Fighting Slave of Gor

Gor #14

by John Norman

Emotionally lost, Jason Marshall finds himself thrust into a lengthy struggle to save his beloved from slavery on an Earthlike world called Gor. Kidnapped and helpless, Jason begins a life on Gor as a slave and becomes a prominent warrior. He must battle his way to freedom, if only to liberate his love from the clutches of the alien slave emporium. Will Jason overcome the numerous obstacles he encounters? Will he ever reunite with the girl he loves? Can he survive the trials and tribulations he must endure on Gor? 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.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Adventure, Erotica, Ebooks, Adult

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

John Norman, real name John Lange, was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1931. His best known works, the Gor series, currently span 36 books written 1966 (Tarnsman of Gor) to 2021 (Avengers of Gor). Three installments of the Telnarian Histories, plus three other fiction works and a non-fiction paperback. Mr. Norman is married and has three children.

Reviews

[Johnny Hazelnut · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is the 14th of John Norman's series of science fiction porno novels that have, in this age of the internets, become a byword for extreme creephattery and basement-dwelling, Second Life-playing weirdos.

Now, by the time Norman got to writing this one, he was already well aware that his main fandom was BDSM enthusiasts. He was also under siege from feminists. This was, of course, before great Feminist Sex Wars and for a lot of the 2nd-wave feminists of the 1970s, all BDSM was abuse, and to certain of those who belonged to this movement, especially in academia, women who were into it were gender traitors, dupes, or useful idiots of the patriarchy. Needless to say, John Norman, being in academia, and having been best known for a series of novels about a world on the other side of the sun where fem-sub Total Power Exchange BDSM relationships were the norm, this didn't exactly endear him to people, and I am given to understand that there were protests about them by this time.

So. Fighting Slave of Gor. As a reaction to the reaction his books were getting, he wrote this, with a new protagonist, just to try to answer and/or troll up his critics. Sounds like he might be improving as a writer?

Wrong!

Executive Summary

The spiritual journey of an ordinary college student from out and out mangina to masterful studmuffin hyper-alpha redpill of Gor.

A bit more detail, if you wouldn't mind?

Our protagonist, one Jason Marshall, has a date with a fellow student, Beverley Henderson. She is majoring in women's studies. And on their date, the conversation turns to the proper role of women in society. There is a long dialogue in which it is put to Jason Marshall that there are those who believe that men should be the masters of women, and that this is their biological role in life. But Jason, being a fairly rational person beta whiteknight manboob, dismisses this idea out of hand. While all this is going on, two background events occur. The first of these is that two of Beverley's lecturers are spotted in the corner discussing things. Much stock is made of how mannish they try to present themselves as being and how Beverley is worried about being seen by them in case she's upbraided for letting her gender down and suchlike. This is put in solely, I'm sure, to troll Norman's critics.

The other is that some rather suspicious looking gentlemen overhear their conversation. Anyhow, one thing leads to another and Jason and Beverley get a cab back to their respective abodes. Only to find that the driver is one of these suspicious looking gentlemen, and he kidnaps them both and drives them to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere. There, he gets Beverley on her knees, chained up, and crated for shipment to Gor, because she would be pleasing to the men of Gor as a slave. As for Jason? He gives him a Reason You Suck Speech about how he's a disgrace to his gender, how he has allowed his masculinity to be sold down the river for a remote possibility of sex and how he is a traitor for buying into this feminism guff. It is proposed that he be executed there and now, but the other one instead suggests he be chloroformed, crated up and also sent to Gor to be trained as a silk slave. This is a male pleasure slave for the servicing of noble free women of Gor, if you must know. And this is what happens to him.

Well, the next thing he knows, he's in a dank cell somewhere on Gor at the mercy of a dominatrix who is assigned to whip him into shape - literally - as a sex slave. Once again, she explains to him how this is his just punishment for being such a wuss.

It was at this point that I thought to myself, hang on a second, isn't this exactly the same rhetoric used by the manosphere nowadays? They obviously have a downer on feminism, but they have an even bigger downer on the men who think there is something in feminism worth having and accordingly aren't rampaging misogynistical fuckheads like them. Granted, this novel never uses words like "whiteknight," "mangina," or suchlike, but the slavers back on Earth and the lady Gina (the aforementioned dominatrix) both share the same disdain for him as any manospheroid would. And thankfully Norman doesn't mention the concept of the "cock carousel" either. But there's similarities.

Anyhow, Jason Marshall is eventually sold from the block as a silk slave and is bought by a noble woman of the city of Vonda. On a shopping trip to Ar, on which he is taken along, Jason gets into a fight with another silk slave belonging to someone else and seriously beats the snot out the guy. But instead of being punished, he is transferred to his mistress's gladiatorial stables to be trained as a fighting slave.

Basically, after much flapping about, and Jason's subsequent awakening as a proper man who can master women and having them beg to please him and all that, combined with a deus ex machina act of arson that allows him to escape, he gets free and enslaves his former mistress, who cracks many moisties at the prospect. And then it ends. Thankfully.

Now I suppose there's meant to be some sort of metaphor here for a man's intellectual progression from beta bluepill useful idiot to REAL MAN. Bear in mind that this was 30 years before the manosphere ever appeared on the shores of the internets. At the beginning, Jason is effectively at the bottom of the heap. He is literally whipped by women he could have no hope of acquiring, and Lady Gina and her accomplices Lola and Tela, and their roided-out guardsmen Prodicus and Grom, are supposed to be a sort of representation of feminism as an ideology and the pressures that can allegedly be brought to bear on those who will not fall into line, although I doubt that Andrea Dworkin ever had her critics lashed to a St Andrew's cross and beaten with a knout, much as she would have liked to. However, upon realising that simply doing stuff to please women would get him used as a fuck toy for the rest of his life, he has what in the manosphere is called a "red pill" moment, becomes a gladiator, suddenly has access to all the chained naked slave girls in the villa, and then embraces the REAL MAN that lies within him, escapes his slavery, and all the women who formerly used him for their own purposes now are his to do with as he pleases. Ain't life glorious.

Unfortunately this metaphor gets confused by the fact that every single part of the novel is yet another BDSM fantasy. Come on. Being lashed by a dominatrix? Check. Being forced to serve in humiliating ways? Check. Being humiliated as a person by women who, according to the strictures of Gor, should be creaming themselves at being in the same room as him? Check. Being sold as a sex slave? Check. Having a mistress who explains why he's but a slave, "then she aroused me, and raped me" for her pleasure not his? Check. Having a woman thrown to him as a reward for a good performance in the fighting pits? Check. The whole bit at the end with the chain being on the other neck, so to speak? Check. The worst thing about all this, though, is that John Norman can't really do convincing dialogue, and dialogue is very important for stuff like this. Characters repeat things a lot. One stinker of an example is where the Lady Gina asks, "I wager that you were well taught that you were a slave," upon where Jason replies, "Yes, I was well taught that I was a slave." Then there's other lines which attempt to be authoritative and in character and masterful, but which just come over as plain hilarious.

Then there's the sheer derp and rage that the mistress comes down to the dark corners of the gladiators' stables at night dressed - or not dressed - as a slave girl and begs Jason to "use" her. Because although he is but a slave, and she is an important, noble and wealthy free woman, he is a REAL MAN and it's only right that she flings herself at him bodily. Natch.

And another slice of sheer derp and rage is that when Jason is being sold to the free women of Vonda as a silk slave, one of the free women asks what they would do if these well-built wammickers for sale as pleasure slaves would do if they were insufficiently tamed and broke their bonds and suddenly cast down their mistresses into abject slavery mid-tryst. The other free woman says she does not know, but quivers with anticipation at the idea. Christ on a bike.

Well, at least there's the gladiatorial battle sequences, and those should make for good reading, shouldn't they? Well... yes, the scene where Jason Marshall bests the larger, stronger, and heavier Krondar of Ar, who is odds-on favourite, is fairly well written, but that is all the actual fighting that gets done in this novel. We see none of Jason Marshall's tastiness in the pit fights even though by this time he has been, for over a year, the champion of the stables of Vonda. We do see him training by wearing ten-pound metal plated boxing gloves and punching his way through a solid wooden pillar, though, during which a chained naked slave girl named Taphris swings by and begs for him to give her one. This results in my favourite line in the entire novel when they are discovered:

"Were you, Jason, given permission by some free person to engage in slut sport with this lascivious wench?"

Of course, he's a REAL MAN and needs nobody's permission for slut sport, lascivious wench or otherwise. I suppose that the line was supposed to come over as masterful and sneeringly condemnatory, but actually is just hilarious. Do members of the Men's Rights Reddit need permission to engage in slut sport with a lascivious wench, even from the lascivious wench herself? Do they fuck.

Yeah.

See, the only reason this novel exists is basically for John Norman to troll up his feminist critics. There are massive author-tract stretches where he swipes at feminism all throughout the novel just because he can. Most of the other later Gorean novels also have these, granted, but they can be skipped because they have no real impact on the plot. This... they can't. The whole purpose of the novel is to allow spaces to shoehorn in godawful anti-feminist nonsense and show how acting like a rampant misogynist allows Jason Marshall to achieve his every goal in life. Unfortunately, even at that it fails, because only on Gor, where sex slavery for women is endemic, does it work. Here on Earth, it doesn't work like that, and chaining your lady friends to your bed and forcing them to satisfy your every sick need does not result in happiness in slavery but instead results in well-deserved prison sentences. (Boundary-agreed BDSM scenes between consenting adults notwithstanding, of course.)

Bloody hell.

I think I'll end it there before I start craving the absinthe again. Suffice it to say that this was the point that I definitively gave up on reading Gor for good.

(originally written for Everything2.com)

[Alexandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I saw this book on a friend's bookshelf & asked him what it was like. After some unusually inarticulate mumbling, he thrust it into my hands, saying "See for yourself."

Sometimes a book is SO bad that 1-star is simply not eloquent enough...

Not only is most of this book vile & mysogynistic (whilst surprisingly inexplicit sexually, which is presumably why it evaded being labelled as porn) but large portions are taken up with lengthy, turgid expositions as to exactly why women 'can only find true happiness' when raped, beaten and generally abused.

And yes, I read it all the way through. The philosophy put into the mouth of the protagonist was so jaw-droppingly awful that I assumed the book was satire, and read on in expectation of the denouement where the hero realises his errors and sets forth to right wrongs etc. etc. I was wrong. He doesn't. It appears that John Norman shares his character's outlook.

Plot: the hero observes the love of his life being abducted, and grovels so pathetically that the kidnappers decide to take him too. He is then abused and humiliated (which, by the tone of the novel, he 'deserves') until he learns the error of his ways and starts raping & abusing too.
And the actual denouement: he sets of with a new resolve to find his lost love - so that he can rape and abuse her properly too!!

The next day, I gave the book back to my friend (in a brown paper bag). He could not make eye contact. We never spoke of it again.

[Shaun · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the better books since the series went completely to hell in book six. Norman's ramblings on "the nature of women" are kept to a relative minimum, likely because the male protagonist is a slave for almost all of the book instead of the female being a slave. Between what ramblings there are, Norman tells an action packed but predictable (to those of us who have read all the books up to this point) story with plenty of fighting and adventure. Like always, the author repeats himself too much... to the point where it is insulting to the reader's intelligence. The hokieness and forced nature of the dialogue in this book can not be chalked up to the Gorean manner of speaking as the dialogue is just as forced and hokey in the beginning when the characters are on Earth, speaking English. As I do with virtually all the books I "read," I actually listened to the audiobook version of this book. The narrator of this book was different than the narrator of the last book, and he was quite good. He took a lousy book and made it barely acceptable. I can't recommend the Gor series beyond book 5. I am compelled to finish it only because I have made it so far in to the series.

[AmbushPredator · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, for the next three novels, we have a new character to follow - and Jason, despite being taken to Gor as a slave rather than as a favoured son and agent for Priest Kings, takes to it a hell of a lot quicker than the young Tarl Cabot! His initial start as a spoiled brat's silk slave is not destined to last, and he soon becomes a fighting slave, winning his freedom and selling his former mistress before setting off to track down the woman with who he was abducted.

You just know it'll end in tears....and slavery.

[Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading this one in my youth. I found Jason's capitivity a real turn on at the time. One for the ladies!!

[Darth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have learned to read the Gor books with a number of mental disclaimers in my head.
I know the author will treat me like I am 5 and he is teaching me a lesson I have been particularly recalcitrant in picking up & he will go a bit far in his rhetoric.

As usual in the Gor books, the story is pretty okay. A swashbuckling adventure through hostile lands and peoples. There is just lots more rubbish marking the landscape this time.

This installment marked a new main character. Tarl Cabot / Bosk of Port Kar is nowhere to be seen and we instead follow the adventures of Jason Marshall. He is transported to Gor when he blunders onto the kidnapping of a girl he is interested in, where he is enslaved and goes on a romping adventure.

Here are my problems with it.

The character is BRAND NEW. But the voice the story is told in, is exactly the same as always. There was no attempt by the author to change it up, make it seem like a different person. And of course, since the author likes to throw in, in-depth nuggets about far away places and cultures on Gor - I get it - but he has Jason voice them, and Jason is new to Gor and shouldnt really have clue zero about anyting - let alone be lecturing natives about how things are in Gor. I just doesnt make sense.

The more of these I read too, the more I think - "If raw untrained barbarian slave girls go for a few tarsk bits each, how can it possibly be worth flying an interplanetary ship to Earth and paying henchmen to rounnd a few up, and flying them back to Gor - half an Earth's orbit distance away?"

I know I know, suspend my disbelief... It just gets harder and harder the more of these I read, and they dont seem to get to be any more well crafted. I have them on my shelf up through 28 or 29, so I will still read them, but I may not be in too much of a rush.

[Almustafa Couch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately this book is a failed attempt by the author to separate the question of the naturalistic approach to gender from the philosophy of naturalism and the naturalistic fallacy; or the "is ought dilemma" this book however fails abysmally in its attempt to separate the misogynistic view point from naturalism. It does fit well with the rest of the Gor chronicles and given that the main character is new it does provide an interesting launch point into the society that exists on the counter earth.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started a three book trilogy featuring a new character named Jason Marshall, and earthman kidnapped and enslaved on Gor. I thought it had promise but it fell victim to the same old problems that the series began to show after book 10. It was the best of this trilogy, though. The other two books were Rogue of Gor and Guardsman of Gor.

[PRJ Greenwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know, it's not the concepts or the misogyny that grate the most about this book - it's his writing style. It's repetitive and child-like. There's a fairly decent sword and sandals story buried in here but it never gets a chance to shine through all the woman-debasing and poor phrasing.

[Katrina Courtright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not Tarl Cabot

For some reason a girl named Beverly asks a man named Jason out for coffee. She speaks weirdly even for 1980. No one male or female talked like this on Eath on am sure. Anyway, they find themselves slaves on Gor. Jason is the narrator of this story. He is the first male slave taken from Earth. He is trained and sold as a pleasure slave of sorts but finds himself competing as a pugilist. He soon becomes the champion that everyone respects except his mistress, the Lady Florence. She just wants his flesh. Jason finds freedom and begins a quest to find Beverly. He is torn whether or not to free her or keep her a slave. This book was amusing. Jason didn’t drone on about slavery like Tarl does. I just want to say that it is stupid to think women are always turned on and ready to be touched at any moment. The people of Gor really need to seek therapy for sex addiction. How in the world can such a horny society thrive?

[David Mann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gor at its most repetitive and misogynistic (which is saying something).

Unfortunately no redeeming qualities in this one. In some of the previous books it was possible to grit one's teeth over the problematic parts (if you have read the books, you know what I mean), while still enjoying the world building of the author, where each new story explored another unique part of the geography of Gor. No such luck with this one. Pretty much on par with the awful Slave Girl of Gor, except this time the protagonist is a man from Earth. Regarding what happens when he finally meets up with poor Beverly Henderson of Earth in the next book, that's totally predictable, but, having committed to reading this series, I'll have to go through that torture as well at some point.

[Jeff J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better books in the Gor series despite the ever-present misogyny.

[Sónia Rocha · Rating 5 out of 5]

And the saga continues…. Let’s learn more about Gor.

[Squire · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Norman begins a trilogy featuring a new male character: Jason Marshall--a person who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes the first male taken to Gor as a slave. The only reason I can conceive as to why Norman wrote this new character is to give something for the ladies--a male who is used and abused by females. Which lasts about 200 pages before Marshall asserts his masculinity over the females of Gor.

Fine. Whatever.

The book begins with a 35-page chapter of bad dialog that can be a chore to wade through. But I've put up with Norman's inability to write good dialog before and I knew that if I waited it out, the story would pick up. And it did.

Amid the BDSM and the inane philosophical musings, a pretty good story emerges. Jason Marshall is a much interesting character than Tarl Cabot ever was, and his tale is exciting, suspenseful and fraught with peril. And things get set up nicely for the sequel as war breaks out between Ar and the Salderian Confederation.

But there is the usual repetition of not only phrases (which I actually like), but whole paragraphs (which I don't). Norman can be a pretty lazy writer at times. And he wrote these books so a reader could pick any one to read. Which means lengthy discourses on the geography and the politics of Gor--all things I'm willing to put up with.

I understand this series is not for everybody, but at this point I'm pretty immune to the effects of the slavery issue--I expect to see the phrase "rape me" several times each book. Aside from Book 5, it's only the books that are narrated by a female slave that seem to go overboard and try my patience.

This one was about par for the course for what I expect from a Gor novel.

[Álef Cero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Importante: esta es la catorceava entrega de esta saga de los libros de Gor, así que primero lean los 13 libros anteriores para que sepan de que va este libro. Sólo tomen en cuenta que es un libro viejo y que, por lo tanto, no es políticamente correcto, para que no les sorprenda la temática que abarca.

Ahora bien, si ya has leído las entregas anteriores, te puedo decir que este libro se siente un poco diferente. La temática general se mantiene: una aventura en el planeta de Gor. Pero esta vez el personaje principal es un hombre distinto a Tarl Cabot, es un hombre raptado de la Tierra, Jason, que llega como esclavo a Gor y se narra su travesía de entenderse como un esclavo, pero también entender las reglas sociales que rigen en este planeta.

El libro, como un libro de aventura y fantasía, es un libro normal, «bueno» a secas, al igual que los anteriores. No es gran literatura, pero es un libro que entretiene. Además, si eres seguidor de la saga, pues es normal continuar con esta lectura. Eso sí, hay que tener en cuenta que esta historia es sólo la primera de tres que tendrán la histroia de Jason (lo investigué en Wikipedia). Así que si quieres saber como avanza esto, habrá que leer las siguientes entregas.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wasn't going to read anymore Gor novels, but a friend of mine said that this book wasn't about Tarl Cabot, it's about someone else. It wasn't very good either. I did read the three books of this "trilogy." Didn't care for any of them.

[Contrarius · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't believe that an actual publisher stooped to printing this.