Tarzan and the Forbidden City has all the usual elements of the formula: cruel villians, some comedy, lovely heroines, and threatening wild beasts. The first half of the book was better than average pulp adventure. Here, the pace moved quickly; the story's main conflicts emerged in the midst of Burrough's evocative depictions of the threatening and unknown regions of the African jungle. However, towards the end, the tension bogs down into a series of relentless and wild action sequences where cliffhanger follows upon cliffhanger, stretching the bounds of plausibility, even for a Tarzan story.