Prize of Gor [Paperback]

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 .