Rogue of Gor (Counter-Earth Saga, Book 15)

I finally am getting my collection back and love it. Only a few more to get and then enjoy them, this will add to my experience with online Gor and those few friends I've made at Gor Fests.

Love the Gor series. Sometimes campy, sometimes repetitive and long winded on why slave girls like being slave girls, but always entertaining.

Yep like it

OK I'll give this one 3 stars because the plot is interesting and pretty fast paced for a later Gor book, and for other qualities which I'll get to. Unfortunately as always there are meanderings into the author's favorite obsession, but these detours are not as overwhelming as in, say, the previous Gor books. This is the second of 3 books dealing with Jason of Earth, who by now has shed his origin as a Gorean slave and there actually is some growth in his character through the course of the book. The book mostly takes place along the Vosk river, specifically the independent town of Victoria. While war is brewing between Ar and Cos, the major problem is two bands of pirates who plan to join forces and start marauding up and down the river. The book ends on a cliff-hanger, so I'm actually looking forward to Book 16. I should note that the sex in the book is a little more explicit than in the prior books, though the author still completely avoids any obscenities and all of the sex is still by innuendo. I also suddenly realized while reading the book that there never seem to be any Gorean children around. How do Gorean parents explain to their little boys and girls all the slavery and lascivious behavior happening in broad daylight? Although the author usually seems very serious about his beliefs in the biological nature of the sexes, he manages to slip in a funny set of scenes in which he is clearly satirizing married life. Jason and Beverly start bickering until he gets completely fed up after being henpecked to death. There isn't much humor in the Gor books, but it was definitely present in that part of the book. The author also inserts a dig against the wokeness of universities, long before wokeness was a thing. He writes "examples of the ideologically obsessed mediocrities whose intent it was to turn a university into a personal political instrument, one promoting a specialized agenda designed to further particular interests, theirs, an agenda whose fruition would be to replace education with indoctrination, thought with rote reflexes, an indoctrination in which objectivity, logic and reason were to be sacrificed to a specialized, contrived orthodoxy, one alien to evidence, one foreign to nature, one relying on intimidation and falsehood, one predicated upon the utility of harm, pressure, control, censorship, and hatred." So overall enough of interest to give this book 3 stars, but if you are familiar with this series or have read my other reviews of books in the series, you will realized that Gor is not many readers' cup of tea. If you can get past the author's bizarre fetishes, there are some good elements. Gor the planet is very well realized. Occasionally the plotting is good. On the minus side, the characters are stilted, everyone talks the same way, or as "John Norman" would put it: "Too, everyone talks the same way." The worst thing about the books though is the author can't decide whether he is writing fetish books or planetary romance.

I am a fan of this series. Read them in the 60s and now reading them again. They are a fantasy saga that allow to be totally immersed in the storyline.

Continuing on with his journey Jason is learning more of what life has in store for him and who he can trust.

I could not stop reading until it was finished. One of the better books. Starting on Guardmen of Gor now because I must see how this storyline ends!

Long time series. Always improving.

I love the Gor series and I'm now on my fourth of fifth reading of them, and I still find new things and/or new nuances. I recommend this series to anyone who has an interest in science fiction and the "natural order" of life.

By this stage the Gor books are too formulaic. The hero will meet a new race of Goreans. He will know more than them and outdo them in all their skills after a few weeks. He will make a friend who will turn out to be the leader in secret. There will be page after page of master slave drivel. And the book will end