Tarl Cabot is transported from planet Earth to a world known as Gor - a savage land where savage people do savage things and drop Savage Elbows from the top rope. (Okay, I made that last part up.) Turns out Tarl's old pappy is from this land of Gor and needs his sonny boy to steal a magic stone from a rival city to help depose a tyrant who refuses to give up the throne and scepter. But first - a training montage! The best way for a warrior worth his salt to get around Gor is on giant pterodactyl-like birds called 'Tarns' - and wouldn't you know it? Our boy Tarl is a natural Tarnsman! He's the Tarnsman of Gor! Sheesh.
There must be a lot of haters and losers who don't like John Norman (aka John Lange, noted philosophy professor). I'm a complete neophyte to his writings and the 'controversy' surrounding them, but as I understand it, Norman had more than a few run-ins with the feminist crowd of yesteryear who were positively clutching their pearls in outrage that his books featured sexy Boris Vallejo cover art and writing with hints of S&M, bondage, and the enslavement of some of the female characters. What's funny is my limited research into this subject turned up waaaay more female fans of the Gor books online than dudes, which tells us that females are just as enticed or curious about BDSM culture as men can be. How many copies did that damn Fifty Shades of Grey book sell anyway?
Anyway, because of all the hoopla, I curiously went into John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor expecting something kind of racy and controversial, but what I found was just a Burroughs-esque science-fantasy story that I greatly enjoyed. Now, I understand that perhaps it's really the later novels in the Gor series that might up the ante as far as the light erotica elements and the S&M philosophizing are concerned (again, I'm only going on the word of others here), but Tarnsman of Gor on its own merits is pretty damn tame by today's standards. Yeah, there's slavery present in the world of Gor, but there are men owned as slaves too. So I'm not sure where the narrative comes from that every female in Norman's world is a beaten and battered slave other than yesteryear's cancel pigs deliberately misrepresenting Norman's material. Interestingly, much of the aforementioned discourse I've seen online slamming Norman's writing comes from the white beardy male feminist types who haunt liberal arts college cafeterias across the land, which... yeah, that actually checks out. She's still not gonna sleep with you, bro.
But let's get off the tedious culture war nonsense and actually discuss some of the content here. Tarnsman of Gor is written in a journal style from the perspective of our main character Tarl Cabot. Our hero is swept away from a camping expedition in a snowy New England clime and dropped into a world that's referred to as a 'counter-earth' because it shares orbit around the sun with Earth but its position is preposterously opposite of the Earth, thus it's always eclipsed by the sun and never seen by us silly earthlings. But just when you think it's all space travel pablum, we get shields, spears, giant bird mounts, oversized insects talking to our hero, beautiful women to be rescued, vile assassins to battle against, sword fights galore... it's basically all the elements you'd get in a pulpy Conan continuation novel from decades ago. What's not to love if you're a fan of this genre?
I also found it interesting that the way Tarnsman of Gor wraps up leaves it as something that could be read as a standalone novel. There's obviously room left for a sequel, but the author concluded the events of this novel satisfactorily enough that one could drop in, sample the flavor, and get out before the crazy kink proselytizing (allegedly) begins.
Recommended.
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