Renegades of Gor

It had been seven years since I read the previous volume in the Gor sword-and-planet series, although this one was published in the year after its predecessor (both in the mid-1980s). It returns to the voice of the series' chief protagonist Tarl Cabot, newly on a mission to a besieged town. The non-human intelligences of Counter-Earth (Priest-Kings and Kur) make no appearances in this installment, and receive only the briefest allusive mention.

The geographical details that supported the military concerns of this book reminded me that in twenty-three volumes there had never been a map of Gor. Surely the author must have worked one up for his own reference, even if it never was published in any of these books. I was able to find various show more maps online, but all of them were apparently fan-produced on the basis of the texts, and I didn't consult them while reading.

Typical of these books, the story is mostly concerned with the enslavement of women. These are encountered in two locations: the Crooked Tarn, an inn situated on a military highway, and the prison in the citadel of the town of Ar's Station. The narrator has left his Earthly squeamishness about slavery behind him many volumes since, and he is a frank advocate of it.

The accounts of sexual activity are written with just enough circumspection to allow for a denial--perhaps not a convincing one--that the novel is primarily porn. Still, the world-building is that much more powerful for being largely implicit in this late stage of the series. I am in no hurry to acquire or read the twenty-fourth book, despite or because of finding in this one nearly just what I expected. show less