Customer Reviews

Beasts of Gor

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is Volume 12 of the Gor series. The first six volumes were action-adventure stories with increasing amounts of bondage material present but the adventure aspects dominated. Volumes 7 and 11 were written from the perspective of slave girls so it's not surprising that the bondage aspect took center stage in those books. Volumes 8, 9, 10, and the present volume are somewhere in between, maybe 50/50 bondage and action-adventure. This trend is a good thing if you are interested in bd/sm but not for the rest of us. Several things appeal to me about this series. First of all, the incredible detail in which Gor is depicted. There is no other world in all of fantastic literature that is so fully realized. Secondly, John Norman is a master at creating engaging characters (even though I don't always approve of the activities that they are engaged in!). Thirdly, the man knows how to tell a story. Sure, the plot twists are frequently predictable but he keeps me turning those pages anyway. Also, he has created two truly alien races, the Priest-Kings and the Kurii, and made them believable. I even like his style. Is it clunky? Yes. Is it ungrammatical? Yes. Does he keep repeating stock phrases? Yes. But somehow it all seems to work. If you don't like his style, it's bad writing. If you do, it's "a distinctive auctorial voice"! In this book Tarl Cabot attempts to locate and destroy the arctic beachhead of the Kurii, the staging area for a full-fledged invasion of Gor. Along the way he encounters Imnak of the red hunters (who are based on the Innuit culture of Earth) and enslaves six (!) girls. (On Gor "girl" means any attractive female regardless of age.) One touch and they are putty in the hands of the master. Male power fantasies, anyone? Two things make this volume stand out in my mind: One, for the first time since Volume 4 (Nomads of Gor) humor returns to the series. Several scenes are quite funny and the courtship of Poalu had me laughing out loud. Two, we learn more about the natural history of the Kurii, a race which is highly intelligent and yet also ferocious. Norman even indicates how their savage nature relates to their life cycle with its 4 sexes (or 3 depending on how you count!). This is a good book but would have been better with more action and less repetitive discussion of Gorean philosophy.

John Norman strikes again with the Beasts of Gor. The twelfth book in the series. Tarl Cabot's exploits take him to the far north of the planet Gor. An excellently written book. John Norman explores how a culture, similar to our Eskimos, fits in to the fantasy world of Gor. He continues his erotic venture into the world of domination/submission.

Tarl Cabot ventures to the North trying to stop the beginnning of a potential invasion of the Kurii. The on-going battle between the Priest-Kings of Gor and thier arch-nemisis the Kurii, draws Tarl once again into the roll of Hero. An excellent mix of humor, action, the truth of human-nature and fantasy rivaling that of John Carter of Mars.

I gave this 4 stars because I think I am finally learning the way to read the Gor books.

To anyone not familiar, the Gor books are about 20-25 % story, and about 75-80 % needless description of things that dont exist & doctrine on how ALL women are slaves at heart if there was just a man strong enough to beat them into submissive; figuratively & literally.

This books story was better than most, it really has Tarl going all over the place and doing all kinds of things we havent seen him do before. I enjoyed the meandering of the voyage in this book. It didnt seem too wandering, though there were plenty of changes of scenery. It didnt feel rushed to a conclusion.

This books doctrine was as bad as it gets, although, mostly delivered with a wink and a smile. The raped slaves cry out for more, not for the rape to stop. The firm master only backhands his slave when he is trying to save her. Tarl spend more time talking captured women into loving their bondage than defeating Kurii or collaborators, and almost as much time given overly in depth descriptions of mundane "Gorean" items - that just isnt interesting. Yes, I have read the preceeding 11 installments. I know what the slave coffle is. You dont need page after page describing things you have already spent page after page describing in 11 other straight books.

I am sure plenty of women have a slave fetish, or role playing behind closed doors in their hearts. I have known several, and I cannot speak highly enough about them, they are a BLAST.
But I think it is overly simply minded to project that onto every woman out there. Allow for some variety man.

Although I like this for the most part, if this book's editor had earned his money, we could have been spared several typos a 5th grader should have caught, and it probly could have been at most half as long. 444 page was a LOT to slog through for the 200-250 +/- pages worth of interesting material in this book.