Before Tarzan met Jane, before he became lord of the jungle, he was simply a boy caught between two worlds. These twelve stories trace his savage apprenticeship: the bloody aftermath of vengeance, the brutal education in what it means to lead, the first stirring of love and jealousy among the great apes. Tarzan has killed Kerchak and claimed leadership of the tribe, but the jungle is not yet finished with him. He must still face Buto the rhinoceros, outwit Numa the lion, survive the sorcerery of witchdoctor Bukawai, and learn what it means to love when that love brings only pain. Teeka, a young female ape, awakens feelings in him that his nature cannot name, and watching her courts a rival fills him with a jealousy as old as desire itself. Burroughs writes at his most elemental here, before the civilization and romance and pulp melodrama accumulated around the character. This is Tarzan as pure instinct, learning to become a king.
