fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviewsfantasy book reviews John Norman 2. Outlaw of GorOutlaw of Gor by John Norman

“Weep, free maiden. Remember your pride and weep.” 

Outlaw of Gor is the second novel in John Norman‘s cult classic Gorean Saga. After languishing on Earth for seven years, Tarl Cabot is finally returned to the Counter-Earth where he hopes to find his father and the woman he loves. Instead, he finds that things are not at all as he left them. After a bit of roaming, he winds up in a city he’s never been to before and gets tangled up in a battle of the sexes.

Tarl Cabot is a bit like Richard Rahl — effortlessly subduing evil, fighting oppression, and spreading nobility wherever he goes. He loves and serves his fellow man (“How could I be free when others are bound?”). He spends a lot of time talking about how he reveres women and hates those Gorean cultures which capture women and consider them useful only as pleasure slaves.

Yet, for all of Tarl’s assurances that he’s a feminist, it’s a bit hard to swallow when his only descriptions of the women he meets are their stunning beauty and how he admires their spirit. (Spirit is shown by a woman saying things like “No, never!” to men who want to subdue her.)

fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviewsAnd the reader knows it’s just a matter of time before one of these beautiful and spirited women, with her dress ripped to shreds, will be on her knees with her arms raised and wrists crossed and begging Tarl to enslave her. Even women who were previously powerful are anxious to know if Tarl finds them beautiful and pleasing and when he insists that he doesn’t want to purchase them, they pout. He buys one of them as “an act of sentiment”! (There is no sex of any sort in these books so far, by the way.)

This is all fine for a little bit of fun and fantasy roleplay, but when Tarl suggests that women don’t really want freedom, but actually want to be men’s full-time pleasure slaves…. that’s a little much for me. One ruling woman says that slave girls have it better because their skimpy clothes are easier to walk around in. Okay, I’ll give her that point, but when she says that being chained is the only way that many women can learn to love…? And that she really would rather be a slave than to take up her former ruling position?… yeah, right.

Tarl goes on to explain why matriarchies don’t work: men lose their self-respect and then the women lose respect for the self-loathing men and “hating their men, they hate themselves.” This is a point I’m willing to consider, but he goes too far with his next point: “I have wondered sometimes if a man to be a man must not master a woman. And if a woman, to be a woman, must not know herself mastered.” Unfortunately, “mastered” seems to mean that men are free and ruling and women are collared, leashed, scantily clad, and serving and dancing for men. How can Tarl Cabot, the feminist, justify this? Easily: the women say they like it this way.

But for all of this, I must admit that I’ve got a strange fascination with this series and I plan to read the next book. However I think that it wouldn’t work for me if I was reading it in print instead of listening to it on audio. I believe that it’s the reader, Ralph Lister, who manages to “fix” what otherwise I’d read as just plain sexist masculine fantasy. Lister gives Tarl a voice that’s innocent and enthusiastic enough to deceive me into believing that he’s not really as shallow as he demonstrates that he is.

The Chronicles of Gor — (1967-2013) Publisher: Tarl Cabot has always believed himself to be a citizen of Earth. He has no inkling that his destiny is far greater than the small planet he has inhabited for the first twenty-odd years of his life. One frosty winter night in the New England woods, he finds himself transported to the planet of Gor, also known as Counter-Earth, where everything is dramatically different from anything he has ever experienced. It emerges that Tarl is to be trained as a Tarnsman, one of the most honored positions in the rigid, caste-bound Gorean society. He is disciplined by the best teachers and warriors that Gor has to offer… but to what end?

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  • Kat Hooper

    KAT HOOPER, who started this site in June 2007, earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University (Bloomington) and now teaches and conducts brain research at the University of North Florida. When she reads fiction, she wants to encounter new ideas and lots of imagination. She wants to view the world in a different way. She wants to have her mind blown. She loves beautiful language and has no patience for dull prose, vapid romance, or cheesy dialogue. She prefers complex characterization, intriguing plots, and plenty of action. Favorite authors are Jack Vance, Robin Hobb, Kage Baker, William Gibson, Gene Wolfe, Richard Matheson, and C.S. Lewis.