You got give the man credit for commitment to the bit.

Back in the 70s, I was a big Edgar Rice Burroughs fan and read the first three Gor novels, considering them a pretty good Burroughs pastiche. Around the fifth novel, it became pretty obvious that the BDSM stuff was going to be a major part of the series, so I bailed. A few years later, while serving in the Army, I had a sergeant who was a science fiction and fantasy fan. His favorite SF was the Gor series. He really enjoyed the kink aspect of the novels and was part of a real life BDSM group that modeled their fun and games on the Gor slave/master philosophy. A bit later I learned that there was an entire subculture devoted to John Norman's ideas.

I read the first several. I was a 14 year old girl back in the early 80's  (I loved John Carter it looked similar so I read it). My parents had literally no clue what I was reading. I eventually lost interest because they got repetitive and too focused on the kinky stuff instead of the story of Tarl dealing with the politics and adventure of being on Gor.

I haven't read any of these, and as much as I want to judge Norman as a weird pervert, the sort of things that are apparently in modern romantasy books written for and by women, and considered acceptable, if not lauded, by the same, suggests that Norman was simply just ahead of his time.

In High School my friends and I read many of these books and howled with laughter, they were so over the top.

Back in the early 1970s I was a middle school student. I went into my parent’s room looking for something to read. I found a paperback entitled "The Priest Kings of Gor". I was about halfway through it before my Dad caught me reading it. I remember he was quite embarrassed that I found it, and he threw it away.
I forgot all about that until I saw your video....

In case anyone is wondering, I'm not defending the Gor books here. I just don't like it when people review things inaccurately.

When I was in my twenties, I read many of the Gor series.  I think I had all of them up to around #22.  The female subjugation got WAY worse as the series progressed.  It went from the couple incidents you described to almost entire chapters dedicated to the detailed reasoning for females being natural slaves, and loving it.  Removing all of that would make for some pretty fair fantasy reading.  The highlight of most of this series is the absolutely incredible world building Norman does.  Very much in the vain of ERB, Norman could pick up an entire ethnic group and seamlessly insert them into his world and have it make perfect sense.  To have actual Vikings, the Roman Republic, Tarn riding Cheyenne and a Pirate controlled river delta port city (NOLA) existing at the same time is a major feat.  I found myself skipping many pages, up to entire chapters, just so I could read more about these cultures.

So fun having you back! Great vid, as always.

'She looked at me insolently. "You are insolent" I said.'  It's been decades since I read any of these but I can vividly remember that line.

Thanks for the review. I'm a new viewer and am glad to see that you are doing better. I've had the first four Gor books for a while, but haven't read them yet. I remember seeing them all the time at bookstores as a kid. I'll definitely read them sooner rather than later.

You nailed it with Priest Kings.  Not the best adventure, but the aliens are most imaginative and believable in their alien-ness.

That cover is not representative of the story. The image of Tarl Cabot is absurd and his outfit is more Conan than Cabot. He wasn't selling Talena, he was trying to avoid selling her. The merchant, Mintar, is depicted as an odious toad in this image and Norman describes him as a brilliant manipulator. The scene is in the book, but it doesn't play out anything like the way it's been depicted. Also, there's very little overt sex in the book; there's nudity, but it's only mentioned and not described in intimate detail. If anything, the Gor books avoid explicit content, and that includes the violence which is depicted in a very matter of fact fashion. PS Everyone copied A Princess of Mars. It's the standard.

His father wasn't an Ubar. He was the administrator. Ubars only rule during times of war.

I own a good 24 or so of them. Some of the best action scenes put to paper in the early ones. Went too far into the BDSM stuff in later books, but I still rate the series. Anyway, I still own them and I have fond memories of reading them and immersing myself in the world of Gor back in my 20's

Edit: Some of the Chris Achilios covers were also fantastic, not just the Boris ones.

The Tarl Cabot books were great (got up to 12 or 13 or so).  Those based on other characters I found uninteresting.  The best were vividly memorable.

(And yeah, too much slavery)

I remember that there was a huge debate back in the 80s about who John Norman actually was - and you came out with it in the first few seconds! I didn't care for the books much. Not because of the BDSM, but Norman had a stilted and pedantic way of explaining everything. The sex, yes, but also how catapults work or the economics of nomadic cultures. Part of that was the weird call and response vocabulary that you alluded to.

One thing I have to add that no one else has mentioned: I once talked to a used bookstore owner in the 90s or 00s who told me  that it was mostly WOMEN who bought them. Interpret that how you will.

This is a fair look at the beginnng of the series. I loved the first 3 as a kid. Years later, I read Hunters and Marauders--8&9--andcthey were still good as adventure, though the bondage stuff made them more like "outsider" literature.

I read and really enjoyed the first nine books of this series back in the '80s in high school/college. I stopped when Norman spent a large part of an early chapter in the 10th book describing how women desperately want to be in chains at the foot of their master's bed.
What i appreciated about these books, though, was the rich world building Norman did. I loved the tarns (and if you didn't keep control, it might eat you). Another detail I loved was there were no locks, but everyone had their own personal knot. He also showed an interesting example of how differences in culture shape your perception. An earth woman was captured and she didn't mind the slavers piercing her ears but freaked out about having her nasal septum pierced, where the Gor women didn't mind the septum piercing, but didn't like the ear piercing, because piercings were a sign of slavery, and with pierced ears, you were forever marked as a slave.
Thanks for the interesting trip to the past.

Gor became popular amongst my friend group at the time in about '80 or '81, and I think I read farther than most of my friends did. (One of the girls in the group LARPed being a slave girl, and her boyfriend loved it.) I remember nothing of the plots (aside from how the aliens communicated), but I remember that somewhere around the fifth book, I put the thing down and never felt the desire to pick it up again.