I wept.” instead of any kind of real prose fleshing it out in any kind of experiential way.

A whole whipping or punishment scene flies by in passages like “I was whipped. It was all I could do to get through it, it was so mindnumbingly dull, even when interesting things were happening. There’s very little in the way of description, very little emotional impact, and very little that happens, as Elinor is dragged in chains through the world of Gor and tossed into cages and gradually comes to accept her position as ‘kajira’. It’s written entirely in stream of consciousness and simple sentences that are so basic I felt like I was reading See Spot Run. Elinor Brinton narrates her experiences from the initial abduction from her life on Earth and through her adventures being enslaved on Gor. Surely, she would have more interesting things befall her? This is one of the ones that follows one of the women abducted from Earth to be made a slave girl in Gor, Elinor Brinton. Having heard that the Gor books get progressively more porny as they go, I thought I’d pick up one a little later down the line, one about a sex slave. I initially tried to read the first in the series, Tarnsman of Gor, which follows the series more or less main character Tarl Cabot, but I found I just couldn’t get through it, as it was so bogged down in boring details.

I was hard pressed to get anywhere in these books. So I set in, not sure what to expect but sure it must be shocking and salacious, only to find that they are mostly… just really boring. Although they are widely decried as being deplorably misogynistic, they in fact have inspired an entire subset of BDSM culture, so they are clearly more well loved than reviews would lead you to believe. The Gor series of books by John Norman are controversial and divisive. Nevertheless, she is sold for a high price, and her master is determined to get his money’s worth Forced to learn the arts of providing pleasure to any man who buys her, Elinor is determined to escape. She is powerless as a female pleasure slave in the camp of Targo the slave-merchant. Brinton must relinquish her earthly position as a beautiful, wealthy and powerful woman when she finds herself a part of the harsh Gorean society. In this seventh book in the Gorean Series, beautiful and headstrong Elinor Brinton of Earth finds herself thrust into the savage world of Counter-Earth, also known as Gor.

Tarnsman of gor series