Raiders of Gor

Gor #6

by John Norman

Strapping warriors sail through the seas of a Counter Earth—where the powerful have every fantasy fulfilled—in this cult classic sci-fi adventure series. Former Earthman Tarl Cabot finds himself in the most depraved city on Gor. Port Kar is a city of robbers, brigands, and men without allegiance to any cause or kingdom where the weak are quickly consumed by the strong. However, Tarl is able to flourish in the cutthroat environment of the city, for he is a powerful Tarnsman used to having his way. He finds that there is much to learn in Port Kar, where the people are celebrated for their skill of training their voluptuous slaves into utter obedience.   Rediscover this brilliantly imagined world where men are masters and women live to serve their every desire.  Raiders of Gor is the 6th book in the Gorean Saga, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. 

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

326 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1971

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

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the very slight downturn of "Assassins," Norman turned up the heat with "Raiders." This is my second favorite of the Gor novels and is really the book where Tarl Cabot finally "becomes" Gorean. Again he is made a slave, and nearly broken.

I really enjoyed this book, but in retrospect I can see that this is probably where the books begin to take a slight turn toward the over focus on sexuality to the exclusion of adventure. My judgment on this one, though is:

Not sexist.

[Christopher Walls · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this whole series in a marathon session, while stationed in England. The depth and volume of the stories is humbling for any writer and I consider this series very influential in my own approach to writing and world building in general; generic post for all the books in this series as I am finally getting around to recording my reading list in Goodreads.

[Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures:
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/20...

John Norman’s Gor series is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s set in a world where the men are big and brave and half naked all the time, and the women are content to be sex slaves, which should offend me, but instead I find myself sucked into the story and craving more. The world of Gor values honor and glory, and beneath its outward appearance, it’s secretly ruled by a race of insectoid aliens. Basically, when I’m having a rough day, this is my go-to series of books.

Based on reviews that I’ve read, most people who stop reading the series stop with this one, and I can see why. In Raiders of Gor, the protagonist, Tarl Cabot, transforms from a noble hero to what can best be summed up as a bad rendition Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars prequels.

Tarl Cabot is on his way to the pirate city of Port Kar, but he is ambushed in the marshes and taken prisoner. He’s given the choice between death or slavery (albeit to a sexy warrior chick), and he chooses the latter. Unfortunately, that decision messes with his pride, and he feels like he violated his warrior codes by choosing to grovel rather than die. This pissed me off for so many reasons. I can deal with a fictional world where all the women are happy sex slaves, but I can’t stand Tarl Cabot being a frickin’ baby when what goes around comes around and he gets a taste of his own medicine. And yes, he escapes pretty quickly, but his experience changes him for the worst. He gets super emo, and decides that rather than following the rather interesting plotline with the Priest Kings, he’ll just say fuck it and get rich instead, and then he starts acting like a dick. Well, a more honorable dick than most of the people who rule Port Kar, but since Port Kar is basically Tortuga from Pirates of the Caribbean, that isn’t saying much. And I’m just like dude, cut it out. Let go of your stupid-ass ego and step up to the plate and save the world and all. Wanting to stay alive no matter what it takes is part of being human, and the fact that you made what you perceive to be a big mistake shouldn’t mean you can’t pick yourself back up and get on with your life.

I’m still determined to get through the whole series, but this one was rough. A big part of the appeal of the sword-and-planet genre is having heroes who are heroic, and Tarl Cabot just wasn’t cutting it this time.

[Christian West · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahoy me hearties, it be Talk Like A Pirate Day and I be finishing reading me book.

Badly, me book turned into bilge water. Arrr. That thar Tarl Cabot becomes a slave to a wench to save his lubber neck. He then loses his pride and becomes an emo pirate after about 5 minutes of being a slave. Arrr.

Him be a scurvy dog for the rest of thar book, and him be abusing them thar wenches all over thar place. Tarl Cabot be an arrrrrse. Arrr.

Worst book so farrrr.

[Tenebrous Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're not put off by pages' worth of having the longbow explained to you, then maybe you'll get as far as the mid-action digressions into agriculture and animal husbandry or even the multiple scenes of the protagonist's drunk crying before the pain kicks in. Agonizing.

Covered in depth on the Bad Books for Bad People podcast:
http://badbooksbadpeople.com/episode-...

[Giulia Napoli · Rating 1 out of 5]

Everything comes apart here. Our hero becomes the antihero. The next 19 - 20 books are just more and more of the same "all women want to be slaves" idea. Books 1 - 5 are great. The rest can be used as fireplace starters.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

**SOME MINOR SPOILERS, THOUGH NOT MANY AND I CAN'T BE ARSED TO GO THROUGH AND SEEK THEM OUT INDIVIDUALLY SO I'M TACKING THIS ON THE FRONT HERE INSTEAD!**

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Volume 6 of The Gor Chronicles and we see Tarl Cabot the great warrior originally of Earth becoming first a slave, then a pirate and a captain, and finally an admiral. It's all rather exciting stuff as Tarl assumes an alter ego, namely Bosk of Port Ka, which apparently is much like Mos Isley(from Star Wars) in that it is a veritable hive of villany and scum and pirates and so on. Oh, and it's also home to those great and respected slavers who 'know well how to treat their slave girls'. Well, you can't argue with that then can you really?

So Bosk, as he now is chooses slavery over death and mopes about it a good deal afterwards and generally goes around feeling sorry for himself. Meanwhile he enslaves the woman who originally made a slave of him and then proceeds to treat her like less than nothing until, of course, he falls in love with her. He does that a lot it seems, almost to the point of falling for a different slave girl in each book. What gets me more than anything about this is that he was originally supposed to be searching for and rescuing his very first lover who's name I now forget due to him being so prolific in the treating-them-like-the-lowly-slaves-they-are-then-falling-for-them-department. Nobody's expecting him to become a monk while he searches for her of course but you'd think he might think upon her from time to time. In fact the only time he seems to think about her or even mention her at all is generally as an afterthought appended to end of the book, usually in the last page of so.

Anyway, I expected this one to be very heavy on the mistreatment of slaves since that's basically what the cover blurb hints at, and also because a number of the reviews I've read seem to have been complaining about just that. I can't say I felt it to be particularly harsh with reagards to slaves, certainly no more so than almost any of the other books in this series so far, and in fact a good deal less than one or two.

So, another rollicking good adventure on Gor. I liked it well enough, although it's not my favourite so far by quite a margin. I think that honour is still held by the first book in fact.

Very enjoyable, though not quite so much as the others. Still very good though.

[Darth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe the deepest Gor book in the series to this point. I know that may sound antithetical, depp and Gor book, but in this volume our hero finds out a little more about himself and what it means to be human in general. The story is still inane, and the treatment of women VERY badly short of todays standards of political correctness, then again, that is the best part of this series ;-)

[Darryl Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A writer doing detailed summaries of Norman's books on a Gor website prefaced his RAIDERS OF GOR synopsis with an astute quote. Up until RAIDERS the writer (nicknamed Socrates) pointed out:

"The stage appears to be set for many adventures in which Tarl, aided, abetted and occasionally hindered by Elizabeth, will foil the plots of the Others in city after city of Gor, while Tarl enjoys James Bond-like romantic encounters over and above Elizabeth's considerable charms and sees many a deserving and brave slave girl restored to freedom, escapes from hair-raising dangers and finds himself unexpectedly assisted by people much better clued-in than he about what is going on. He will surely make occasional progress towards the eventual discovery of his lost Talena, despite his many worries as to the fate of a defenseless woman on Gor."

That is a keen insight down the path the series could have gone, one many readers wish Norman had taken. I, too, would've loved another two or three books with Cabot still in good guy mode like he is in NOMADS or ASSASSIN before Norman veered onto 'the road less traveled by.' But Professor Lange trekked into darker territory and murky emotional waters where Tarl Cabot undergoes a massive paradigm shift, reversing his former notions on the enslavement of women; gone is the squeaky clean firm-jawed boy wonder Cabot and in his place is a more believable and flawed character. RAIDERS is the springboard for the humble beginnings of Bosk of Port Kar, a shattered man in serious denial about many things, one of them claiming not to serve Priest Kings anymore while clearly doing so.

Norman sprinkled clues pertaining to future plot developments large and small early on in the series making obvious the fact he had a long range vision of Gor. He might not have had it when he penned TARNSMAN, but he certainly did once OUTLAW was finished. Cabot first hears of the Others (a major plotline many years and books down the road) in the fourth book, he gets a glimpse of a Kur in the fifth, but never meets one face to face till the ninth book, when the Others nomenclature is all but dropped from the series in favor of Kurii. All those Centurions, Vikings and American Indians traipsing about Gor make perfect sense in Norman's cosmic scheme of things too. The invasion of Ar by Cos and Tyros was also only an inevitable matter of time. On a smaller scale, Chenbar the Sea Sleen and Ivar Forkbeard (among others) are mentioned in conversation in books prior to their actual walking/talking debut on the page.

What makes RAIDERS OF GOR one of the most important books in the series is Cabot's character about-face in chapter three. RAIDERS is not as strong a work as the two previous titles NOMADS and ASSASSINS, but it is an absorbing read and an unpredictable change seeing the invincible dunderhead Cabot with the sandal on his other foot. Forthwith Cabot eschews his dunderheadedness after hundreds of thousands of previous words of prose and wakes up to smell the hot black wine.

It must take some authorial courage to skewer and reinvent a hero on the Tarzanic level of Tarl Cabot and transform him into a fairly unlikable chap. Cabot suffers mental duress in RAIDERS that will greatly impact all the Gor books to come, where both protagonist and planet get meaner and grittier. The next book CAPTIVE takes another huge leap in outlook at the less kind and gentle doings on Counter-Earth.

Then HUNTERS, MARAUDERS and TRIBESMEN rear their awesome heads with the DAW brand and rival PRIEST KINGS, NOMADS and ASSASSIN in quality, storytelling and plot resolution. After those only a few Tarl Cabot novels could even stand in their shadow: BEASTS, BLOOD BROTHERS, PLAYERS and, maybe, REBELS.

[AndrewP · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first 5 of these books way back when and remember them being rousing adventure stories. 30 years on this one does not seem to have the same thrill as the ones I remember. Either this volume is not as good, or more likely, I have read a great deal of better fantasy in that time.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tarl Cabot becomes a bit more Gorean in this book, a bit less of a good guy, but still there is a lot of adventure, this time involving warships.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gor books were great adventure books with some pretty repulsive "women are best as slaves" commentary. Then the commentary overtook the adventure and I stopped reading.

[Grey Wolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raiders of Gor was the best of the Gor books in my opinion, helped by a largely static geographic focus, and on a setting that resembled medieval Venice in many ways.

[Malum · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Tarl Cabot has an existential crisis, shit gets real!

This book serves as something of a soft reboot to the Gor series, and readers who have read to this point will either love it or hate it.

Remember the woman traveling with Tarl at the end of the last book? Well, forget about her. Remember the woman Tarl has been searching for for almost the entire series? Forget her, too. Remember Tarl's duties to the Priest Kings? Yep, throw that right out the window. Remember the boy scout Tarl Cabot who traipsed around Gor, freeing slaves left and right and helping anyone and everyone he came across? Wave bye bye to that fella'.

Tarl has a bit of an existential crisis (and, even though I like this book, the reason behind it was handled VERY poorly and so out of character that it is laughable) and decides that money is what he wants in life and so he becomes a pirate (arrrrrr!). Tarl suddenly has no problem with torturing the shit out of captives. He also has no problem with keeping lots of slaves and pimp-slapping them at will and going beast-mode on them at the slightest infraction.

Despite the big tonal shift, I actually liked this entry into the Gor canon. Although much of the old recipe is still in effect here (Tarl meets woman. Woman and Tarl are shitty to each other. Tarl and woman eventually fall in love after woman realizes how awesome slavery is. Tarl finds a random tarn to tool around on. Big battle scene. The end), there is enough newness with Tarl's new anti-hero status to keep it fresh and interesting.

The main problem with this book is that same problem with all Gor books: sooooooo much exposition! In this volume, we are told how Goreans make paper, how they make ships, how ship sailing and combat works, information on different types of ships, information on ship oars (did I mention there is lot of information about ships in this one?), the differences between longbows and crossbows including what types of people would choose to use which weapon and why, how to make slave collars out of material other than metal, how to train slaves (of course). We also get more exposition on units of time and distance measurement (as if we haven't had enough of that in previous volumes).

But, despite all of that, this is probably my favorite Gor novel to date. It is bloody, mean, and fun! And, hey, who doesn't love pirates?

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler Alert**

After reading Assassin of Gor I seriously considered skipping this book and going straight to #7 which I know is told from the perspective of someone other than Tarl Cabbot. However, I'm pretty glad I decided not to as this ended up being one of my favorite books of the series so far.

One of the pitfalls of this series is how little Tarl progresses as a character throughout the books. While this installment of the Gor series doesn't necessarily change him overall, it does provide a sense of interiority that I believe is lacking in Norman's other books.

We get a sense of Tarl's pseudo-crisis of faith in the first book after his city is destroyed and his lover is lost. However, he seems to move on from this fairly quickly and is serving the priest kings again before we know it while the loss of his father and companion seems to fall by the wayside and be forgotten almost entirely by the end of the third book.

Tarl's crisis of self in Raiders of Gor is far more significant, both to the plot and to his character development as a whole. When he throws aside his moral code (what little of it there was) and no longer considers himself one of the cast of warriors, his emotional vulnerability comes into play in a way that has not yet been evident in the series. His downward spiral is juxtaposed by his upward mobility from a slave to what is basically a pirate king. The more powerful he becomes, the more miserable he seems.

His eventual realization that he not only fears death but also fears his own inadequacy as he has been unable to protect his former lovers, is a surprising and welcome addition to a series that centers around a guy who seems to be...well, a real bastard.

The pirate angle of this book is pretty cool and the world building is, as always, impeccable if a little drawn out at times. I love these books but jeez Norman, I do NOT need half a page talking about how to make paper on Gor.

TLDR; Pirate Gor is pretty cool, more interiority for Tarl, a little melodramatic and drawn out at times but overall, worth the read.

[5 pound poi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All men," said Samos, "and all women, have within themselves despicable elements, cruel things and cowardly things, things vicious, and greedy and selfish, things ugly that we hide from others, and most of all from ourselves." ..... "The human being," he said, "is a chaos of cruelties and nobilities, of hatreds and loves, of resentments and respects, of envies and admirations. He contains within himself, in his ferments, much that is base and much that is worthy. These are old truths, but few men truly understand them."


"When you lost your images of yourselves, and learned your humanity, in your diverse ways, and shame, you abandoned your myths, your songs, and would accept only the meat of animals, as though one so lofty as yourself must be either Priest-King or beast. Your pride demanded either the perfection of the myth or the perfection of its most villainous renunciation. If you were not the highest, you would demand to be the lowest; if you were not the best you would be nothing less than the worst; if there was not the myth there was to be nothing." Samos now spoke softly. "There is something," he said, "between the fancies of poets and the biting, and the rooting and sniffing of beasts."
"What?" I asked.
"Man." He said.


Excellent book in a great series thus far. Gor is magnificently ridiculous and over-the-top and I'm enjoying nearly every page of it.

[DKC · Rating 3 out of 5]

The spoiler: My jaw dropped at the conclusion of the book. Seriously.

I floundered a bit with this installment in the series. Tarl is taken to places, physically and psychologically, that were quite unexpected at this juncture. This still being early in the long, long catalog of Gor books, I'm not quite sure where Norman is going to take his hero. But the direction this volume took kind of shook my affection for the character to the core, even while awakening a sense of sympathy that could not have been applied in the previous books.

Can the hero fail, even when he triumphs? This story made me say, "Yes." Can Tarl be more block-headed and blinded to his purpose? Apparently so. Does Tarl need a few sessions with Carl Jung? Oh hell, yeah.

I'm hoping the character arc swings back around, enriching the hero, not diminishing him - but that might be a few books down the road. The way Norman takes his time with plot developments, I don't expect Tarl's issues will resolve for a while, so I will have to grit my teeth and struggle through, waiting for enlightenment to dawn on our hero.

Mos Eisley or Port Kar? I'd take Mos Eisley, hands down.

[Squire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tarl Cabot travels to Port Kar to meet up with an agent of the Preist-Kings, but is detained by river people and is himself subjected to the indignities of a slave. He emerges from the experience embittered and self-destructive--traits that allow him to thrive in the vileness of Port Kar.

This is the one I've been waiting for. I like it when a series takes a dark turn and this one did not disappoint. The problem I had with the novel is that the tone was inconsistent. At times Norman seemed to be angry, other times sarcastic, still others just plain evil. Maybe that's what Cabot was going through, but it struck me as being steered by external influences. Militant feminism was on the rise (as were attacks on his books) and I think it affected his writing. In the end, he seems to have weathered the storm and delivered a somewhat optimistic ending.

This is the book that made me look at the slavery theme as satire. He seems to be enjoying his role as literary villain and making certain people uncomfortable. It remains to be seen how it all plays out (again, I'm not accepting anybody's opinion but my own).

[Stephan · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Norman's Gor series has two main topics: planetary swashbuckling in what started out as a somewhat original fantasy setting, but over the course of the series becomes more gritty and inspired by ancient Earth cultures, and horticulture (see Houseplants of Gor - you can find legal copies of the text online). Over the course of the series, the horticultural content, dealing with the acquisition and proper watering of houseplants, the philosophical foundations of gardening, and the natural division of beings into either natural house plants or natural gardeners, becomes increasingly dominant - some may call it repetitive and plain boring. In the first few volumes, plants play minor and mostly decorative roles, and the Earth-human protagonist, Tarl Cabot, comments on horticulture in a quite detached way, sometimes enjoying flowers, but not really adopting the whole flowermania mindset.

The German publisher, Heyne, very much minimised the horticultural content of the books, basically by cutting nearly all of the material out of the translations (which reduced the later volumes by about half and immensely improved them). The series was published as a planetary science fantasy series similar to Alan Burt Akers' Dray Prescot/Scorpio series, or Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom. This ploy became increasingly impossible for later volumes (starting with Captive of Gor), in which house plant cultivation became the central topic.

Raiders of Gor is from the middle of the series - arguably it is the novel in which Tarl Cabot changes from an observer of horticulture to an ardent horticulturalist. I originally read the German version of it as a teenager, and quite enjoyed it. Plenty of action, sea battles, some nice planning and ruses, sword fights, longbow battles - it was good fun. So now I tried the original. It was a bit of a let-down. Some of it still worked (e.g. the sea battles), but other parts are harder to swallow. The protagonist changes from clean-cut all-American hero to self-conscious whiner to total asshole and back several times. And the whole sex slavery thing (sorry, "gardening material") just distracts from what could be a decent story.

There is something here, and this volume is much better than the later volumes of the series, but from a speculative fiction point of view, it's a missed opportunity (though, apparently, a commercial and cultural success, with a large and actice fandom). Don't start the series here - but it's a decent place to stop.

[Allan Ashinoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book out of sequence, skipping 5 by accident. Frankly, I skimmed more of this book than I read..Norman's compulsion to backfill the historical detail of anything needing to be explained ad nauseam made reaching the end a task. Even so, his action sequences were enjoyable. I'm not so sure that I'll be reading more from Norman since it seems to have gone downhill from Priest-Kings of Gor or Nomads of Gor.

[Aaron Bolin · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, this is the best book in the Gorean Saga. Yes, it is still pretty stupid; nobody reads these books in an effort to get smarter, though. It is still Tarl Cabot with a supernatural level of agency. However, John Norman does a pretty good job of keeping a coherent plot-line throughout. The ending is a little weak, but the overall narrative was engaging and executed well.

If you love the world of Gor, like I must because I just finished book 6, then this one is a must read.

[Šimon Podlesný · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure if I should give it one or five star. Book have a good and rich story, great conclusion at the end but there were parts where I wanted to close the book and never ever open it as I didn't like the main character anymore.

My one of the favorite quotes (spoiler free):
"Now, with weapons and courage, perhaps for the first time, they were truly free, for they could now defend their freedoms, and those who cannot do this are not truly free; at best they are fortunate"

[Flosse07 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es war mal wieder an der Zeit auf die Gegenerde, nach Gor zurückzukehren.

Dieses mal ging es für Tarl, der sich im Laufe des Buches in Bosk, den Piraten umbenannt hat, in die Welt der Gesetzlosigkeit.

Ein Teil des Buches war kurzweilig, es hatte aber auch viele Längen. Leider ist vieles immer corhersehbar, so dass Spannung irgendwie Fehlanzeige ist. Für zwischendurch ist die Serie aber immer mal wieder lesenswert. Von mir mal wieder 3 von 5 Sternen.

[Deborah Countryman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pages 831 Raiders of GOR. Tarl Cabot sent by Priest Kings to Porta Kar, to meet a contact. Along the way he becomes a slave to the marsh people, known as Rencers. Then his adventures to Porta Kar he becomes Captain Bosk. He also becomes a pirate and then an admiral, and bearer of a Home Stone of Porta Kar. Still as we leave him with his new companion and he refuses to do what Priest King have in store for him.

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gor #6

John Norman leaves almost nothing to the imagination. He describes everything in minute detail. I have loved this series since I was a young man. I still remember this one when came out in 1971. I bought it at my local Circle K store which no longer exists. Long live the books of Gor and Mr. John Norman.

[Peter Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book great naval battles. I would highly recommend this book to all sword and planet readers. The world of Gore is one of the most fascinating places ever developed in science fiction.

[Klaudia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terrible, terrible read. However, I do like the world described and I am interested in philosophy so I made myself to finish it.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this in the 70s along with several other Gor novels.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really know how to review these things... They are really, objectively terrible and I'm not sure anyone should read this kind of thing... But... I can't look away.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Port Kar gains a Homestone. These books were books that I had read in High School, and they are good, probably a bit dated in some ways, but the story and Gorean ritual still hold up.