Customer Reviews

Prize of Gor

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

 

 

This is the 27th book in the lengthy "Gorean saga" of novels, set mostly on the planet Gor which supposedly shares the orbit of Earth but on the opposite side of the sun so that our astronomers cannot detect it.

To understand what is going on in "Prize of Gor" you really need to have have read a good chunk of the previous 26 books in the series. If you haven't, do not touch this with the proverbial barge-pole.

To describe the book I will have to refer to a number of places, characters and races on the planet of Gor, e.g.

PLACES

Ar - the greatest city on Gor, recently conquered and still occupied
Ar's Station - a colony of Ar
Brundisium - a city near Ar
Cos - an island, which has recently defeated and conquered Ar
Port Kar - a coastal city: main "industries" are piracy and slave trading
Treve - a city in the Voltai mountains and traditional enemy of Ar
Tharna - a city near the Sirdar mountains, once the only nation on Gor run by women, but which has now gone to the opposite extreme.

CHARACTERS

Tarl Cabot - narrator and anti-hero of the majority of books in the series, though not this one. Originally from England, then Ko-Ro-bar on Gor. Also known as Bosk of Port Kar, where he made his home from books six to twenty, but has been an outlaw since then because someone seems to have persuaded the Priest-Kings (see below) that he had betrayed them.

Marlenus - Former Ubar (Emperor) of Ar. Erstwhile father-in-law, sometimes ally, somtimes bitter enemy of Tarl Cabot who helped to depose him in book one and restore him to power in book five. Currently missing.

Talena - Daughter of Marlenus. Former free companion (wife) of Tarl Cabot. Currently Ubara (Empress) and titular head of the puppet government imposed on Ar by the army of Cos after the war.

SPECIES

Priest-Kings - reclusive rulers of the planet. Gor is an artificial world and this species appears to have created it. They live in the Sirdar mountain range and rarely allow themselves to be seen by humans. Have promulgated laws banning certain forms of technology, for example "forbidden weapons" such as guns. Worshipped as gods by most of the human population of the planet. Some others wrongly assume that they are mythical: if this leads them to break the laws of the Priest-Kings by using forbidden technology, this may be the last mistake they make.

Kurii or "Others" - another space travelling race, who are large, furry and extremely fierce carnivores. Cruel and bloodthirsty but capable of honour. Constantly plotting to conquer Gor, but often divided among themselves: for example, one Kur, at the cost of his own life, worked with Tarl Cabot to frustrate a plot by others of his kind to blow up the entire planet in book ten.

If you don't follow the references in this review, don't buy the book because you won't understand "Prize of Gor" either. I would advise anyone who is thinking of reading any of John Norman's "Gor" books to start at the beginning with "Tarnsman of Gor" and work through until you reach this one, lose interest, or lose your temper. And there is a good chance that it will be the latter.

For me the first book was good, numbers two through six were excellent, but then the series gradually goes downhill. To get to the flashes of imagination and excitement which made the first few books fun to read, you have to wade through ever more interminable male supremacist lectures calling for the enslavement of all women.

Yes, you really did read that correctly. And the endless repetition of the case for making women slaves eventually gets quite boring and almost makes you wonder if Norman actually means it.

Anyway, the full series is

1) "Tarnsman of Gor" - Tarl Cabot first comes to Gor
2) "Outlaw of Gor" - Tarl returns to Gor to find his home city destroyed
3) "Priest-Kings of Gor" - Tarl meets the alien rulers of the planet
4) "Nomads of Gor" - a search for the stolen last egg of the Priest-Kings
5) "Assassin of Gor" - a plot to restore Marlenus as Ubar of Ar
6) "Raiders of Gor" - Tarl Cabot becomes known as Bosk of Port Kar
7) "Captive of Gor" - Elinor Brinton from Earth meets an alien monster
8) "Hunters of Gor" - Tarl hunts for his lost love Talena in the forest
9) "Maurauders of Gor" - of Viking raiders and the monstrous "Others"
10) "Tribesmen of Gor" - of a Doomsday weapon in the deserts of Gor
11) "Slave girl of Gor" - with a warning of invasion hidden in her head
12) "Beasts of Gor" - of an invasion base at the North Pole of Gor
13) "Explorers of Gor" - Tarl Cabot explores the equatorial jungle
14) "Fighting Slave of Gor" - part one of the Jason Marshall trilogy
15) "Rogue of Gor" - part two of the Jason Marshall trilogy
16) "Guardsman of Gor" - part three of the Jason Marshall trilogy
17) "Savages of Gor" - the Kurii stir up trouble on the plains, part one
18) "Blood brothers of Gor" - trouble on the plains, part two
19) "Kajira of Gor" - Tiffany is brought to Gor to impersonate a Queen
20) "Players of Gor" - of Gorean chess, drama, and war between Cos and Ar
21) "Mercenaries of Gor" - the invasion force from Cos moves against Ar
22) "Dancer of Gor" - a librarian from earth is caught up in a war on Gor
23) "Renegades of Gor" - Ar's war against Cos begins to go badly wrong
24) "Vagabonds of Gor" - Ar's soldiers meet disaster in the Vosk Delta
25) "Magicians of Gor" - Ar has been conquered - but resistance begins
26) "Witness of Gor" - a girl planted in Treve to look out for a prisoner
27) "Prize of Gor" - Cos's puppet regime in Ar starts to look shaky
28) "Kur of Gor" - Tarl Cabot visits the Steel worlds in the Asteroid Belt
29) "Swordsmen of Gor" - Tarl trains an army, Tersites finally gets to build his ship!

The first 25 books in the saga were published between 1969 and 1988. Then after a long gap, John Norman has published three more novels. The first two, "Witness of Gor" published about seven years ago, and this book, "Prize of Gor" published in November 2008, are indifferent 700 page books, inside which a moderately good, much shorter book is struggling to get out.

(Another reviewer made a similar comment, suggesting that these books would have been better at 400 pages: to be brutally honest I'd go for 250.)

Since then however, Tarl Cabot has returned to centre stage in "Kur of Gor" which IMHO is dramatically better than "Witness" or "Prize" and the first Gor book for many years which has significant flashes of the brilliant imagination for which many of Norman's mainstream readers originally followed the saga. To some extent "Kur of Gor" is a reprise of "Priest-Kings of Gor" and does for the Kur race in their artificial worlds in the asteroid belt what the earlier book did for the Priest Kings and their nest in the Sirdar Mountains. And now we have had "Swordsmen of Gor" which starts a new story arc after Tarl Cabot returns to Gor. This includes something which those who have been following the detail of the story have been awaiting for thirty years - the mad genius Tersites finally gets to build the giant ships which he first proposed thirty years ago in "Raiders of Gor."

Returning to the business in hand, "Prize of Gor", like its immediate predecessor volume "Witness of Gor," is narrated by a woman from America, who has been kidnapped, brought to the planet Gor, and enslaved. We are told that she was a PhD and college professor, but never learn her original name.

Early in the book one of her masters gives the narrator the name "Ellen" which she keeps for the rest of the novel. Her story is mostly set in the city of Ar, at the same time frame as book 25 or a little later, e.g. after Ar has been conquered by Cos.

One new element in the story concerns the "stabilisation serums" mentioned in a number of previous books. Up to now, these have been described as being able to halt the aging process, sometimes for hundreds of years. But the narrator of this book, who was fifty eight when she left Earth, is given a four doses of a new version which can reduce the biological age of the subject by ten years at a time. (And even reverse the menopause - now that would be remarkable!)

One interesting subtlety in the book is that the first three doses, reducing Ellen's biological age to about 28, are regarded as a kindness, but the last application, reducing her apparent age to 18 and then "stabilising" her permanently with that appearance, is regarded as an act of cruelty. "Someone must have hated you very much" says another slave girl to Ellen when it is explained that she has been "prematurely stabilised."

Apparently stabilisation serums, while known to exist, cannot be commonly available, or else they are usually used to preserve people at an apparent age in the mid twenties to mid thirties. So throughout the rest of the book, almost everyone Ellen meets presumes she really is the teenager she appears to be and treats her as if she were little more than a child.

There are plenty of men on this planet with normal male tastes but a rather more elevated view of women than is usually set out in the Gor books, for whom the idea of a mate who combined the mind and life-experience of a woman in her fifties with the body of an eighteen-year old girl may sound almost too good to be true. One can also see why a college professor nearing sixty might initially be delighted to have her age cut by two-thirds, but discover this to be more than she bargained for!

In terms of the development of the series as a whole, the main contribution of this book revolves around a plot by patriots from Ar to steal a caravan of Cosian gold intended to pay the mercenaries being used to keep the city of Ar under control. A band of the alien Kurii, a troop of soldiers from Cos, and Tarl Cabot (using the name Bosk of Port Kar) all get in on the act. Tarl also drops a few hints that the revenge he took on Talena in book 25, after which he left her nominally still ruling the city, is not the end of the story, and he has not finished with her.

There is also a little cameo appearance for the narrator of the previous book, "Witness of Gor," who meets Ellen when both slave girls have been sent to wash clothing at the public laundry, and we learn during that episode that another major character from that book is back in Ar.

But the main bulk of the story is yet another variant on "How I learned to stop worrying and love being a slave girl."

Norman's greatest strength is not that he is a particularly good writer, and the prose in this work is sometimes quite impenetrable. His strength is the breadth of his imagination - as demonstrated by his ability to bring to life creatures like huge birds (the tarns of Gor, which appear in this novel) which can be trained to carry a warrier on their backs - and in particular his ability to set your own imagination off. At times this book does do that. I particularly like some of his battle and fight scenes. If only he would go back to using a bit more of that imagination.

Like "Witness" this book could be rewritten at about a third of the length. Ideally with a bit more of the exciting fight scenes, imaginative description of a beautiful planet, and meticulous world-building which used to characterise the series, and lot less repetition of ludicrous arguments in favour of slavery. And it would be a much better book.

GOR books are back in print, in no small thanks to the Internet. But online searches for GOR turn up as much, if not more, information on the "Gorean subculture" as on the books themselves, leading me to wonder for whom the newest books are being written. What used to be a very "male fantasy adventure" series is now being written as the B&D equivalent of a Harlequin romance (I mean, come on, by the end just about everyone wants to get there hands on this one's main character and own her!). I do not like to speak poorly of anything John Norman does; he is my favorite writer, having written my favorite book of all: Tarnsmen of GOR (#1 in the series). Close behind in my list of favorites are Nomads (#4), Marauders (#9), and Tribesmen (#10). It is fortunate for the author that I did not realize at the time that I went to the very college where he taught, as I would have been bugging him all the time, always talking about whichever book I was reading at the time. As it is, I speak to him whenever I see him at a convention, and when he told me his new book would be another kajira narrative (which he revealed as if imparting the most thrilling news), I made an effort to conceal my disappointment.
Now I am not one of those who complains about Norman's long-winded sentences and never-ending paragraphs of text; I actually like this style, especially when the complex sentences are grammatically correct (and even when they're not). Too much thought is packed into them, and simple sentences just don't cover a fraction of what complex sentences can convey. But repetition is quite another thing, and hearing the same things mentioned, and the same philosophies spouted, every few sentences is enough to drive crazy even those of us fans who are not offended by all the "woman = slave" dictum. In fact, there is so much of that in this latest book, that when you treat the series as a whole, precious little happens of consequence in this installment, and that's the most offensive thing about it. If you're going to read 715 pages of a book in a series of books that have evolved into such long epics, you don't want over 600 of those pages to be inconsequential to the series.
At one time, having the narrator be a kajira made for an interesting diversion. But also, it wasn't done for the hell of it, or simply to convey a different perspective on the world; it served an interesting purpose (the best of which was when the narrator was being set up to kill the main character of the series!). Still, whenever a kajira book came along, fans like me were left missing Tarl Cabot, who for us is the embodiment of the series, and to have the last two books in a row be kajira narratives, after waiting forever for new GOR stories to be made available, is simply prolonged torture! At least in this one he makes an appearance or two, and the only thing I can say pleased me about this book was that events seem to be turning once again to the conflict with the Kurii, after years of intrigue and involvement with the war between Ar and Cos, which also figures prominently into this storyline. (Let's face it, no matter how good the intrigue got, in contrast to the battle between worlds, the strife between two major cities is still small potatoes.)
And worst of all, I no longer care about the main character when it's a kajira; she simply goes through the same internal dilemma every few paragraphs (just as the kajira before her did), and it isn't even convincing! Maybe in the sixties and seventies, audiences could be made to believe that only as a slave could fire burn in a woman's belly, but in this day and age, where women are as much sexual predators as men, it reads about as contemporary as Chaucer or Shakespeare. Rarely do women any longer pride themselves on their frigidity, but rather they boast of their experience and even their promiscuity, and will boldly assert how they can "rock your world." This is a major flaw in the narrative, and further convinces me that kajira should be stripped (no pun intended) of their main character status and returned to being just another background aspect of Norman's imaginative world, a world which he has culturally fleshed out (okay, pun intended there) like very few science fiction writers have accomplished.
I have read reviews from other die-hard fans like myself, and they all complain about the same thing that I have: constant interruptions of text to revert to endless diatribes about the true relation between genders, all of which he has sufficiently established in his previous diatribe(s). So again, for whom are these books being written? Certainly not for sci-fi fans. For members of this Gorean subculture I have been reading about? I hate to say it, but I think they are written for the author himself, where he can cast his old enemies (feminist activists, such as the daughter of DAW Books' owner, who took over and refused to publish him further) into the roles of the narrators and inflict upon them his revenge for the years they have cost him for being, as he calls it, "blacklisted." It is not without warrant; they did work hard to prevent him from continuing the series, as well as from making public appearances (although ICON has been wonderfully unprejudiced enough to have him back often for absolutely riveting discussions, such as on the subject of censorship, where he sat across from Harlan Ellison on the panel to speak out against it). Unfortunately, this type of "revenge writing" is only satisfying the author himself. The main character seems too intelligent to constantly slip in her slave training, providing the author constant opportunities to once again go off on his master/slave tangents. And one character (a slaver, no less!) starts speaking entirely out of character by the end, allowing for yet another speech on the subject to follow.
I hope Norman has now gotten it mostly out of his system, at least enough to pay attention to the fans' complaints and return his attention to the main thrust of the series and its true main characters (Tarl/Bosk foremost among them). I have heard that the next one takes place on the Steel Worlds of the Kur, a wonderful prospect, but I suspect this means it will probably be told by another kajira being used to serve some purpose in their interplanetary plots and schemes. Of course I'll buy it. Of course I'll read it. By now, I'm well versed in his books and writing to know where I can stop reading and just skim through the excisable rhetoric. But oh how I wish he would write another installment that simply knocks me out and makes me reconsider just which of his books are my all-time favorites.
Tal.

_Prize of Gor_ (Gor 27) follows the adventures of "Ellen" as she is taken to Gor and finds happiness in slavery. While far less successful then some of the previous earth girl on Gor books, Norman came up with a good idea to keep things interesting: Ellen is initially an older women but reduced to the physical age of 18 after she is taken to Gor. Sadly, Norman's writing is no longer up to maintaining reader interest at the length at which he chooses to write.

The bloat factor in this book is notable; it should have been no more then a third of the final 700 page length. That is not, in the beginning, fatal. By adopting a peculiar paragraph at glance and to heck with the details style of reading, I quite enjoyed the first forth of the book, and stayed up late reading it the day I got it. I stopped enjoying it at the point when Ellen is removed from her initial place of enslavement.

The constant harping on the alleged superiority of all things Gorean, though not new in Norman's writing, becomes tedious. We told in this book, as we have been told in previous books, that Gorean men are more intelligent then the men of earth and women everywhere. As a group, however, then somehow they don't seem all that bright and they often don't know their own heart. They are also deathly afraid of being thought easy on their slave girls, and are quite willing to administer unjust punishments when properly taunted.

That brings me to my real problem with this book: the atmosphere of unrelenting brutality after the first forth of the book. Yea, I know, "Brutality on Gor? Who'd have thunk it?" but it just gets to be a little much. The punishments seem nonstop, petty and often completely unjust. When combined with Ellen's continual monologue about how much she enjoys being a slave girl, from which I got the idea that she was desperately trying to convince herself, it just got to be too much

If you intereted in an account of life as a Gorean slave girl, get Captive (Gor 7) , Slave Girl (Gor 11), or Kajira (Gor 19) instead of this book. If you're new to Gor, get Nomads (Gor 4) or Assassins (Gor 5) instead. If you interest in accounts of Gorean slave girls being trained, get Assassins (Gor 5) or Explorers (13) instead .

What is this, could they be,
my eyes do spy?

Why, three new Gor books,
by and by... (no poet, I...)

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Marshall Lord's review that once you get past the first half-dozen novels or so you get the impression that the author has somehow lost connection with his supposedly "target audience" of science fiction fans and has allowed himself to delve deeply into his own psychological issues of the place of women in his world view.

So much so, in fact, that the action sequences and other expected contiguous elements that would normally guide the story along are shunted aside while the author blathers on incessantly about the place of women in the world of Gor and why Earth women in particular are fit only to be subject to slavery.

One must pause to wonder what upbringing the author had to endure to mold his thought processes in such a manner.

Likewise, sometimes, even in the midst of an action sequence, the author deviates into a several-paragraph, or even a page or two, developmental expansion of the environment; often duplicating previous extraneous explanations with subtle differences pointed out for that particular location.

Having recently un-boxed my original 25-volume set of Gor books from the 70's I attempted to read through them and I found myself, this time, skipping over those several sentences, paragraphs and, yes, pages of text not materially contributing to the flow of the story line. Admittedly, I did read every word - the first time round - but that was in my naive youth. Having reached an age where stabilization serums would be an unkind addition to my existence I find it easy to bypass these roadblocks to an otherwise entertaining narrative.

The "narratives", all first person, for John Norman had several different "voices" telling the story from different viewpoints (one is supposed to believe) all seem to be from the same cultural mind-set, if not, in fact, the same mind. His inability to narrate the storyline from more than one viewpoint, let alone one "voice", detracts greatly from the credibility of the story lines - yet his spoken lines can, at times, be greatly entertaining such as the lines given to the young Tuchuk named Harold in "Nomads of Gor"; particularly the lines spoken by Harold as he is encountering his first Tarn.

My impression is that the spoken lines are often the only thing holding the stories together as without them the stories would just be a bland statement of someone's rather boring journal through various encounters.

The various cultures encountered by the protagonist each supply an intercepted view of those Earth cultures as transplanted to Gor (amazingly enough, it would appear that no matter where the main character, Tarl Cabot, travels he seems to end up encountering the highest elevation of control or government in the area). Aside from the obvious (he is serving Priest-Kings; begrudgingly at times) this seems somewhat too much of a coincidence on such a repeated basis. It's like every bunny he comes across is the king bunny of that region (admittedly, that's a terrible, terrible analogy).

Having once again plowed my way through to the twelfth book in the series ("Beasts of Gor", or "Tarl Cabot Meets Nanookie of the North") I find myself once again playing hop-skip-and-jump over superfluous text (I mean - really - thirty-two pages of "pillow-talk"?) in a valiant struggle to discover where the story line wandered off to.

Hopefully, Tarl and his stalwart boon companion will proceed in a forward direction and get this tale back on track at some point (that happened last time; at least I think I remembered it happened).

And that is the point. When the author, who is obviously well educated and has performed the requisite cultural research to add such artistic verisimilitude to the storyline (with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan) continuously wanders all over the story arc in such a random and certainly untimely manner it is disappointing to now learn that three more volumes have been added to the total, with more to come, with page counts nearly double his previous endeavors.

As other reviewers have commented these stories could have easily been trimmed by several hundred pages. If they were available in PDF format I, as an intellectual exercise (and just to see how much real content is in them) would enjoy processing a few stories in that manner just to see how much "fluff" was really in there.

As a reader of E.E. Smith ("Skylark of Space" and the Lensman series) and Edgar Rice Burroughs ("John Carter of Mars", et al), both masters of science fiction prose of similar narrative wording and phrasing, there is no tangible benefit for the misogynistic diatribes that litter John Norman's works; unless, of course, he's getting paid by the word?

Recent comments about the latest releases convince me that it would be well for someone else to "pay retail" (or Amazon "retail") and just wait for them to pop up in the "used books" category before I spend any precious retirement funds further on this series.

I note that there are available on Amazon.com two VHS movies taking place on Gor - neither of which are in any relationship to the novels other than the place names and character names. One wonders, then, how well the upcoming "John Carter of Mars" movie will translate from novel to the big, digital screen (please save us from gratuitous CGI storytelling).

Okay, I'll say it...I'm female and I liked this book. I've been a fan of Norman's Gor series since the age of 14 when I first picked up Tarnsman of Gor. (I won't say what year, but it was quite awhile ago)While it did get tedious at times with the Master/slave ideaology, the premise of an older woman being taken to Gor and given an anti-aging serum was an interesting concept. Anyone who has read these books know about the serum that halts aging, or at least slows it down to a snails pace but a serum that actually reverses it was intriguing to me. I actually read this book out of sequence as it has been a very long time since I read any of them. I have Witness but have yet to delve into it. I will as soon as I catch up with what is happening on the planet, which of course means I have to begin at the beginning with Tarnsman, no chore I assure you.

I have always looked upon these books as a science-fiction romance. After all, that was how it started out, Tarl met Talena fell in love with her and was ripped from her arms and sent back to Earth only to come back as an Outlaw. I've wanted these two to get back together for years. It was no different, in my mind, with Prize. Ellen is kidnapped and brought to Gor and her age is reversed by the new serum. Mirus, her first Master, does it for revenge. I would have liked to know the back story on him. He may have been mentioned in a previous novel, as I said, it's been awhile since I read any of the books. When he first met her he was a student and she his professor. It was plain that he was from Gor, but it isn't until later in the book we find out that he's actually an Earthman. What intrigued me is how did he become involved? How did he find himself on a world so different from Earth? Obviously he worked for agents of the Kurii but there is more of a story there and I would have liked Norman, through Mirus, to elaborate on it a bit rather than go on and on about how Ellen felt so right in her collar.

I did say this was a romance in many ways...through a series of events she is bought from Targo (Targo the slaver is one of my favorite characters from the previous novels)and sold to Portus Canio who is involved in events taking place in secret that revolves around the libration of Ar from Cos. Another thing I would have liked Norman to elaborate on rather than the usual "now I realize how much of a slave I am" which sad to say goes on for pages and pages to the point where I want to tell Norman in person:"Okay, we get it. I understand. Women should be at the feet of men. Please tell us more of the conflict between Ar and Cos and is Marlenus going be Ubar again? Is Talena going to be enslaved again?" Anyway,I digress.

While Ellen is Portus' slave she meets Selius Arconious (I'm a sucker for those Roman names), a tarnster who is employed by Portus. Well, because she does belong to Portus, Selius can't touch her (without permission from her owner). Ellen, being female, and lets face it, ALL females flirt with handsome men, flirted with Selius, taunting him with her new 18 year old body. Knowing full well that Selius would have to suffer with wanting her. It was quite plain that Selius took a fancy to Ellen, despite how young she was. So can one really blame the man for purchasing her when he had the opportunity?
I do feel that Norman missed an opportunity to develop the story a little more. I kept hoping he'd have Ellen over hear something of import that was happening between Ar and Cos, after all, on Gor, a slave is a piece of furniture and Master's do talk in front of them.

As the story progresses Ellen ends up a slave of the State of Cos and meets up with her former master Mirus, who seeing how much of a "slave" she's become, decides he wants her back. Instead of continually rejecting her status as a slave, she's embraced it and though it disgusts him to think of an Earthwoman becoming less than a (as it is said on Gor) kailla, he is nevertheless intrigued by it. He goes up against Selius when she is auctioned off but is outbid by the tarnster who had coinage stolen from a cache ment for the mercinaries in Ar. Mirus follows her trail and they meet up on the grasslands. Where he challenges Silius for her. By this time Ellen is in love with Silius and will even give her life to protect him. On Selius' part, he becomes angry when one of the soldier's uses her. Is he acting like this because she's his property and was touched without his permission, perhaps, but the romantic in me says he's in love with his little barbarian slave girl and like any man of Earth who loves his wife or girlfriend, considers her his. Period. And it has NOTHING to due with her being owned by him, but his caring deeply for her.

I liked the characters in this book, I really did, and felt they could have been developed a lot more. I was thrilled when Bosk (or Tarl rather) made a brief appearence. He's still my favorite character and can't wait to read Kur of Gor.
I am hoping that Norman will realize that his fans accept the world he's brought to life. That we understand that there is slavery on said planet, and that we know, according to Goreans, Earth woman make the best slaves, but that he doesn't have to, more or less, ram it down our throats. I was so pleased to read that others share my view, that the books are good, dispite the Master/slave diatribe that seems to go on forever.

I have friends who continually give me grief regarding this series. I've ignored them for years. Unless a person reads them from the beginning, it is hard to get past the Master/slave issue that is so prevalent in the later novels. I'm hoping that Norman is over whatever set him on that tagent in the first place. Those of us who are his fans accept Gor as it is...that it is a male dominated cilization who like to harvest Earth women to serve them.

I would suggest that if you are new to the series, start with Tarnsman. Especially if you are fond of the kind of stories written by Burroughs and Norman; Earthman taken to another planet, becomes a warrior, falls in love with a Princess (Talena was the equivalent)and makes his life on his adoptive world. At 14 Norman brought the world to life for me and the characters in his books stayed with me all these years. I'm so pleased he is back to writing about Gor, that someone is publishing the books (sorry but I do like the old fashioned paper back rather than the kindle version)and I look forward to his next one.

This book could be rated in many different ways. I've rated it simply as I enjoyed it, as what it meant for me. 5-stars. [Note: I've just read the latest two books, so the intro to my two reviews are the same, the specifics of the book differ... just in case you're looking at #27 & #28 and see my review twice.]

If you're not a John Norman fan, don't want to know about all the history nearly 30 books in a series can provide, the idea of females as slaves turns you off, or simply hate books with words you need to look up (Mr. Norman loves finding/using obscure words) not the book for you.

But, if you like any or all of those things (learning new words alone could recommend this book) then this is a book for you.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time going over history or how I am one of those people who like John Norman's work and have followed it over the last 30 years. I read my first Gor series book back in the mid-eighties when there were just 12 books. I tore through those as fast as money allowed. Once caught up, I followed each release with excitement. Then... a long wait. I'm just glad that wait is over and his old characters, his old style, are all back and honestly as good as ever.

This story repeats the idea of a woman telling her story (part of the ongoing saga) providing another side of the female slave concept and all that goes with it. John Norman has done that before, the first (#8) was outstanding, but each one after that a bit less effective, this one however goes farther than he's gone before and it's worth it. Beyond that though, he sets up a spring board that makes the next two books must haves for anyone who enjoys this kind of story. Note to all, it also makes the ownership of a Kindle just that much more grand. I've owned all these books and re-read all these books in one form or another over all these years, now I can actually keep them without giving up a shelf. Also, with all the far-fetched words Mr. Norman comes up with, the dictionary feature gets a real workout. God bless the Kindle. Anyway, the psychological play, the action, the depth of story, the passion, all make this an excellent new addition to the Gor saga.

I don't want to give away much of the story, I think by now you know I enjoyed the book. But one key plot element (noted in much earlier books) is that on Gor (the planet) medicine never saw old age as something to take for granted, they attacked it like a disease and kind of cured it. In this book, they suggest that age can also be rolled back to some extent. I bought this book on my birthday and let's just say it was yet one more thing that hit home reading this. It was a wonderful fantasy to dream about in every way. Really enjoyable.

Within this books 700 plus pages lurks a very good 400 page story.
Like the previous book, Witness, this is a marginal link story which makes it clear that the events in Ar are coming to a climax, I cannot wait for the next Tarl Cabot story, even though he makes an appearance here as a support character.
This book is an excellent addition to the Gor saga

All in all, a typical slave girl book. Lots of wonderment at finally being enslaved by the strong manly men of Gor. But short on action. I'm glad to see John Norman back in the saddle but dang, I want to see these Gor guys kicking ass. Ar is controlled by Cos and Marlenus is wandering around-let's get to it Mr Norman. Or I've heard there is a Kurii book in the offing, wow, that'd be cool. Hopefully both Witness and Gor have sated Mr Norman's, ummm, shall we say fondness for sticking it to feminism and we can see the Talena/Cabot reunion. There's sure as heck not going to be a repeat of her being freed again. And Tarl and Marlenus didn't exactly leave as best buds in the northern forests.

I started reading these books in 1973! and have read through them several times

John Norman remains as provocative and entertaining as ever, Those who have bought his other books will enjoy this one. The conflict underlying the saga remains as interesting as ever. There are many stories which we want to know more. A book that can be read many times,