Witness of Gor: Gor: Book Twenty Six
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the 26th book of 29 to date in the length "Gorean saga" of novels, set mostly on the planet Gor, an artificial and beautiful earthlike world which supposedly shares the orbit of Earth but on the opposite side of the sun so that our astronomers cannot detect it.
If you have read all 25 of the previous Gor books (in which case you will probably read this one whatever the reviews say) you will get something out of "Witness of Gor".
If you have not read at least most of the previous books in John Norman's Gor series, do not touch this one with the proverbial barge-pole.
The story is set mostly in the Gorean city of Treve, and appears to overlap several of the previous five books. Tarl Cabot, central character of most of the books in this series, does not directly appear in this book at any point, though he is mentioned once or twice. The narrator is a slave girl from earth, who at various times of the book is given the names Janice or Gail, or at other times is not allowed a name at all.
The narrator has been planted in Treve in the hope that she will be able to identify whether a particular important prisoner is there. She has no idea who the prisoner is, and when she does find him, he appears to have lost his memory and doesn't know himself. Norman obviously intends the reader to work out the prisoner's identity for yourself: he is not named at any stage in this book and therefore I won't name him to avoid spoiling the story. Those readers who have previously seen the rest of the series may begin to form an idea what is going on. The reader will learn from the 29th book, "Swordsmen of Gor," the identify of the prisoner and what happens when he finally recovers his memory.
There are some quite good parts of the book: one is the development of the pit master character, who is horribly ugly but also honourable and intelligent and about as kind as Norman allows a Gorean male to be (which after about book eight has meant "not very"). You meet again an old enemy, Doorna the Proud, who attempted to usurp the throne of the city of Tharna in book two, "Outlaw of Gor". Naturally she has never forgiven Tarl Cabot for frustrating her ambitions, and Norman may be setting up something here for a future book.
The most nerve-wracking scene comes towards the end of the book when an entire hit squad of assassins comes to dispose of the prisoner, only to find that he is still much more dangerous than anyone had imagined.
No mention at all of the alien Kurri or "Others" in this book - those of us who have been wondering to what extent they were behind the attack on Ar by the island kingdom of Cos, and the subsequent war which raged from book 20 to book 25 will not learn anything from "Witness of Gor." In fact, although the humans who brought the central character of this book from Earth to Gor must have been working for one of two alien races - the Priest Kings or the Kurri - they do not share this information with her. As the narrator never discovers that she was taken from Earth on an alien-built ship, the reader does not find out which alien race was involved.
The narrator of this story will make a brief cameo appearance in the subsequent book "Prize of Gor." She will meet the narrator of that book in the city of Ar, when both slave girls will have been sent by their respective masters to Ar's equivalent of the public laundrette to wash their household's dirty clothes. By that time Gail/Janice will have been renamed yet again by her new master and be known as Corinne.
A list of the 29 books of the series to date and their contribution to the overall storyline 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 (K)
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 (K)
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 (K)
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 (K)
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 (K)
27) "Prize of Gor" - Cos's puppet regime in Ar starts to look shaky (K)
28) "Kur of Gor" - Tarl Cabot is taken to one of the Kurri "Steel Worlds"
29) "Swordsmen of Gor" - Tarl trains an army back on Gor, Tersites builds his ship
Books with (K) at the end of the description are "Kajira" novels, e.g. they are stories like this one, told from the perspective of slave girls, (Kajira is Gorean for slave girl.) Books 14 to 16 are told in the first person by a man from earth called Jason Marshall and tell his story. All other books have Tarl Cabot as the central character.
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 his ability to set your own imagination off, and at times this book does do that.
The catch is that to get to those moments you have to wade through reams of very undistinguished filler, and particularly the most turgid "women should be slaves" tosh. The very apposite title to one of the reviews of this book on the Amazon US site is "Why did the Pit Master want to throw himself into the abyss? Because he was forced to read the first 400 pages of 'Witness of Gor'!"
It is one thing to fantasise about things which you would never want to do in your real life, but the endless repetition of arguments for enslaving women eventually gets quite boring and almost makes you wonder if Norman actually means it. There was rather too much material of this kind in books 14 to 25, and Witness of Gor is worse. From this 700 page book you could cut out at least 250 pages of male supremacist lectures without losing any of the essential plot or action, and still have quite enough left to annoy any feminists or politically correct people who for some strange reason are reading it. And it would be a much better book.
If you have read all 25 of the previous Gor books (in which case you will probably read this one whatever the reviews say) you will get something out of "Witness of Gor".
If you have not read at least most of the previous books in John Norman's Gor series, do not touch this one with the proverbial barge-pole.
The story is set mostly in the Gorean city of Treve, and appears to overlap several of the previous five books. Tarl Cabot, central character of most of the books in this series, does not directly appear in this book at any point, though he is mentioned once or twice. The narrator is a slave girl from earth, who at various times of the book is given the names Janice or Gail, or at other times is not allowed a name at all.
The narrator has been planted in Treve in the hope that she will be able to identify whether a particular important prisoner is there. She has no idea who the prisoner is, and when she does find him, he appears to have lost his memory and doesn't know himself. Norman obviously intends the reader to work out the prisoner's identity for yourself: he is not named at any stage in this book and therefore I won't name him to avoid spoiling the story. Those readers who have previously seen the rest of the series may begin to form an idea what is going on. The reader will learn from the 29th book, "Swordsmen of Gor," the identify of the prisoner and what happens when he finally recovers his memory.
There are some quite good parts of the book: one is the development of the pit master character, who is horribly ugly but also honourable and intelligent and about as kind as Norman allows a Gorean male to be (which after about book eight has meant "not very"). You meet again an old enemy, Doorna the Proud, who attempted to usurp the throne of the city of Tharna in book two, "Outlaw of Gor". Naturally she has never forgiven Tarl Cabot for frustrating her ambitions, and Norman may be setting up something here for a future book.
The most nerve-wracking scene comes towards the end of the book when an entire hit squad of assassins comes to dispose of the prisoner, only to find that he is still much more dangerous than anyone had imagined.
No mention at all of the alien Kurri or "Others" in this book - those of us who have been wondering to what extent they were behind the attack on Ar by the island kingdom of Cos, and the subsequent war which raged from book 20 to book 25 will not learn anything from "Witness of Gor." In fact, although the humans who brought the central character of this book from Earth to Gor must have been working for one of two alien races - the Priest Kings or the Kurri - they do not share this information with her. As the narrator never discovers that she was taken from Earth on an alien-built ship, the reader does not find out which alien race was involved.
The narrator of this story will make a brief cameo appearance in the subsequent book "Prize of Gor." She will meet the narrator of that book in the city of Ar, when both slave girls will have been sent by their respective masters to Ar's equivalent of the public laundrette to wash their household's dirty clothes. By that time Gail/Janice will have been renamed yet again by her new master and be known as Corinne.
A list of the 29 books of the series to date and their contribution to the overall storyline 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 (K)
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 (K)
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 (K)
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 (K)
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 (K)
27) "Prize of Gor" - Cos's puppet regime in Ar starts to look shaky (K)
28) "Kur of Gor" - Tarl Cabot is taken to one of the Kurri "Steel Worlds"
29) "Swordsmen of Gor" - Tarl trains an army back on Gor, Tersites builds his ship
Books with (K) at the end of the description are "Kajira" novels, e.g. they are stories like this one, told from the perspective of slave girls, (Kajira is Gorean for slave girl.) Books 14 to 16 are told in the first person by a man from earth called Jason Marshall and tell his story. All other books have Tarl Cabot as the central character.
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 his ability to set your own imagination off, and at times this book does do that.
The catch is that to get to those moments you have to wade through reams of very undistinguished filler, and particularly the most turgid "women should be slaves" tosh. The very apposite title to one of the reviews of this book on the Amazon US site is "Why did the Pit Master want to throw himself into the abyss? Because he was forced to read the first 400 pages of 'Witness of Gor'!"
It is one thing to fantasise about things which you would never want to do in your real life, but the endless repetition of arguments for enslaving women eventually gets quite boring and almost makes you wonder if Norman actually means it. There was rather too much material of this kind in books 14 to 25, and Witness of Gor is worse. From this 700 page book you could cut out at least 250 pages of male supremacist lectures without losing any of the essential plot or action, and still have quite enough left to annoy any feminists or politically correct people who for some strange reason are reading it. And it would be a much better book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
30 reviews
74 of 78 people found the following review helpful
At last, a new Gor book
1 Nov 2002
The last of 25 books in the "Gor" series, "Magicians of Gor", by John Norman was published in 1988. I have waited 14 years to read the 26th book in the series, "Witness of Gor", which was recently published in book form this August. It is difficult to describe the feeling of pleasure and anticipation when I finally held this new book in my hands.
The book is told from the point of view of Janice, an earth girl who has been kidnapped and brought to Gor. She has been enslaved and trained to the collar. She is then sold to the City of Treve, which is secretly located in the Voltai mountains. Terrence of Treve assigns her to duties in the sub-terranean prison pits deep beneath the city. There she befriends the Lady Constanzia who is being held for ransom. Janice has been bought for special duties. She is to look after a mysterious prisoner who is chained alone in one of the deepest and most isolated cells in the pits. The prisoner is Marlenus, Ubar of Ar, the largest city on Gor. He has lost his memory and believes himself to be one of the caste of peasants. Every day he asks the pit master, a deformed ugly monster of a man with honor and kindness in his heart, if is it time for planting. On Gor the harvest can mean life or death for peasants. Every day the pit master says "No".
One day 200 warriors arrive from Ar in a surprise tarn attack to try to free Marlenus. All are killed in the attempt. The Ubar of Cos the enemy of Ar decides not to risk further attempts to free Marlenus. He pays a team of assassins to come to Treve and execute Marlenus. They have permission from the rulers of Treve for this but Terrence and the pit master do not think that being murdered while chained in an underground cell is an honorable way for any man to die. When the assassins enter the cell, Marlenus once more asks the pit master if it is time for planting. This time the answer is "Yes". A primeval urge is awaked in Marlenus and he must do whatever is necessary to escape.
I cannot tell you what happens next without spoiling the book for you. If you are a John Norman fan, this book is for you. It is over 700 pages long and some would argue that it should have been shorter. After a 14-year wait, I was glad for every page.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Slow start, but ultimately classic Gor novel
22 May 2003
Perhaps John Norman needed to warm up after his 14-year hiatus from the world of Gor, because the first 400 pages of Witness are nearly interminably dull. Whether the talk of the "natural domination" of men over women thrills or offends you, 400 pages of it is certain to bore you to tears.
However, once you hit that 400 page mark, the book becomes classic Gorean adventure, with all of the skill, daring, courage, and honor Gor fans have come to love. The slave girl Janice, from whose point of view the book is written, is caught up in intrigues in the prison pits of Treve. There, she is given the task of administering to a mysterious prisoner, Marlenus of Ar, who is suffering from amnesia and believes himself to be only a peasant. A Cosian team of assassins is sent to find and murder him, and the adventure begins when Janice's master, the deformed pit master, finds the assassins' task to be less than honorable.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
About a third of this book is quite good
4 April 2006
Amazon Verified Purchase
If you have read all 25 of the previous Gor books (in which case you will probably read this one whatever the reviews say) you will get something out of "Witness of Gor".
If you have not read any, or even most, of the previous books in John Norman's Gor series, do not touch this one with the proverbial barge-pole.
And if you like those books in the lengthy "Gor" series which feature the anti-hero Tarl Cabot, but have had enough of Kajira (e.g. slave girl) books, skip this one and the following book, "Prize of Gor" and go straight to number 28, "Kur of Gor" in which Tarl Cabot makes his return.
This story is set on the planet Gor, which supposedly shares the orbit of Earth but on the other side of the Sun so that our astronomers cannot detect it. Most of the action takes place in the Gorean cities of Treve and Ar, and appears to overlap several of the previous five books. Tarl Cabot does not appear "onstage" at any time, though he is mentioned once or twice.
The narrator is a slave girl from earth, who at various times of the book is given the names Janice or Gail, or at other times is not allowed a name at all.
The narrator has been planted in Treve in the hope that she will be able to identify whether a particularly important prisoner is there. She has no idea who the prisoner is, and it turns out that he appears to have lost his memory and doesn't know himself. Norman obviously intends the reader to work out the prisoner's identity for yourself: he is not named at any stage in the book. However, most of those readers who have previously seen the rest of the series may begin to form an idea what is going on.
There are some quite good parts of the book: one is the development of the pit master character, who is horribly ugly but also honorable and intelligent and about as kind as Norman allows a Gorean male to be (which after about book eight has meant "not very"). You meet again an old enemy, Doorna the Proud, who attempted to usurp the throne of Tharna in book two, Outlaw of Gor. Naturally she has never forgiven Tarl Cabot for frustrating her ambitions, and Norman may be setting up something here for a future book.
The most nerve-wracking scene comes towards the end of the book when an entire hit squad of assassins comes to dispose of the prisoner, only to find that he is still much more dangerous than anyone had imagined.
No mention at all of the Kurri or "Others" in this book - those of us who have been wondering to what extent they were behind the Cosian invasion and war which raged from book 20 to book 25 are still wondering.
The heroine & narrator of this book gets a brief cameo in book 27, "Prize of Gor" when she will meet the heroine & narrator of that book at Ar's equivalent of the public laundrette, where both slave girls have been sent by their masters to wash the household's dirty clothes. By that time her new master will have renamed her Corinne.
Norman's greatest strength is not that he is a particularly good writer, and the prose in this work is sometimes quite impenetrable. It is his ability to set your own imagination off, and at times this book does do that.
The catch is that to get to those moments you have to wade through reams of very undistinguished filler, and particularly the most turgid "women should be slaves" tosh. It is one thing to fantasise about things which you would never want to do in your real life, but the endless repetition of arguments for enslaving women eventually gets quite boring and almost makes you wonder if Norman actually means it. There was rather too much of this sort of thing in books 14 to 25 and Witness of Gor is worse. From this 700 page book you could cut out at least 250 pages of male supremacist lectures without losing any of the essential plot or action, and still have quite enough left to annoy any feminists or politically correct people who for some strange reason are reading it. And it would be a much better book.
If you have not read any, or even most, of the previous books in John Norman's Gor series, do not touch this one with the proverbial barge-pole.
And if you like those books in the lengthy "Gor" series which feature the anti-hero Tarl Cabot, but have had enough of Kajira (e.g. slave girl) books, skip this one and the following book, "Prize of Gor" and go straight to number 28, "Kur of Gor" in which Tarl Cabot makes his return.
This story is set on the planet Gor, which supposedly shares the orbit of Earth but on the other side of the Sun so that our astronomers cannot detect it. Most of the action takes place in the Gorean cities of Treve and Ar, and appears to overlap several of the previous five books. Tarl Cabot does not appear "onstage" at any time, though he is mentioned once or twice.
The narrator is a slave girl from earth, who at various times of the book is given the names Janice or Gail, or at other times is not allowed a name at all.
The narrator has been planted in Treve in the hope that she will be able to identify whether a particularly important prisoner is there. She has no idea who the prisoner is, and it turns out that he appears to have lost his memory and doesn't know himself. Norman obviously intends the reader to work out the prisoner's identity for yourself: he is not named at any stage in the book. However, most of those readers who have previously seen the rest of the series may begin to form an idea what is going on.
There are some quite good parts of the book: one is the development of the pit master character, who is horribly ugly but also honorable and intelligent and about as kind as Norman allows a Gorean male to be (which after about book eight has meant "not very"). You meet again an old enemy, Doorna the Proud, who attempted to usurp the throne of Tharna in book two, Outlaw of Gor. Naturally she has never forgiven Tarl Cabot for frustrating her ambitions, and Norman may be setting up something here for a future book.
The most nerve-wracking scene comes towards the end of the book when an entire hit squad of assassins comes to dispose of the prisoner, only to find that he is still much more dangerous than anyone had imagined.
No mention at all of the Kurri or "Others" in this book - those of us who have been wondering to what extent they were behind the Cosian invasion and war which raged from book 20 to book 25 are still wondering.
The heroine & narrator of this book gets a brief cameo in book 27, "Prize of Gor" when she will meet the heroine & narrator of that book at Ar's equivalent of the public laundrette, where both slave girls have been sent by their masters to wash the household's dirty clothes. By that time her new master will have renamed her Corinne.
Norman's greatest strength is not that he is a particularly good writer, and the prose in this work is sometimes quite impenetrable. It is his ability to set your own imagination off, and at times this book does do that.
The catch is that to get to those moments you have to wade through reams of very undistinguished filler, and particularly the most turgid "women should be slaves" tosh. It is one thing to fantasise about things which you would never want to do in your real life, but the endless repetition of arguments for enslaving women eventually gets quite boring and almost makes you wonder if Norman actually means it. There was rather too much of this sort of thing in books 14 to 25 and Witness of Gor is worse. From this 700 page book you could cut out at least 250 pages of male supremacist lectures without losing any of the essential plot or action, and still have quite enough left to annoy any feminists or politically correct people who for some strange reason are reading it. And it would be a much better book.
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