Re: (Worst) Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman

James Nicoll wrote:

Tarnsman of Gor  (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman
 In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself
as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than
the series reputation would lead one to expect.
 https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-you-critics-said
 

Most Gore devotees tell me I should read the first N books, where N varies from three to nine.
Dreamer, who used to post here, defended the later books, at least those in the high teens, though he was aware that there were problematic elements.
Fortunately for me, I was still suffering from a surfeit of ERB when the fist Gor book hit the racks.  One look at it and I passed, and though I definitely bought worse books, they weren't part of a series that my compulsion would have made me follow.
Once when I moved into a new apartment, someone had left behind a Gor novel, somewhere around the eleventh.  I got about 200 pages into it waiting for furniture to arrive.
Tarl Calbot was not present, and while there was plenty of  talk about how women should behave towards men, nothing kinky occurred.  Leaving aside all the talk about slavery, etc, it was sufficient to keep my attention.  But I never finished it, once I had alternate reading material.  I wouldn't call it porn in even the slightest degree, but then I have no idea what happened after Calbot showed up.
Only later did I discover that the previous tenants had also left behind "Brat Farrar", an infinitely superior book. It pays to be observant!
William Hyde