At the Earth's Core

By: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Narrated by: James Slattery

When David Innes and his inventor friend pierced the crust of the Earth in their new burrowing device, they broke out into a strange new inner world of eternal daylight - a world in back of the Stone Age, where prehistoric monsters still lived, and cave men and women battled against cruel, inhuman masters.
The story of what these two men did in that new world of Pellucidar makes At the Earth's Core one of Burrough's most outstanding best sellers.(P)1996 by Blackstone Audiobooks

A short entertaining book, but a little dated.

The reader is perfect for the book. This is the first book in the Pellucidar Series of stories about David Innes exploring a subterranean world of prehistoric creatures where highly intelligent reptiles are the dominant species and prehistoric men are much lower on the social scale. The story is obviously more fantasy than science fiction. The story was written in 1914 by the author Tarzan the Ape Man and the author is enamored with Darwin?s relatively new theory of evolution, so you will hear the narrator speak at length about the state of our knowledge of evolutionary theory just after the turn of the century. We?ve come a long way in our scientific understanding since then. Edgar Rice Burroughs? has a military background so pacifists and environmentalists won?t be happy with some aspects of any of his stories, but the hero in this story arrives in this new world without a gun, limiting the mayhem. The book is a light enjoyable read and I recommend it without reservation.

A Classic

Edgar Rice Burroughs had a gift for creating memorable characters and settings. One of the most influential is Pellucidar, his world within the world which he introduced in this novel. Using an experimental drilling car, David and Abner discover that they aren’t strong enough to turn the machine once it begins burrowing. Several hundred miles later they break into a realm Jules Verne would have been proud of—a whole new world ruled by the inhuman mahars.

In many ways, I felt the plot was similar to Princess of Mars. David falls in love with a beautiful woman, accidentally insults her, and spends most of the book trying to find her again to profess his love. Along the way he has a ton of adventures. It’s an exciting book, but the ending really stretched my incredulity. I guess ERB wanted to make certain readers returned for the sequel.