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3.0 out of 5 stars
Love it or hate it, Gor is Gor, Jun 3 2004
Someday a literary study of sex slave books is going to be written, and this one is going to stand out as a milestone. This is not to say that "Slave Girl of Gor" is great literature, because it isn't. The writing alternates between tight and clumsy, often wandering into misogynist philosophical rants, and some of these can be downright irrational. But it is one of a group of books that have become both a part of the social canon of BDSM and perhaps the most reviled series in the history of science fiction and fantasy fandom. Yes, it's John Norman's "Gor", and "Slave Girl of Gor" might well be its most sexual and most provocative title.Getting past the rhetoric surrounding the series, this book is actually not that different from a traditional erotic romance novel, except for the more intense bondage elements and the philosophical ramblings that sometimes get in the way of the story. The sex scenes are not extremely explicit but are hot nonetheless: young, beautiful Judy Thorton wakes up one morning to find herself naked and chained on the planet Gor, and she has a variety of erotic and not-so-erotic adventures as she is trained as a pleasure slave and discovers her love for her "true master" and he gets it through his thick skull that he loves her too. It's all rich material for sex slave fantasies, as the widespread internet subculture based on the Gor books testifies. The extent that this series has influenced newer sex slave science fiction books like Susan Wright's "Slave Trade" or Karen Anne Mitchell's "The Usahar" remains to be seen, but it would be hard to imagine that such an influence isn't there, since Gorean words like "kajira" (slave girl) have become normal parts of the fetish community's vocabulary. But be warned as well: "Slave Girl of Gor" is at times appalling in its misguided assumptions about men, women, and human nature, which it reduces to a simplistic sociobiology that even with (or perhaps especially with) recent advances in the field, is completely untenable. This would be a stronger book without such asides, but Norman must be given some credit for at least tackling a subject that even today makes so many people uncomfortable. In short, if male dominant/female submissive sexual fantasies are your thing, this is a book to own.
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