Customer Reviews

Raiders of Gor

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tarl Cabot was a warrior of Gor--the world that earth could never see. Normally he was a proud and mighty warrior, but now he was bound for Port Kar, the only city with no home stone to give it a heart. It was a city of reavers and looters...of outcasts without allegiance. Merchants and pirates stalked its quays beside the beautiful Sea of Thassa. Tarl Cabot was headed for the sinkhole of the planet, a teeming den of iniquity. And that was no place for an honest warrior from Ko-ro-ba. But he was no longer Tarl Cabot, the warrior. Now he was only Bosk...a miserable slave.

Raiders of Gor is one of the best books of Norman's Gor series (right along with Magicians of Gor).

First of all it features all the expected ingredients of a Gor novel: A lot of bondage situations and non-consensual sex amidst the typical Gor-like setting with adamantine warriors dominating their submissive female slaves. Plus an elaborately carved fantasy world with unique flora, fauna and complex human (and non-human) societies.

But as a welcomed change, our hero Tarl Cabot doesn't wander through this world like the invincible and unaffectable symbol of virtue, law and order he had become in the first 5 books of this series. Instead we discover a darker side of our ideal warrior that Norman exploits to create an intelligent story of downfall and rise-back to power. For the first time I found myself really rooting for Tarl as he first succeeds in establishing himself as a competent swordsman in the anarchic pirate city of Port Kar, to finally become the savior of his newly chosen hometown, when he wards off a large-scale attack on Port Kar by rival seaports.

The only reason that kept me from giving Raiders even 5 stars was the usual exaggeration of Tarl's achievements, like defeating a small armada of war barges with just a longbow and a huge quiver of arrows. Or the flight with his warbird across miles of open sea through a severe thunderstorm. But those minor flaws aren't too crucial to spoil the fun, and whatever you can say of Norman's idiosyncratic and maybe sexist fantasy setting, Raiders of Gor is one exciting fantasy book featuring strife, passion and a fallen hero set to become a morally stained yet emotionally matured elite warrior in a wild and dangerous archaic world.

This is one of those odd books that I picked up off a rack in the 70's because of the cover art, and was pleasantly surprised to find a great story, too. This was the first book of the series that I read, but as a measure of it's quality, you do not really need to know anything about the rest of the series to enjoy it. While Tarl of Bristol is an agent of the "priest-kings" it is not really necessary that you know who or what they are. Perhaps it is better that you do not.
Briefly, this is the story of a great warrior who is captured and enslaved while on a mission for his patrons. He is famed in story and song as that world's greatest warrior. Yet, he finds that rather than accept a clean excecution, he instead submits to the fate of slavery. This decision comes as a surprise to him. It totally destroys his self image and his honor. He truly thought that he would accept death before dishonor.
Only one small boy shows compassion to him during his enslavement. When pirates attack the village where Tarl is a slave he manages to escape while his captors are enslaved. While returning to the burned village to recover his weapons and supplies he finds the boy's dead body. The rest of the story deals with the vengeance of what was once the world's greatest warrior against the raiders. Yet Tarl of Bristol knows that, once lost, honor can never be regained- it can only be "recollected."