Forgotten Books: Ki-Gor--and the Stolen Empire - John Peter Drummond

Man, if I had the attention span of a six-week-old puppy, I might be dangerous. This observation is prompted by the fact that I posted a JUNGLE STORIES cover here on the blog a couple of weeks ago, as part of the Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp series, which led to a discussion in the comments about the Ki-Gor novels featured in that pulp. I recalled reading the first one in the series a while back, liking it, and blogging about it, a post that concluded with my stated intention to read the second novel “soon”.

Well, that was more than five years ago.

But better late than never, or so they say, which brings us to “Ki-Gor—and the Stolen Empire”, from the Summer 1939 issue of JUNGLE STORIES. As you may recall, the blond giant Ki-Gor is really the son of English missionary Robert Kilgour, who grew up in the jungle after his father’s death. In the previous story, Ki-Gor met and rescued beautiful, redheaded American aviatrix Helene Vaughn, who was captured by Arab slavers after her plane crashed. The second story picks up pretty much where that one left off. Helene wants to get back to civilization, but Ki-Gor has more in mind that she’ll stay and live with him in the jungle. To help convince her that’s a good idea, he builds her a treehouse in a giant baobab tree. Before anything can get settled between them, though, they encounter a sinister American who’s trying to set up his own little empire in the middle of equatorial Africa. There’s also a lost city, a remnant of an ancient Egyptian colony, involved in the story. (Africa, as we all know, is lousy with lost cities.)

Clearly, the Ki-Gor stories are imitations of Tarzan, although they seem to me to be influenced more by the Johnny Weissmuller movies than by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels. The first one was published under the author’s real name, John Murray Reynolds, while this one appeared under the house-name John Peter Drummond. However, while there are some stylistic differences, my hunch is that this one is Reynolds’ work, too. It’s rather sloppily written in places with a number of continuity errors, and some of the action is described so sketchily that it’s really lacking in drama. The villain is woefully underdeveloped.

However, there are some interesting things in “Ki-Gor—and the Stolen Empire” as well. Helene is a great character. She’s not as much of a bad-ass as Ki-Gor, of course, but that doesn’t stop her from trying. She gets right in the middle of some of the fights, mowing down bad guys with an Enfield rifle. The relationship between her and Ki-Gor is a little odd, too. There’s no real chemistry, no passion between them. I suspect that will change as the series goes on, but at this point they’re more comrades-in-arms than anything else. The climax of this story tries to be big and dramatic and almost succeeds, and the sacrifices made by some of the characters are genuinely touching.

From what I’ve read, this series gets wilder—and better—as it goes along. While I’m tempted to skip ahead, I think I’ll continue reading them in order for now. I have the first dozen stories in reprint editions from Altus Press. I just hope it won’t take me five years to get to the next one. At that rate I’ll never even make it to the crazy stuff! (Although the next one is called “Ki-Gor—and the Giant Gorilla Men”. That sounds promising . . .)