This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures:http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/20...Recap thus far: I’ve been reading this really trashy pulp series about a dude who ends up on another planet where there’s no modern weaponry and most of the women are contented sex slaves. Think a kinky version of Barsoom. I’ve enjoyed the series thus far with the caveat that it necessitates a suspension of morality in addition to a suspension of disbelief in order to avoid being filled with outrage at the series’ treatment of women.Based on reviews I’ve read, there’s a point where the series starts to go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay downhill. I’ve definitely reached that point. Generally I write spoiler-free reviews, but this one will include some spoilers to spare you the pain of having to read the book for yourself.Captive of Gor is one of the worst books that I’ve ever read. I got through it only because I feel that after having read the six previous books, I’m invested enough in the series that I’m determined to persevere. Depending on how the next couple books are, that might change, because this book was really really bad.It also represents a major departure from the series thus far, because instead of focusing on Tarl Cabot, the hero of all of the previous books, it instead chooses to use an Earth woman as the protagonist. Elinor Brinton is a rich bitch New York City socialite who hates men. That’s her defining personality trait. Her only personality trait, even. One night, Elinor is captured and taken to Gor, where it’s pretty obvious what happens to her. She quickly learns that women on Gor have no social status, and changes hands between a variety of different men.I couldn’t sympathize with Elinor, because despite the fact that terrible things were happening to her throughout the entire book, she was entirely unlikeable and had no redeeming personality traits. This is likely because John Norman cannot write convincingly from a female perspective.Up until this point, the female characters in the series, while submissive, have possessed character traits that complement the hero in some way. That didn’t happen here. Elinor was a horrible person. Instead of hoping that she would find a way to escape and return to Earth, I hoped that Elinor would be eaten by a sleen. It would put both her and readers out of their misery.The plot is repetitive and unnecessary. It can be summed up as follows:Elinor: I’m not a slave! I’m rich! I have lots of money on Earth.Random Gorean Man: You are slave! (and I am Gorean and don’t use the word “a”)*insert display of dominance*Elinor: Okay fine, I am slave.Elinor’s internal monologue: Why am I weirdly turned on by this?Rinse and repeat, and that’s the entire plot of the book. You could have cut out three quarters of it and miss nothing whatsoever, until Elinor finally meets the man who is right for her, at which point her former personality is erased by his dick. It’s about to be happily ever after, at which point John Norman realizes that nothing that’s happened in the book so far has any relevance to anything else in the series. In order to remedy it, Elinor’s master decides for no reason whatsoever that his feelings for her are a sign of his own weakness, so he sells her. She ends up finally meeting Tarl Cabot (although he’s still in his emo phase, so he’s calling himself “Bosk,” which I can’t think of without picturing a certain Trandoshian Bounty Hunter), and in telling him her story, she reveals to him that she’s met Talena in passing. Talena is Tarl Cabot’s Free Companion, aka wife, and has been missing in action since the end of the first book. Now that this piece of crucial information has been revealed, Elinor is again irrelevant and can go back to whatever it was she was doing before. Elinor’s former master realizes that he can’t live with out her and quite literally swoops down from the sky to bring her back to him. It felt like Elinor’s only relevance to the main storyline was an afterthought.The pulpy SF/F that I most enjoy follows a very specific formula. Basically, a half-naked male protagonist in a low-tech world fights monsters and performs feats of strength to save the world from certain doom and/or rescue the scantily clad female lead. This formula is tried and true, and it makes me happy. It’s why I’ve enjoyed the Gor series up until this point. Captive of Gor doesn’t work for me at all, and instead is redundant, poorly written, and misogynistic.
I have to agree with other reviewers that, unless you're into bondage and dominance/submission, you probably won't like this book. If you *are* into BDSM, you might like it. Maybe. You don't really need to read any of the previous Gor books to be able to read this one, but you'll probably understand more of the references if you at least have some passing familiarity with what happened in the first few books.In Captive of Gor, the main character is an unlikeable and passive-aggressive woman named Elinor (or El-in-or, as everyone on Gor calls her) who snubs and backstabs at every opportunity, and who switches between the mindsets of "I am free and a woman of Earth and I will never ever be a slave!" to "I'm a slave, let me be your slave!" with an almost unhealthy regularity. I think I know what Norman's trying to do--show that she isn't sure what she thinks of her lot in life, and that her self-view changes over the course of her being a slave, and so on--but it didn't work for me. And then you have the constant reminders of who people are. Inge, you will learn, is of the Scribes. Every time Inge, who is of the Scribes, is mentioned, you will be reminded that, hey, Inge is of the Scribes. This is done constantly. For every character. Constantly. The writing itself is also pretty bad, but it's an easy read, and it requires zero brainpower to get through. So that's a plus.In the story, Elinor manages to be so unlikeable that she makes it hard for you to root for her, and to symapthize with her when she gets punished, because you end up feeling like she really did deserve it. It's not a terrible book, all in all, but it's not anything remarkable. Go ahead and read it if you're so inclined, but I'd strongly suggest skipping the series entirely if you don't like dominance/submission, or if you intend to read it with a feminist outlook. Because, I assure you, there is NOTHING feminist about this series.
What do You think about Captive Of Gor (1977)?
This book is not just bad, it is appallingly so. I'm not even put off by the BDSM theme. Really, to each his own, and if Norman wants to imagine a world where women are only truly fulfilled by total submission to loutish men, he is welcome to do so. What he is not welcome to do, in my view, is to beat me half to death with incessant repetition of his theme. Norman makes Ayn Rand seem like a master (well, mistress) of subtlety and nuance. He yammers away continuously from beginning to end about what he calls the 'biotruth' of male gender ascendancy until you just want to grab him by the throat and feed him to one of his fanciful creatures. It wouldn't be so bad if repetition weren't the only tool in his box, but that seems to be the limit of his skillset. He can't even stay consistent with the logic of his own premise, as the long suffering reader will find when he/she finally washes up on the rocky shores of Norman's denouement. I would call this a spoiler alert, but should you read this travesty in spite of my review, by the time you get here Norman will have already spoiled it himself. It seems that after 400 some pages of beating, abusing, confining, and humiliating his female protagonist into accepting slavery as not only her due but her highest, most rewarding existence, Norman allows her to become the beloved companion of her master - a position we begin to suspect in the closing pages is actually preferable to slavery in spite of having been told otherwise over and over and over and over again throughout the rest of the book. Really? Do yourself a favor, and give this one a miss.
—Jonah Gibson
I have read the entire series, there simply isn't anything else like it; they are decadent and addictive, completely and wholly something everyone should have on their MUST READ list. Edgar Rice Burroughs BARSOOM series would be a faint comparison, I suppose; but Norman carries his characters to a depth of depravity that is reminiscent of a D/s or BDSM fetish fanatics dream. At the same time, they are not written in a way as to be entirely sexual, he merely casts about components and subtle subtext that one familiar with the lifestyle would of course pick up on, while a "vanilla" person could read right over without ever noticing or being offended.The worst part of this series is it's highly addictive quality. Not long after I read my first book, I found myself at a Second Hand BookStore in Dallas purchasing a paperbag FULL of the entire series. 20 years later and I still have them! And, I always WILL!
—J.L. Day
I saw a brief reference to the Gor series the other day and I was curious enough to look into it, and after reading a bit about it, I chose to try this book. Now... I am no shrinking violet when it comes to bondage and sub/dom and similar genres, but this book genuinely feels like an outlet for a man who has serious gender-superiority issues and needs an "acceptable" outlet for his feelings, and I suspect the rest of the series is rather similar. I was especially tickled by the implied notion that a woman just needs some penis to fully change her ways. That good old "she just needs some dick" mentality thrives, in this book.Throughout the book I felt rather conflicted. The main character, Elinor, ends up sort of being an anti-heroine; as she's the main protagonist I couldn't help but root for her, but given that she's genuinely a despicable person, I simultaneously despised her, and so couldn't fully invest myself in the story. I also felt like it couldn't make its mind up whether or not it's an erotica book. As far as any sex scenes go, it either it goes too far or doesn't go far enough. There was a lot of build up to the event, but the actual "scene" was underwhelming. "Scene" in quotes because the scene itself didn't happen. One minute the main character is being thrown down on a pile of furs (lol) and the next it skips to something completely different with only a general reference in her recollections to the night before. In the previous scene, she had been horrified and terrified about what was about to transpire, but then in her recollections, suddenly she apparently enjoyed herself to a mind blowing degree. I fail to find the transition from one to the other believable. Additionally, it was made even MORE disappointing by the intricacy with which the fantasy world seems to be built. Great fantasy world, really disappointing storyline.Overall, it's not awful. It's not good. It just is. "Meh," is about as clearly as I can sum it up. I have no interest in reading any additional books in the series.
—Abbey
