Item - Tarzan and the Tower of Diamonds

Well, it's another Tarzan book, and I still don't understand what they have to do with the rest of this series. I also don't understand why this seems to be set in the present day; I'm no Tarzan expert, but I'm pretty sure the stories are supposed to take place in the early part of the twentieth century. Still, while I'm not a Tarzan fan, I did enjoy the story at least a little -- it eventually turns into an archaelogical adventure of the Indiana Jones variety, and it's fun if a bit silly. My biggest complaint is with the flow of the story. A lot of sections are re-used, so it's often possible to pick a choice that you rejected earlier. Normally I like this sort of thing, but here it leads to a lot of redundancy; I found myself learning certain facts about the story two or three times during the same reading! It's not really a big deal, but it's a sign of poor editing, and it detracts from the sense of immersion in the story.

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I'll agree with Demian that the story is very linear with not a lot of replay value.

As a Tarzan story, it's not a bad tale though. As someone who is familiar with the literary Tarzan series, it shows that the gamebook author has some familiarity as well. Tarzan's friend Nkima is present throughout the book, and the Waziri also make a brief appearance.

As for appearing in modern times, there have been numerous TV series and movies that have Tarzan set in the modern era, so a book doing so doesn't seem out of line.

Also, while the last Tarzan stories by ERB were written in the 1940's, in the 19th Tarzan novel, "Tarzan's Quest," printed in 1935, Tarzan, Jane and Nkima were all granted immortality at the end of the story. Hopefully, he's still out there to this day, living in his jungle home and having adventures to share with his fans.

This is one of the rarer Endless Quest books out there. For those who want to try it without paying a ton of money, I made an app for it on the Palm DB site. Windows, Palm, and Android under a pal emulator.

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