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Witness of Gor (Paperback)

by John Norman (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 776 pages
  • Publisher: E-Rights/E-Reads Ltd (30 Jun 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0759270686
  • ISBN-13: 978-0759270688
  • Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.7 x 3.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2,676,007 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Synopsis

Ar, defeated, shamed, systematically looted, is occupied by Cosian forces. Perhaps Marlenus of Ar, alone, the great ubar, could recall the men of Ar to the recollection of their Home Stone and its meaning. But it is thought that he perished in the Voltai. Young women from Earth brought to Gor are commonly brought for the markets, to be branded and collared, and sold as the delicious, lovely livestock they are. Naturally Goreans regard these women as barbarians, for they do not speak Gorean, and know little of civilization, Gorean civilization. They have little in common save their beauty, and their newly acquired fear of their masters. Their naivety and ignorance, while sometimes troublesome, are occasionally of considerable value to a master. An instance of such a case is the young woman whom we shall call Janice, for that name was put on her as a Gorean slave name. In the prison pits of piratical Treve, a bandit city in the Voltai mountains, there exists a large man, a chained prisoner, an amnesiac who believes himself to be of the Gorean peasantry. The nature and even the existence of this prisoner, strangely enough, is a closely guarded secret.In order to better keep this secret, it is decided that his servant and warder had best be no native Gorean, but, ideally, one muchly ignorant of the history and politics of Gor.

For this purpose, Janice is purchased and brought to Treve. Of her charge she knows only what she has been told, but even that may prove to be too much. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the first book of the Gorean Saga, TARNSMAN OF GOR, E-Reads is proud to release the very first complete publication of all Gor books by John Norman, in both print and ebook editions, including the long-awaited 26th novel in the saga, WITNESS OF GOR. Many of the original Gor books have been out of print for years, but their popularity has endured. Each book of this release has been specially edited by the author and is a definitive text.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars About a third of this book is quite good, 1 Feb 2009
By Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Witness of Gor (Gorean Saga) (Paperback)
This is the 26th book of 27 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 particularly 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 the book and therefore I won't name him to avoid spoiling the story. 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 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."

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 27 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
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


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. 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.
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