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Gor #12
Beasts of Gor
In this, the twelfth book in the famous Gor series, the fight for survival on the primitive, Earthlike world, Gor, continues with a ferocity that matches the rest of the series. On Gor, there are three different kinds of beings that are labeled beasts: there are the Kurii, a monster alien race that is preparing to invade Gor from space; the Gorean warriors, who fight with viciousness almost primitive in its blood lust' and then there are the slave girls of Gor, lowly beasts for men to do with as they see fit, be it as objects of labor or desire. Now all three come together as the Kurii fight to take over Gor with its first beachhead on the planet's polar ice cap. As all three kinds of beasts struggle together, an incredible adventure is told, one that begins in lands of burning heat and ends up in the bitter cold of the polar north among the savage red hunters of the polar ice pack. 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.
444 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
58 people are currently reading
612 people want to read
About the author
John Norman
99 books337 followersLibrarian 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
June 13, 2014
Is the 12th in John Norman's destined never to end cavalcade of sword-and-planet-cum-BDSM novels, the Chronicles of Gor, which means it immediately follows the irremediable Slave Girl of Gor that I have already derided on here.
Now, when someone suggested I trash the Gorean novels on here, this one didn't immediately spring to mind as being particularly horrific. Not compared to its predecessor, which is narrated by a Chained Naked Slave Girl who gets "well used" every verse end, and not compared to Kajira of Gor, which I summed up using the quote, "Lie there and juice. Waste no time about it." I recall it as being rather pants but solely because it was rambling and incoherent. Then I re-read it. It was still rambling and incoherent, but either my mind was playing tricks on me back then, or I completely blocked out the shotgun blasts of horror that rear their head every few pages. As I said before when reviewing Slave Girl, this was written at the time when Gor was in transition in its core audience from your friendly local basement dwellers to your friendly local BDSM enthusiasts. However, it is still from the viewpoint of designated Mary Sue protagonist Tarl Cabot.
Right, I suppose I'd best give you an executive summary, then.
Executive Summary
Eskimos, bondage, and intergalactic gorilla-panthers, oh my!
A bit more detail, if you wouldn't mind?
It all starts when Tarl "Studmuffin" Cabot, who is now a rich political power in the world of Gor, undergoes an assassination attempt by a frenzied sleen. Gor, incidentally, suffers horribly from "call a rabbit a smeerp" and as such a sleen is sort of a Gorean dog equivalent but has six legs. Anyhow. He wonders how he could have been tracked, given his security is in tip-top condition, upon where he suspects one of his chained naked slave girls - Elizabeth Cardwell. Gorean readers will, of course, be familiar with this person; she's been a major character for the past 8 novels and there is a theory amongst the fandom that she is based on an old girlfriend of John Norman's because she starts out as a heroine in her own right as well as a love interest, but then, around volume 8, when the relationship was going south, increasingly unpleasant things begin to happen to her, and/or she goes over to the Bad Guys. He suspects she knows something, so he summons her to the furs for a sexual interrogation.
Yes, this is what it sounds like.
So once he's fucked the truth out of her (yes, seriously, he's so fucking manly is our Tarl that his prick acts as a lie detector), he casts her out and she's never seen again. I am truly gratified that the author is responsible enough to dispense sound relationship advice in his works.
Anyhow, off Tarl Cabot goes to the Sardar Mountains where he meets a contact at a neutral zone therein and watched a game of chess, sorry, Kaissa. That's Gorean chess which is like normal chess but has 21 pieces each, is on a 10x10 board, and the pieces are a mixture of orthodox and fairy chess pieces. It's the big game between Scormus of Ar (aka Bobby Fischer) and Qualius of Cos (aka Tigran Petrosian). Kaissa is really serious business because when the crowd see Qualius make unorthodox moves which sacrifice loads of his pieces they think he's been bribed to lose and are ready to lynch him - then all of a sudden, Scormus announces he's irretrievably lost because all the sacrifices were misdirections and he's left himself wide open. Needless to say, fascinating as this interaction is, there is no reason for it to be in the novel and in no way is the plot advanced.
So, his contact meets him and mentions something unusual in the land of the Red Hunters. They're Inuit to you and I. Apparently they're in trouble because the herds of tabuk, sorry, reindeer, haven't come along their usual migratory paths this year and they're in danger of starving to death. There's also word that this is the doing of the Kurii. They're the big bads of Gor, ten foot tall alien gorilla-panthers who want to conquer the solar system and have agents working to that effort, but they can't move against the Priest-Kings (eight-brained hyperintelligent praying mantises who protect it and all life in it) for various thinly justified reasons. While all this is going on, a fresh shipment of women of Earth arrives in the local slave market and they are confronted with the reality of the situation that they are women of Earth and now on Gor and they know what that means. One of them does but the other falls into flat denial and pleads, "That is only in stories!" Wrong! They're taken off for training, which is described in unnecessary detail, and results in them being really quite content with being a Chained Naked Slave Girl in service to a strict master. Yay.
So off Tarl goes on a boat to the land of the Red Hunters.
What follows now is a mixture of anthropology porn and just plain porn. Tarl Cabot finds that the Red Hunters, despite living in a remote and inhospitable area of Gor, which is very rarely contacted by people from other areas, practice slavery in the same manner as the civilised lands of Ar and Turia and Cos and Ko-ro-ba and Schendi and Torvaldsland and similar. Right down to having the same practices of ritualistic collaring of women and having them "kneel in the position of the Pleasure Slave." If you want to know how to do this, consult Google or better still, Second Life, which is full of Goreans for reasons I do not understand. Tarl fits in to this society absolutely perfectly, because he's a big Mary Sue, and befriends a Red Hunter called Imnak. There's then plenty tedious scenes of them hunting seals together and building igloos and a huge infodump about their culture and traditions, which is probably lifted from a book with a name like "101 Fascinating Things About The Inuit" or similar. I'm sorry, but no. The ritualistic pleasure slavery and Total Power Exchange BDSM that the rest of Gor indulges in doesn't really work here. Nobody fantasises about sneaking into the womens' igloo like they do a harem or seraglio. But it still is chucked in. Anyhow. We then discover the reason why the tabuk aren't migrating - someone, probably the Kurii, has built a huge wall across the tundra to keep them out of the Red Hunters' land and thus starve them out to make room to land a big Kurii invasion force.
Fhat the wuck.
Given the Kurii have interplanetary space travel and nuclear fission, why don't they just nuke them from orbit or something, I don't know.
Anyhow, Tarl reckons something is up and he decides to venture to the Wall. Where he is captured by a bunch of sinister warriors led by a woman of Earth named Sidney Anderson. She is an engineer by trade and was brought in by the Kurii to build the wall.
Fhat the wuck.
Why would they enlist a person of Earth to do this and thus spend 193 million miles worth of rocket fuel when they could just enlist a Gorean from the Caste of Builders to do it, especially given that there are Kurii agents recruited from the native Gorean population, I don't know.
Well, Tarl Cabot is made a slave and forced to work on the wall, but not before ominously telling Sidney Anderson he will one day enslave her, give her a properly feminine name, and make her understand her femininity. The prospect of this both terrifies her (as she is a virgin, we are told) and at the same time causes her to crack a moistie. For this, Tarl is assigned to the chain gang under the supervision of two of Sidney Anderson's own female slaves, which she believes he will find a humiliation and thus not bother trying to escape.
Wrong!
He escapes, along with Imnak, the slave labourers on the wall all are set free, and Tarl captures Sidney Anderson, renames her to Arlene, and gives her a seeing-to as promised. And as before, Tarl Cabot is so utterly manly that she turns her coat and joins his side. Yep. That's right. Tarl Cabot's prick can also act as a recruitment consultant. Yay.
More pointless infodumping about the customs of the Red Hunters occurs. Apparently the women of the Red Hunters wear fur bikinis normally, yet amazingly don't freeze to death. Ain't life glorious.
Anyhow, we eventually reach the Big Bad's base. He's a Kur named Zarendargar and he's built a super secret base built into the side of a mountain. Tarl infiltrates it, with Imnak and Sidney "Arlene" Anderson in tow, and meets Zarendargar, who's responsible for all the late unpleasantness that's been happening to the Red Hunters. The Kur are twelve foot tall gorilla-panther type creatures who are prone to violence and whose racial "hat," if you will, is Social Darwinism. So, we're all ready for the Big Fight, aren't we?
No we aren't. We're treated to another fucking infodump, this time about Kurii society and culture. They're standard Social Darwinist aliens. Then we're told about their reproductive cycle. Basically, it's like this. They have four genders - dominant, nondominant, egg carrier, and blood nurser. Nondominants are sterile. Dominants fertilise egg carriers, who lay eggs. The eggs are then put into blood nursers, which are globular masses of flesh and fur with no face and no limbs and which attach themselves to walls and floors, but which are sentient. Then the infant Kur is born. In the words of Zarendargar, "These fasten themselves to hard surfaces, rather like dark, globular anemones. The egg develops inside the body of the blood nurser and, some months later, it tears its way free." This is fatal to the blood nurser.
Fhat the wuck.
Apart from being completely irrelevant, have you spotted the evolutionary flaw in this plan? Yes, that's right - where do the blood-nursers come from? Tarl asks this, but it is simply hand-waved as being that there are lots of blood nursers about.
It's like John Norman thought, what's the squickiest yet strangely kinkiest way I can have a social Darwinist species reproduce? Aha! Chest-bursting!
Anyhow, Tarl Cabot and Imnak then proceed to battle their way through the complex (with the assistance of various chained naked slave girls kept in the complex who are so won over by Tarl Cabot's irrepressible manliness that they tell him all the secret entry codes and things), set the main reactor to explode, and bugger off, gathering up the former Sidney Anderson and a few other slave girls in the process, and bugger off home with a nice nuclear blast at the end.
Thank fuck that's over with.
Oh, and every so often, throughout the novel, Tarl Cabot goes into constantly repeated walls of text as to how awesome the Gorean institute of slavery is and how brilliant it is for gender relations and how suited to slavery women of Earth are and sideswiping feminism every so often. I am glad to see the War on Straw is still alive and well.
Well, I suppose I should give you an excerpt from one of the interminable scenes in which Tarl Cabot gives one of his many chained naked slave girls a good seeing to. Fine. Dinner is served.
Oh yes. There's also a wonderful display of the "slave orgasm" shortly thereafter. This is where the chained naked slave girl comes at the mere thought of being enslaved and branded. In the book's words:
The rest, as they say, is silence. Only it isn't because there's another 20 of the buggers after this interminable, bloated, plot-hole-ridden, creephatted volume.
*liver-disintegrating belt of alcoholic liquor*
(originally written for Everything2.com)
Now, when someone suggested I trash the Gorean novels on here, this one didn't immediately spring to mind as being particularly horrific. Not compared to its predecessor, which is narrated by a Chained Naked Slave Girl who gets "well used" every verse end, and not compared to Kajira of Gor, which I summed up using the quote, "Lie there and juice. Waste no time about it." I recall it as being rather pants but solely because it was rambling and incoherent. Then I re-read it. It was still rambling and incoherent, but either my mind was playing tricks on me back then, or I completely blocked out the shotgun blasts of horror that rear their head every few pages. As I said before when reviewing Slave Girl, this was written at the time when Gor was in transition in its core audience from your friendly local basement dwellers to your friendly local BDSM enthusiasts. However, it is still from the viewpoint of designated Mary Sue protagonist Tarl Cabot.
Right, I suppose I'd best give you an executive summary, then.
Executive Summary
Eskimos, bondage, and intergalactic gorilla-panthers, oh my!
A bit more detail, if you wouldn't mind?
It all starts when Tarl "Studmuffin" Cabot, who is now a rich political power in the world of Gor, undergoes an assassination attempt by a frenzied sleen. Gor, incidentally, suffers horribly from "call a rabbit a smeerp" and as such a sleen is sort of a Gorean dog equivalent but has six legs. Anyhow. He wonders how he could have been tracked, given his security is in tip-top condition, upon where he suspects one of his chained naked slave girls - Elizabeth Cardwell. Gorean readers will, of course, be familiar with this person; she's been a major character for the past 8 novels and there is a theory amongst the fandom that she is based on an old girlfriend of John Norman's because she starts out as a heroine in her own right as well as a love interest, but then, around volume 8, when the relationship was going south, increasingly unpleasant things begin to happen to her, and/or she goes over to the Bad Guys. He suspects she knows something, so he summons her to the furs for a sexual interrogation.
Yes, this is what it sounds like.
So once he's fucked the truth out of her (yes, seriously, he's so fucking manly is our Tarl that his prick acts as a lie detector), he casts her out and she's never seen again. I am truly gratified that the author is responsible enough to dispense sound relationship advice in his works.
Anyhow, off Tarl Cabot goes to the Sardar Mountains where he meets a contact at a neutral zone therein and watched a game of chess, sorry, Kaissa. That's Gorean chess which is like normal chess but has 21 pieces each, is on a 10x10 board, and the pieces are a mixture of orthodox and fairy chess pieces. It's the big game between Scormus of Ar (aka Bobby Fischer) and Qualius of Cos (aka Tigran Petrosian). Kaissa is really serious business because when the crowd see Qualius make unorthodox moves which sacrifice loads of his pieces they think he's been bribed to lose and are ready to lynch him - then all of a sudden, Scormus announces he's irretrievably lost because all the sacrifices were misdirections and he's left himself wide open. Needless to say, fascinating as this interaction is, there is no reason for it to be in the novel and in no way is the plot advanced.
So, his contact meets him and mentions something unusual in the land of the Red Hunters. They're Inuit to you and I. Apparently they're in trouble because the herds of tabuk, sorry, reindeer, haven't come along their usual migratory paths this year and they're in danger of starving to death. There's also word that this is the doing of the Kurii. They're the big bads of Gor, ten foot tall alien gorilla-panthers who want to conquer the solar system and have agents working to that effort, but they can't move against the Priest-Kings (eight-brained hyperintelligent praying mantises who protect it and all life in it) for various thinly justified reasons. While all this is going on, a fresh shipment of women of Earth arrives in the local slave market and they are confronted with the reality of the situation that they are women of Earth and now on Gor and they know what that means. One of them does but the other falls into flat denial and pleads, "That is only in stories!" Wrong! They're taken off for training, which is described in unnecessary detail, and results in them being really quite content with being a Chained Naked Slave Girl in service to a strict master. Yay.
So off Tarl goes on a boat to the land of the Red Hunters.
What follows now is a mixture of anthropology porn and just plain porn. Tarl Cabot finds that the Red Hunters, despite living in a remote and inhospitable area of Gor, which is very rarely contacted by people from other areas, practice slavery in the same manner as the civilised lands of Ar and Turia and Cos and Ko-ro-ba and Schendi and Torvaldsland and similar. Right down to having the same practices of ritualistic collaring of women and having them "kneel in the position of the Pleasure Slave." If you want to know how to do this, consult Google or better still, Second Life, which is full of Goreans for reasons I do not understand. Tarl fits in to this society absolutely perfectly, because he's a big Mary Sue, and befriends a Red Hunter called Imnak. There's then plenty tedious scenes of them hunting seals together and building igloos and a huge infodump about their culture and traditions, which is probably lifted from a book with a name like "101 Fascinating Things About The Inuit" or similar. I'm sorry, but no. The ritualistic pleasure slavery and Total Power Exchange BDSM that the rest of Gor indulges in doesn't really work here. Nobody fantasises about sneaking into the womens' igloo like they do a harem or seraglio. But it still is chucked in. Anyhow. We then discover the reason why the tabuk aren't migrating - someone, probably the Kurii, has built a huge wall across the tundra to keep them out of the Red Hunters' land and thus starve them out to make room to land a big Kurii invasion force.
Fhat the wuck.
Given the Kurii have interplanetary space travel and nuclear fission, why don't they just nuke them from orbit or something, I don't know.
Anyhow, Tarl reckons something is up and he decides to venture to the Wall. Where he is captured by a bunch of sinister warriors led by a woman of Earth named Sidney Anderson. She is an engineer by trade and was brought in by the Kurii to build the wall.
Fhat the wuck.
Why would they enlist a person of Earth to do this and thus spend 193 million miles worth of rocket fuel when they could just enlist a Gorean from the Caste of Builders to do it, especially given that there are Kurii agents recruited from the native Gorean population, I don't know.
Well, Tarl Cabot is made a slave and forced to work on the wall, but not before ominously telling Sidney Anderson he will one day enslave her, give her a properly feminine name, and make her understand her femininity. The prospect of this both terrifies her (as she is a virgin, we are told) and at the same time causes her to crack a moistie. For this, Tarl is assigned to the chain gang under the supervision of two of Sidney Anderson's own female slaves, which she believes he will find a humiliation and thus not bother trying to escape.
Wrong!
He escapes, along with Imnak, the slave labourers on the wall all are set free, and Tarl captures Sidney Anderson, renames her to Arlene, and gives her a seeing-to as promised. And as before, Tarl Cabot is so utterly manly that she turns her coat and joins his side. Yep. That's right. Tarl Cabot's prick can also act as a recruitment consultant. Yay.
More pointless infodumping about the customs of the Red Hunters occurs. Apparently the women of the Red Hunters wear fur bikinis normally, yet amazingly don't freeze to death. Ain't life glorious.
Anyhow, we eventually reach the Big Bad's base. He's a Kur named Zarendargar and he's built a super secret base built into the side of a mountain. Tarl infiltrates it, with Imnak and Sidney "Arlene" Anderson in tow, and meets Zarendargar, who's responsible for all the late unpleasantness that's been happening to the Red Hunters. The Kur are twelve foot tall gorilla-panther type creatures who are prone to violence and whose racial "hat," if you will, is Social Darwinism. So, we're all ready for the Big Fight, aren't we?
No we aren't. We're treated to another fucking infodump, this time about Kurii society and culture. They're standard Social Darwinist aliens. Then we're told about their reproductive cycle. Basically, it's like this. They have four genders - dominant, nondominant, egg carrier, and blood nurser. Nondominants are sterile. Dominants fertilise egg carriers, who lay eggs. The eggs are then put into blood nursers, which are globular masses of flesh and fur with no face and no limbs and which attach themselves to walls and floors, but which are sentient. Then the infant Kur is born. In the words of Zarendargar, "These fasten themselves to hard surfaces, rather like dark, globular anemones. The egg develops inside the body of the blood nurser and, some months later, it tears its way free." This is fatal to the blood nurser.
Fhat the wuck.
Apart from being completely irrelevant, have you spotted the evolutionary flaw in this plan? Yes, that's right - where do the blood-nursers come from? Tarl asks this, but it is simply hand-waved as being that there are lots of blood nursers about.
It's like John Norman thought, what's the squickiest yet strangely kinkiest way I can have a social Darwinist species reproduce? Aha! Chest-bursting!
Anyhow, Tarl Cabot and Imnak then proceed to battle their way through the complex (with the assistance of various chained naked slave girls kept in the complex who are so won over by Tarl Cabot's irrepressible manliness that they tell him all the secret entry codes and things), set the main reactor to explode, and bugger off, gathering up the former Sidney Anderson and a few other slave girls in the process, and bugger off home with a nice nuclear blast at the end.
Thank fuck that's over with.
Oh, and every so often, throughout the novel, Tarl Cabot goes into constantly repeated walls of text as to how awesome the Gorean institute of slavery is and how brilliant it is for gender relations and how suited to slavery women of Earth are and sideswiping feminism every so often. I am glad to see the War on Straw is still alive and well.
Well, I suppose I should give you an excerpt from one of the interminable scenes in which Tarl Cabot gives one of his many chained naked slave girls a good seeing to. Fine. Dinner is served.
"There is something nice about having a girl lying naked in your arms, who wears bondage strings on her throat.
"I have waited long for your touch, Master," whispered Thistle, who had once been the rich Audrey Brewster. I caressed the side of her face. She looked up at me. She was worth having. I had won her use in the bone gambling, her use as complete slave, until I chose to leave the tent. The hunt had gone well. Imnak and I had brought down four tabuk. Poalu, whom Imnak, with my consent, had made first girl, and the other girls, had followed us. Poalu had showed them how to cut the meat and lay it out on stones to dry. All now slept in the tent, save Thistle and myself.
"You were once Audrey Brewster," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"For purposes of my use of you," I said, "for I have full rights over you, I shall name you, for the tenure of my ownership of you, Audrey."
"Thank you, Master," she said.
"But you wear the name now," I said, "not as a free name, but as a slave name I choose to put on you."
"Oh," she said.
"Do you object?" I asked.
"No, Master," she said.
"I am Audrey, your slave." She clutched me. "Why have you made me wait so long?" she asked.
"It pleased me," I said."
Oh yes. There's also a wonderful display of the "slave orgasm" shortly thereafter. This is where the chained naked slave girl comes at the mere thought of being enslaved and branded. In the book's words:
"Suddenly she clutched me. "Oh, oh," she cried. "It is the thought of being branded," she whispered, intensely. "Please, Master, hold me, hold me!"
Her thighs were clenched fiercely. "I am going into orgasm," she cried out, frightened. I held her, as she gasped and wept in my arms. I had not even entered her, or touched her intimately. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. Angrily I thrust apart her legs.
"Forgive me, Master," she wept "It was the thought of being branded."
The rest, as they say, is silence. Only it isn't because there's another 20 of the buggers after this interminable, bloated, plot-hole-ridden, creephatted volume.
*liver-disintegrating belt of alcoholic liquor*
(originally written for Everything2.com)
April 9, 2015
This could have been good, if only 2/3 of the book was not there! The story, if Norman ever stuck to it, could be fun, but he spends 75%of the time dogmatising about the virtues of female slavery and the joys of being a girl slave, while we have to look for the story line with a magnifying glass!!!! The adventure could have been jolly if every second sentence was not trying to convince us that we really, really want to be slaves and that is all us women are good for. Now, I have nothing against the expression of this concept, but I do not need to be indoctrinated in the same way ever since book 4, over and over again!!!! Yes, I got that he thinks a woman should be collard and on her knees in order to be pleasing to a man, but how many times are you going to repeat it, and rarely in a different manner? Of the close to 5oo pages, this story should have been 200 and then it could have been palatable. Stop it already and lets go on with the main plot, if any of us remember what that was! I think there were Priest Kings.... maybe, or were they chained naked in the cellar? I am not sure anymore....
January 27, 2017
Snow, Ice and BDSM Oh My!! (insert here George Takei)
The Beasts of Gor was fun and creative I loved that the red hunter Imnak was without songs of his own, it's things like that that keep me enchanted with the author and his books.
The adventures and swashbuckling of Tarl Cabot is upon us again as he heads to the far frozen north of Gor in this book.
He has me happily in a canoe hunting sea sleen by hand harpoon and the air is crisp and clear as the northern lights dance. The book has a few holes and leaves somethings in question but so do many others respected books. Enjoy it as it should be a fun roll in the furs in an igloo.
The Beasts of Gor was fun and creative I loved that the red hunter Imnak was without songs of his own, it's things like that that keep me enchanted with the author and his books.
The adventures and swashbuckling of Tarl Cabot is upon us again as he heads to the far frozen north of Gor in this book.
He has me happily in a canoe hunting sea sleen by hand harpoon and the air is crisp and clear as the northern lights dance. The book has a few holes and leaves somethings in question but so do many others respected books. Enjoy it as it should be a fun roll in the furs in an igloo.
September 2, 2010
John Norman's extensive GOR series finally lost me here. After the magical summer of '84, this line of books released its hold on me (and I daresay most of the 3 and 4 star ratings I've given this series wouldn't hold up if I read them today). I quit reading Norman after BEASTS OF GOR, having discovered the more exciting works of R.E. Howard'S CONAN and Edgar Rice Burroughs' TARZAN.
December 3, 2023
Honestly..I probably shouldn't have skipped 9 books ahead in the series, but I was looking for Kurii adventures, and wow! What a massive disappointment. This book promises you a war against the Kur invasion, and yet, you have to wade through 80% of the book, while Tarl mansplains what being a woman is, and how slavery is the answer to all women's conditions blahblahblahhhh before you finally get to the "war" which lasts 2 chapters I think. There were chapters on slavery where he waxed poetic for an hour, where he spoke to a woman about what being a woman is for an entire page and a half before taking a breath, all while these women sat at his feet, their eyes glistening with moisture at his majesty and breathtaking masculinity. Meanwhile, any chapters on hunting or the so-called war were 3-5 minute reads. It was AWFUL! I can't remember what happened to Tarl in those 9 previous books that turned him into such a ridiculous, mansplaining misogynist, but I wanted to throw this book at the wall 100 times.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 9, 2011
I gave this 4 stars because I think I am finally learning the way to read the Gor books.
To anyone not familiar, the Gor books are about 20-25 % story, and about 75-80 % needless description of things that dont exist & doctrine on how ALL women are slaves at heart if there was just a man strong enough to beat them into submissive; figuratively & literally.
This books story was better than most, it really has Tarl going all over the place and doing all kinds of things we havent seen him do before. I enjoyed the meandering of the voyage in this book. It didnt seem too wandering, though there were plenty of changes of scenery. It didnt feel rushed to a conclusion.
This books doctrine was as bad as it gets, although, mostly delivered with a wink and a smile. The raped slaves cry out for more, not for the rape to stop. The firm master only backhands his slave when he is trying to save her. Tarl spend more time talking captured women into loving their bondage than defeating Kurii or collaborators, and almost as much time given overly in depth descriptions of mundane "Gorean" items - that just isnt interesting. Yes, I have read the preceeding 11 installments. I know what the slave coffle is. You dont need page after page describing things you have already spent page after page describing in 11 other straight books.
I am sure plenty of women have a slave fetish, or role playing behind closed doors in their hearts. I have known several, and I cannot speak highly enough about them, they are a BLAST.
But I think it is overly simply minded to project that onto every woman out there. Allow for some variety man.
Although I like this for the most part, if this book's editor had earned his money, we could have been spared several typos a 5th grader should have caught, and it probly could have been at most half as long. 444 page was a LOT to slog through for the 200-250 +/- pages worth of interesting material in this book.
To anyone not familiar, the Gor books are about 20-25 % story, and about 75-80 % needless description of things that dont exist & doctrine on how ALL women are slaves at heart if there was just a man strong enough to beat them into submissive; figuratively & literally.
This books story was better than most, it really has Tarl going all over the place and doing all kinds of things we havent seen him do before. I enjoyed the meandering of the voyage in this book. It didnt seem too wandering, though there were plenty of changes of scenery. It didnt feel rushed to a conclusion.
This books doctrine was as bad as it gets, although, mostly delivered with a wink and a smile. The raped slaves cry out for more, not for the rape to stop. The firm master only backhands his slave when he is trying to save her. Tarl spend more time talking captured women into loving their bondage than defeating Kurii or collaborators, and almost as much time given overly in depth descriptions of mundane "Gorean" items - that just isnt interesting. Yes, I have read the preceeding 11 installments. I know what the slave coffle is. You dont need page after page describing things you have already spent page after page describing in 11 other straight books.
I am sure plenty of women have a slave fetish, or role playing behind closed doors in their hearts. I have known several, and I cannot speak highly enough about them, they are a BLAST.
But I think it is overly simply minded to project that onto every woman out there. Allow for some variety man.
Although I like this for the most part, if this book's editor had earned his money, we could have been spared several typos a 5th grader should have caught, and it probly could have been at most half as long. 444 page was a LOT to slog through for the 200-250 +/- pages worth of interesting material in this book.
October 31, 2014
Finally, back to a book with some plot! Hero Tarl has had an attempt made on his life and he's mad. So what does he do? Travels to watch a chess game. Then afterwards he travels north to find some baddies. Along the way he meets some Inuit, enslaves some girls, and waxes lyrical about all the pleasures a girl must have being a slave.
If you skip chapter 15 (a tedious conversation with his slave girl about how she is gagging for rape) and any paragraph more than 5 lines long (which will be either a pointless description of things in Gor that I don't care about, or taking about how great slavery is for the woman) then this story moves along quite well.
Unfortunately book 11 scarred me so much that I'm done with this series. I don't even know why I read this one, but I'm glad to go out on a higher-than-book-11 note.
If you skip chapter 15 (a tedious conversation with his slave girl about how she is gagging for rape) and any paragraph more than 5 lines long (which will be either a pointless description of things in Gor that I don't care about, or taking about how great slavery is for the woman) then this story moves along quite well.
Unfortunately book 11 scarred me so much that I'm done with this series. I don't even know why I read this one, but I'm glad to go out on a higher-than-book-11 note.
December 23, 2020
I may not follow through on this challenge to myself to read the entire Gor saga. The common writing structure of these Gor novels: travelogue, BDSM dissertations, bromance, [rap]erotica is being overshadowed by yet again my same 2 complaints from TRIBESMEN: far too many sermons on female bondage & g a p i n g plot holes. I don't have a problem with the overall structure of Tarl being called upon to quest, said questing to happen with him being the best at everything always and Tarl inevitably befriending a new pal in each location who is the perfect compliment and unwaveringly loyal AND a very important figure in his society. I mean, I definitely wouldn't mind some fricking variety, but this pattern is acceptable to me because the 14 year old boy in me still gets a hard on from the Manowar ideal of Heavy Metal bros slaying foes.. and pussy. Well, the hard on is only figuratively, but Gor was doing it for me... in the early works. Now, both TRIBESMEN & BEASTS come off as unimaginative and rather lazy.
Quickly to both my rehashed gripes: 1) WE GET IT. All women are slaves, or should be slaves, or have a damn slave girl in them just LONGING to come out. We, the readers who are 12 books into your series, understand this tenet of your story. Please kindly desist writing a treatise per chapter on the subject. 2) The plot in BEASTS, how can I say this professionally, sucks ass. The ingenious strategy of the brilliant general of the Kurii is to make a wall to block reindeer so that he can starve the Eskimos so that he can have space around his super secret base that's in an iceberg. This is just stupid. From beginning to end the whole plot is hardly ever better than this.
2 stars because for all of Norman's faults in this book he's still a talented writer and comes through shining ever so often with great descriptions of landscapes or actually poignant philosophical commentaries, but wading through 400+ pages of shit for these nice nuggets is growing tiresome. Glutton for punishment that I am, on to the next one!
"Stalemate will be achieved upon the ashes of civilizations... Perhaps the lies of civilization are preferable to the truths of barbarism."
"Where there is beauty and friendship what more could one ask of a world. How grand and significant is such a place. What more justification could it require?"
Quickly to both my rehashed gripes: 1) WE GET IT. All women are slaves, or should be slaves, or have a damn slave girl in them just LONGING to come out. We, the readers who are 12 books into your series, understand this tenet of your story. Please kindly desist writing a treatise per chapter on the subject. 2) The plot in BEASTS, how can I say this professionally, sucks ass. The ingenious strategy of the brilliant general of the Kurii is to make a wall to block reindeer so that he can starve the Eskimos so that he can have space around his super secret base that's in an iceberg. This is just stupid. From beginning to end the whole plot is hardly ever better than this.
2 stars because for all of Norman's faults in this book he's still a talented writer and comes through shining ever so often with great descriptions of landscapes or actually poignant philosophical commentaries, but wading through 400+ pages of shit for these nice nuggets is growing tiresome. Glutton for punishment that I am, on to the next one!
"Stalemate will be achieved upon the ashes of civilizations... Perhaps the lies of civilization are preferable to the truths of barbarism."
"Where there is beauty and friendship what more could one ask of a world. How grand and significant is such a place. What more justification could it require?"
May 5, 2024
4.5 stars
The tale of Tarl Cabot takes a turn for the epic as he slays and enslaves his way across the polar regions of Gor in search of the Kuri war general Half-Ear who awaits him at the End of the World.
Alternately dry, coy, exciting, silly, charming, witty and offensive, Beasts of Gor is the first Gor novel where John Norman gets to be entirely himself. He's telling his story his way, letting events unfold as he wants them to, writing scenes of dialog that feel natural to him, using the slavery/BDSM theme as a backdrop to the action and just not worrying about what others think of what he writes.
This is the way I wish all the Gor novels were written.
By now, I now what Norman is not. He's not Edgar Rice Burroghs; nor is he Robert Howard. He IS a tenured professor of Philosophy at Queens College of the City of New York (retired). His novels can read like classroom lectures. He will repeat certain phrases and thoughts because he wants his readers to remember them--just as a teacher will do.
I'm okay with that.
He even entertains the notion that "perhaps women, after all, are not women, but only small, incomplete men, as many men and women, espousing the current political and economical orthodoxies on the matter, the required, expected views on the matter, would insist. I do not know." Silly, but, in relation to the structures of Gor and some current events, unabashedly insightful, satirical and relevant.
In the end, I can't just summarily dismiss someone who can pen, "I wondered from what shaggy Prometheus the Kurii, long ago, had accepted fire. I wondered at what it might mean, fire rekindled in the paws of a beast."
I wish all the Gor novels were written this way. This is the second of the first 12 Gor books I would reread.
The tale of Tarl Cabot takes a turn for the epic as he slays and enslaves his way across the polar regions of Gor in search of the Kuri war general Half-Ear who awaits him at the End of the World.
Alternately dry, coy, exciting, silly, charming, witty and offensive, Beasts of Gor is the first Gor novel where John Norman gets to be entirely himself. He's telling his story his way, letting events unfold as he wants them to, writing scenes of dialog that feel natural to him, using the slavery/BDSM theme as a backdrop to the action and just not worrying about what others think of what he writes.
This is the way I wish all the Gor novels were written.
By now, I now what Norman is not. He's not Edgar Rice Burroghs; nor is he Robert Howard. He IS a tenured professor of Philosophy at Queens College of the City of New York (retired). His novels can read like classroom lectures. He will repeat certain phrases and thoughts because he wants his readers to remember them--just as a teacher will do.
I'm okay with that.
He even entertains the notion that "perhaps women, after all, are not women, but only small, incomplete men, as many men and women, espousing the current political and economical orthodoxies on the matter, the required, expected views on the matter, would insist. I do not know." Silly, but, in relation to the structures of Gor and some current events, unabashedly insightful, satirical and relevant.
In the end, I can't just summarily dismiss someone who can pen, "I wondered from what shaggy Prometheus the Kurii, long ago, had accepted fire. I wondered at what it might mean, fire rekindled in the paws of a beast."
I wish all the Gor novels were written this way. This is the second of the first 12 Gor books I would reread.
December 16, 2019
As always I am conflicted about writing reviews for these books, let alone reading them. As has been the case since the first few books of the series, the text is clogged up with endless touting of the virtues of female slavery in a fetishistic manner. Nevertheless the book advances the general theme of the series: the background battle between the beast-like Kurii and the strange Priest-Kings, two alien species who hold the fate of Gor and presumably Earth too in their metaphoric hands. Tarl Calbot, who has somehow gone from mild-mannered college professor to greatest warrior on Gor while simultaneously degenerating into a feminist's nightmare, is drawn to the far North of Gor, where he seeks a particular Kur whose attention he has attracted. If you filter out the unpalatable aspects, this is not a bad entry in the series. That which continues to draw me to the books is their travelogue aspect. Once again a new area of Gor is explored, along with its peoples, customs, flora and fauna, and so forth. World-building is one of Norman's strengths. If it were not for the other less palatable elements (OK, and the stilted repetitive dialog), the books might have been more accepted in fantasy circles. I wonder where Tarl will go next? Is he running out of Gor to explore? We'll see.
December 22, 2023
Too Long
The story doesn’t really get going until maybe the last 150 pages. Tarl spends a lot of time discussing slavery with new slaves. It’s turning into mansplaining territory because the same things are being said at length in every book. I wish the author would stop saying a woman begs for slave rape. That really bothers me. At any rate, this story sends Tarl Cabot to the great white north seeking a meeting with a Kur. The same Kur who had sent Tarl an invitation via slave tattoo in the previous book. If it weren’t for the repetition I would have given this book more stars. The actual story was pretty good.
The story doesn’t really get going until maybe the last 150 pages. Tarl spends a lot of time discussing slavery with new slaves. It’s turning into mansplaining territory because the same things are being said at length in every book. I wish the author would stop saying a woman begs for slave rape. That really bothers me. At any rate, this story sends Tarl Cabot to the great white north seeking a meeting with a Kur. The same Kur who had sent Tarl an invitation via slave tattoo in the previous book. If it weren’t for the repetition I would have given this book more stars. The actual story was pretty good.
June 24, 2019
Fun entry in the Gor series, as Tarl Cabot travels to the polar region and battles the invading Kurii. The author doesn't dwell as much on slave girls as in the previous couple books but there is still enough to be creepy.
August 20, 2018
Not enough story
Read
March 30, 2023one of the better and more entertaining reads of the series, though not without its sexist nietzchean diatribes
July 4, 2016
The synopsis above has one serious error that makes it quite clear whoever wrote it has not read much if any of the series. "Slave girls" are not one of the "three different kinds of beings that are labeled beasts". The "three[]kinds of beings" on the planet Gor are: Humans (male and female), the giant insect like "Priest Kings", and the titular "Beasts" also more properly referred to as Kurii, or just Kur for short. Humans are played as pawns by both the Priest Kings and Kur in their struggle for power over Gor. The struggle of Gor has remained in stalemate for millennia; Though if ever the balance tipped in favor or the Kur dire consequences for Earth would ensue. For they truly are best described as "Beasts" of Gor.
Now....., Having said all that anyone who has read the series thus far will not be shocked to learn that the sparse story is interrupted with pages of demagoguery on the "proper" and "natural" relationships and roles of men and women. If you've read the series this far and are committed to finishing the series go ahead and read this book. Otherwise, don't be in a hurry to read this book or any of the books that follow it.
Now....., Having said all that anyone who has read the series thus far will not be shocked to learn that the sparse story is interrupted with pages of demagoguery on the "proper" and "natural" relationships and roles of men and women. If you've read the series this far and are committed to finishing the series go ahead and read this book. Otherwise, don't be in a hurry to read this book or any of the books that follow it.
May 2, 2012
Mr Norman, when he chooses, can be very funny. One of the most likable characters I've encountered in the series so far is the hunter, Imnak. The dialogue between Inmak and Cabot had me laughing out loud. Norman tells a great story, but unfortunately all too often spoils it with extended polemical rants about the submissiveness of women. These lectures by our hero, which go for pages and pages, elicit from me a "oh Christ not AGAIN" response which breaks the narrative flow and makes me as a reader far less receptive. Mr Norman would do well to read Lewis' Narnia series for a good example of how one can write didactically without alienating his reader with explicit preaching.
February 2, 2014
A return to top form with this one, and the commencement of one of the main plot lines, Tarl's uneasy friendship with the Kurii general Zarendargar. The setting is familiar - we are in Eskimo territory, which provides some of Norman's sly humour to show through, particularly in the courtship of Poalu scene, which is a scream!
At the conclusion, we are promised another new land - I suspect we'll be in deepest darkest Africa.
At the conclusion, we are promised another new land - I suspect we'll be in deepest darkest Africa.
December 21, 2016
An interesting book, the is-ought gap is rather obvious, more than before I would say that if Norman was to write without an over emphasis on sexual slavery the book would be much better. The book does have some fine fantasy elements, however these were overshadowed by the distracting element of sex (as a 14-year-old I would not have minded as much), but if ignored the book has a good fantasy background. However, it did only just make the rating of 3 stars.
September 3, 2011
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.
July 18, 2008
Tarl Cabot meets counter-Earth Innuit. I was very wary of this book after the last Slave girl non-adventure, but I'd liked some of his early ones so much that I gave it a try. It wasn't nearly as good as the earlier stuff but it wasn't a bad read. There was some decent action-adventure.
February 14, 2012
This book is good for those who enjoy the gor series. While not for everyone I personally enjoyed this book. There is a lot of time spent on legnthy explainations and a bit of repeating but I do love the chars and alter earth.
January 23, 2016
Ever read the old John Carter of Mars books? Well here is the more adult version of a man transported to a more savage world. Great adventure reads, but not for the faint at heart. Very adult material dealing with sex. Recommended
November 19, 2010
It seems a little odd that I quit reading the "Gor" books about the time I got married.
Want to read
September 29, 2014I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12669080
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12669080
March 5, 2015
1979 grade D
Series book G12
Series book G12
Read
June 7, 2015I really enjoyed it. Beast of Gor had a lot of twists and turns, some mystery, betrayal, and a lot of action.
July 3, 2018
One small detail because I'm like that: the Kaissa game is between Scormus of Ar and Centius of Cos, not Qualius (who is a blind Player in Ar who, though good, is not in Scormus's league). As stated, this book goes on a bit about gender roles and so on, but it's not a bad yarn otherwise even if it should have been ruthlessly edited. Let's just say that there are books I've read that I resent the time spent and will never re-read, and this is not one of those even though it has its faults.
This is the second time Scormus loses a high-profile game, though it's astonishing to learn that Goreans will settle a championship on the strength of a single game. His hour will come - and it's not a bad hour at that.
Incidentally, *I* may have been that fan who speculated publicly as to whether Elizabeth Cardwell was a stand-in for someone Norman was involved with. I once authored a webzine column on the subject of these books.
This is the second time Scormus loses a high-profile game, though it's astonishing to learn that Goreans will settle a championship on the strength of a single game. His hour will come - and it's not a bad hour at that.
Incidentally, *I* may have been that fan who speculated publicly as to whether Elizabeth Cardwell was a stand-in for someone Norman was involved with. I once authored a webzine column on the subject of these books.
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