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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tarl Cabot first comes to the counter-earth called Gor, 23 Sep 2003
I abandoned the Gor series when it got to the high teens, mainly because Tarl Cabot was being replaced more and more often as the main character in the novels, although I was never a fan of the Gorean philosophy regarding sex, which is essentially that women can only enjoy true sexual freedom by totally submitting to the strong will of a male master. John Norman's series has certainly achieved much notoriety because of this philosophy and I have had a few encounters with true believers on the internet who try to live out the Gorean lifestyle as much as possible. However, I came to the series as a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels about John Carter of Mars, and clearly "A Princess of Mars" is the template for "Tarnsman of Gor." Both novels tell of someone who is transported to a more primitive planet where fights are resolved with swords and our hero falls for a beautiful woman whose station rises high above his own. Yet Norman's novel clearly creates its own world, which is what attracted it to me in the first place. Gor is also known as Counter-Earth because it is on the far side of the sun always blocked from view. Gor is slightly smaller than Earth, which works in Tarl Cabot's favor when he accedes to a cryptic message from the father he has not seen for decades and enters a space ship in the woods of New England, bringing with him a handful of earth. After all, Cabot is a college professor (like John Lange, the professor of philosophy who wrote these novels under the John Norman name), and has not been living the life of a warrior. But on Gor he is trained to be a Tarnsman, a rider of the great war birds. His mission is to capture the Home Stone of Ar, the great city-state that is the "Rome" of the Gorean world. The effort is an attempt to end the power of Marlenus, who had been given the power of "Ubar" (essentially the war chief) to handle an emergency, but who refused to give up power afterwards and is building an empire. This 1966 novel is relative short, a little over 200 pages long, but it becomes an important prologue to the rest of the series. In the first half of the book the reader, like Tarl Cabot, is introduced to many key concepts that are developed in the future novels, from the practice of slavery and the joys of paga to caste-bound Gorean society and the technological restrictions imposed on the people of Gor by the mysterious Priest-Kings. When you go back and reread "Tarnsman of Gor," after you have gotten deeper into the series (i.e., "Slave Girl of Gor"), you will recognize the embryonic form of the Gorean philosophy as well: the concept of honor, the independence of men, the respect for the environment, the dangers of technology, and the great "truth" of female slavery." However, at first glance, the sword and sorcery elements are what hook the reader into this opening novel. The parallels between Marlenus of Ar and Julius Caesar of Rome are obvious, but Gor is a much more barbaric world than that of the Roman Empire and one of the fun aspects of reading these books is recognizing the bits and pieces of different warrior cultures Norman has brought to his creation. "Tarnsman of Gor" ends in the same manner as "A Princess of Mars," which means the series effectively offers a second beginning in the next novel, "Outlaw of Gor," which is the first novel in what I think of as the Priest-Kings trilogy. I think that the fifth novel, "Assassins of Gor," is the high point of the series, after which it starts transforming itself into something significantly different. But those first five novels are certainly worth reading for those who like the Burroughs school of grand adventure and Norman improves greatly as a writer, creating memorable supporting characters and unique actions scenes.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tarnsman Sets a Strange Tone for the Gor Saga, 25 July 1997
By A Customer
The Gor series is renown and extremely popular as an alternate dominance/submissive fantasy landscape. As someone who has read the entire (25 book) series I would like to warn newcomers to the world of Gor that the first novel in the series, Tarnsman, sets a strange and contrary tone to the rest of the series. Norman doesn't really hit his stride until the fifth book in the series (Assasin of Gor). That would be a good starting place to begin the series (you'll have to find it used, though, and Gor goes fast in used bookstores). Or an even better place to begin would be with Slave Girl of Gor, Dancer of Gor or Kajira of Gor-- these books get at the essence of Norman's Gorean sexuality and are separate from the Tarl Cabot saga that provides the meat for the rest of the series. These books are self contained stories about three earth women who come to Gor, and you won't get bogged down with Gorean politics. There is also a three part series in the middle of the series (Fighting Slave of Gor starts the three-parter, I believe) about an Earth man named Jason who is brought to Gor by slavers and is assimilated much faster into the culture than Tarl Cabot is in Tarnsman. Norman is just beginning to get his ideas in focus in Tarnsman and the book is startlingly out of place when viewed with its companion novels. Plainly put, it is bad. So don't read Tarnsman and think "I've done Gor and it wasn't much." Read the later books. The ones I have pointed out all serve as better points of entry into a series that has as much to offer in the way of intricate and interesting world-building as it has in the way of cheap thrills.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tarl Cabot's first visit to Gor, the Counter-Earth, 2 Dec 2002
By A Customer
I abandoned the Gor series when it got to the high teens, mainly because Tarl Cabot was being replaced more and more often as the main character in the novels, although I was never a fan of the Gorean philosophy regarding sex, which is essentially that women can only enjoy true sexual freedom by totally submitting to the strong will of a male master. John Norman's series has certainly achieved much notoriety because of this philosophy and I have had a few encounters with true believers on the internet who try to live out the Gorean lifestyle as much as possible. However, I came to the series as a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels about John Carter of Mars, and cleary "A Princess of Mars" is the template for "Tarnsman of Gor." Both novels tell of someone who is transported to a more primitive planet where fights are resolved with swords and our hero falls for a beautiful woman whose station rises high above his own. Yet Norman's novel clearly creates its own world, which is what attracted it to me in the first place.Gor is also known as Counter-Earth because it is on the far side of the sun always blocked from view. Gor is slightly smaller than Earth, which works in Tarl Cabot's favor when he accedes to a cryptic message from the father he has not seen for decades and enters a space ship in the woods of New England, bringing with him a handful of earth. After all, Cabot is a college professor (like John Lange, the professor of philosophy who wrote these novels under the John Norman name), and has not been living the life of a warrior. But on Gor he is trained to be a Tarnsman, a rider of the great war birds. His mission is to capture the Home Stone of Ar, the great city-state that is the "Rome" of the Gorean world. The effort is an attempt to end the power of Marlenus, who had been given the power of "Ubar" (essentially the war chief) to handle an emergency, but who refused to give up power afterwards and is building an empire. This 1966 novel is relative short, a little over 200 pages long, but it becomes an important prologue to the rest of the series. In the first half of the book the reader, like Tarl Cabot, is introduced to many key concepts that are developed in the future novels, from the practice of slavery and the joys of paga to caste-bound Gorean society and the technological restrictions imposed on the people of Gor by the mysterious Priest-Kings. When you go back and reread "Tarnsman of Gor," after you have gotten deeper into the series (i.e., "Slave Girl of Gor"), you will recognize the embryonic form of the Gorean philosophy as well: the concept of honor, the independence of men, the respect for the environment, the dangers of technology, and the great "truth" of female slavery." However, at first glance, the sword and sorcery elements are what hook the reader into this opening novel. The parallels between Marlenus of Ar and Julius Caesar of Rome are obvious, but Gor is a much more barbaric world than that of the Roman Empire and one of the fun aspects of reading these books is recognizing the bits and pieces of different warrior cultures Norman has brought to his creation. "Tarnsman of Gor" ends in the same manner as "A Princess of Mars," which means the series effectively offers a second beginning in the next novel, "Outlaw of Gor," which is the first novel in what I think of as the Priest-Kings trilogy. I think that the fifth novel, "Assassins of Gor," is the high point of the series, after which it starts transforming itself into something significantly different. But those first five novels are certainly worth reading for those who like the Burroughs school of grand adventure and Norman improves greatly as a writer, creating memorable supporting characters and unique actions scenes.
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