perry find themselves inside a hollow world deep inside the Earth, where prehistoric animals still live. They get captured as slaves for a race of creatures called Mahars, who have the local humans under their control.
From their fellow slaves, David and Perry learn that the land is called Pellucidar, and the Mahars are the dominant species here. David develops a crush on a cave girl named Dian, but offends her on accident. As the story progresses, David and Perry must find a way to escape the Mahars, make amends to Dian, and help the people of Pellucidar overthrow the Mahars.
Edgar Rice Burroughs has created a great story in this book, one inspired by science and novels alike. He has succeeded in making Pellucidar a primordial world fans of adventure stories and/or dinosaurs will like. I was pleased when I saw that the characters had such good control over their emotions when they could have easily lost control. I look forward to reading the next book in the Pellucidar series, Pellucidar.

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