The Joy of Erudition’s Reviews > Cave Girl > Status Update

Oh, and then he and Nadara go out on the ocean again in the canoe, and they get picked up by some pirates who just happen to have ALSO captured Waldo's parents! The main characters must all be wearing super-powerful magnets to make sure they always end up back together despite floating aimlessly across the gigantic ocean.

Coincidences for the convenience of the plot are standard procedure for Burroughs, but this one is the most unbelievable I've seen yet! He believes Nadara has been taken back to the US, so he builds a CANOE and tries to sail the OCEAN with it, with no experience on the sea and no map or instruments. He's about to die of thirst when a storm casts him on another island where Nadara just HAPPENS to have landed herself!

Back to the plot from the first book of each party searching for the other, and no one staying in one place.

Meeting the 'rents goes about as well as you'd expect.

Now he's suddenly infantilising his mate.
"Do not worry, little one," said Thandar. "The Great Nagoola will have to grumble louder and struggle more fiercely before ever he may dislodge the two mountains. Even now he is quiet again, so run to your cave, sweetheart, nor bother your pretty head with useless worries—it is time that all good people were asleep," and he stooped and kissed her as she turned to go.

Now Waldo is tormenting his "mate" Nadara with months of forced celibacy, hoping to bring her back to Boston because he considers Western weddings to be the only valid ones, and at the same time he's taking control of the whole tribe and trying to completely change the native culture to fit his Western sensibilities.

One thing I don't like about Burroughs' work is the frequent emotional whiplash of characters loving each other then hating each other, sometimes on a whim, and never communicating. Happens a lot in this one.
This volume contains the first book and its sequel. It looks like it's following the Tarzan formula, as they're returning to civilisation at the beginning of this one, and there's a long-lost heir.

He spends 6 months training alone to become worthy of her, and even refuses a place on a rescue ship, with absolutely no contact or news of her in the meantime, so he doesn't even know if she's alive.

Burroughs seems to be trying something different in this one, by casting a skinny, unimaginative, sickly young man named Waldo as the main character, who was raised to disdain anything macho or masculine, rather than the competent and practical heroes he usually uses.