Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tarnsman of Gor
Book Review: Passable Burroughs Pastiche
Summary: 3 Stars
The first entry in the Gor series is a straightforward adventure, drawing heavily on the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars novels, but with more plot holes and just a dash of sex.
Tarl Cabot, whose father mysteriously disappeared years before, finds himself magically transported to Gor, a counter-Earth revolving on the opposite side of the sun.
The first three or four Gor novels are almost completely devoid of the sadomasochism and misogynism that made later books in the series so popular in the 70s and 80s. If you're looking for light fantasy with just a hint of kinkiness, this will fill the bill.
However, if you're more interested in the BDSM element, I suggest you skip to the sixth novel in the series, when this takes over and pushes the fantasy element aside.
I was very disappointed in how the series turned out, not only because I don't find anything sexy about women being trained to "heel" like dogs, begging to be raped, and sleeping at their masters' feet, but because the writing gets really, really, really bad. Plot is almost entirely disregarded in favor of windy philosophical disquisitions on why men are superior to women and should beat them severely; after all, they really want to be beaten up. There are endless pages of extremely repetitious dialogue, mostly the master explaining the way of things to the slave girl:
"You are a slave," I said.
"Yes", she said.
"You must obey me," I said.
"Yes, master," she said.
"Don't speak unless spoken to," I said.
"Yes, master," she said.
"What did I just tell you?" I said.
This I said/she said format goes on and on and as it's essentially photocopied from book to book, it becomes almost impossible to wade through to get to the few strands of plot that are inserted to make the book look respectable.
Norman's sexual philosophy is reminiscent of the attitude of slave owners in the American South, who felt that black people were inferior and actually were happier being enslaved so they didn't have to think for themselves.
Bottom line: If you want SF adventure, read the first four books and stop there. If it's BDSM you want, skip to "Captive of Gor". Bear in mind that there is no graphic sex, no four-letter words, just a lot of brutality and discussion of brutality, and an attitude towards women that goes beyond chauvinism to unadulterated hostility.
Book Review: Tarnsman of Gor
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book in 1970, never got a chance to read it again untill now. It's even better the second time around.
Book Review: more detail than story
Summary: 3 Stars
Many readers wrongly compair Norman to Burroughs.The only comparison I can see is Norman used Burroughs Mars series as the outline for his Gore Series.The two writers had very differant writing styles.Burroughs used a main Story plot along with 2 or even 3 sub plots to keep the action moving.He used just enough description narritive to set the stage for the story.This allowed him to fill more pages with story,then bringing all the stories togeather at the conclusion.This allowed him to easily fill 300+ pages with Action without bogging the book down with minute descriptive narritive to get the 300+ pages for the book.Burroughs wrote his story's geared for the young and Innocent making his worst villans Nicer guy's than Norman's Hero's.Norman wrote the Gore series to be a grittier version of the Mars books.But unlike Burroughs who used several story lines at the same time.Norman focused only on the Hero of the story.This made it necessary for him to use more descriptive narrative to be used as page filler to get the 300+ pages than just setting the stage for the story.This was not so apparant in the first few books of the series but as the series progressed it became much more noticable and even repetitive.I quite reading this series half way through the 10th book{ The Tribesmen of Gore }It became more of a travel guide than a story.He would devote several pages to to very minute description,then a couple of paragraphs to the story and back to several pages of description.To me This was just a medeocra series to begain with and was going down hill fast.To compaire Norman to Burroughs is a real slap in the face to Burroughs.NORMAN COULD NOT EVEN CARRY BURROUGHS JOCKYSTRAP!!!!As far The Tarnsmen Of Gore It was the first and best book of the series.From then on it was a slow slide down hill gaining speed as it went along crashing for me in the 10th book.