Dancer of Gor

Cover

Title Dancer of Gor

Author John Norman

ISBN 0-886771005

Publisher Daw Books, Inc.

Category Fiction: Science Fiction

Shira's Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)

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What It's About

This is the 22nd book in a 26-part "swords & sandals" series by John Norman, based on his fictitious world of Gor. Norman's premise is that a planet named Gor was settled at some point in the past by humans, and sometimes these humans return to earth to abduct people to serve their purposes on Gor. Although typical modern-day Earth people have never heard of Gor, many Goreans have certainly heard of Earth, and some possess the technology to travel back and forth easily between the two planets. The book doesn't bother to explain why a society that possesses the technology for inter-planetary travel doesn't apply this knowledge to their day-to-day lives. People still travel in oxcarts and live in a medieval fashion.

Slavery is very much a part of the fabric of Gorean culture, and the slavers find Earth to be a useful place to go in search of suitable captives. Male slaves are used for manual labor, and females as "pleasure slaves".

The lead character in this book is Doreen, a librarian is so terrified of her own sexuality that she panics one evening after trying on a silk camisole in front of the mirror in the privacy of her own apartment. Later, she musters all her courage and enrolls in a belly dancing class, but she's deeply ashamed at the discovery that she feels a primal connection to it. She fantasizes about being a slave in a long-vanished society, held in bondage by a potent, manly master. She really doesn't resemble any of the belly dancing librarians that I've actually met!

Naturally, repressed little Doreen comes to the attention of Gorean slavers who force her to face her bondage fantasies, and whisk her off to a new world where she will have the opportunity for her dreams of bondage to come true.

Although focused on what life in bondage is like for Doreen, this book does attempt to have a plot. Sort of. It begins while she is still on Earth, and tells how she came to be captured. Next it describes the training that she undergoes to make her a particularly luscious pleasure slave, and reveals how she came to be sold to a tavern where she serves drinks, dances to please the patrons, and auctions off her "services" to the highest bidder. Life at the tavern is reasonably comfortable for Doreen (at least, by Gorean slave girl standards), and we're even treated to a scene in which she does a "slave dance" performance for the patrons, enacting the story of her bondage and her feelings toward it. Alas, her idyllic life is rudely interrupted when a jealous rival decides to eliminate the competition.

Its Good Points

It's not easy to find good points in such a poorly-written book, but I'll do my best. Actually, this book and others in the Gor series are quite popular with the bondage-and-leather community, who find it to be a rich source of inspiration for fantasies they can act out. It could be entertaining bedtime reading for those whose sexual fantasies run in the bondage direction.

There is some level of medieval adventure about this book, as Doreen's new life takes her into many situations that would never have been dreamed of on Earth.

On The Negative Side....

Overall, this book is poorly written. Doreen's internal conflict between longing to be in bondage, yet being ashamed of having such longing is rather difficult to believe. Character development of everyone else in the book is rather superficial.

The writer goes on and on for many paragraphs at a time with respect to what his characters are thinking. Much of this is garbage, and I found myself skipping entire pages at a time. Here's a sample of Doreen has to say about her decision to start taking belly dancing classes:

For months before, I had toyed with the idea, or the fancy, or fantasy, the idea first having emerged after I had seen myself in the mirror on that incredible night in my room [the night she panicked after trying on a silk camisole], of taking lessons in dance. I had almost died on the phone, making inquiries about these things, and more than once, suddenly blushing crimson, or, from the feel of it, I suppose so, had hung up the phone without identifying myself. I was not interested, of course, in such forms of dance as ballet or tap. I was interested in a form of dancing which was more basic, more fundamental, more female. The form of dance I was interested in, of course, and this doubtless accounted for my timidity, my hesitation and fear, was ethnic dance, or, if you prefer, to speak perhaps more straightfwardly, "belly dancing." Happily it was always women who answered the phone. I do not think I could have dared to speak to a man of this sort of thing. Like most modern women I was concerned to conceal my sexual needs. To reveal them would have been just too excruciatingly embarrassing. What woman would dare to reveal to a man that she wants to move, would dare to move, before those of his sex in so beautiful and exciting a manner, in a way which proves that she is vital, and alive, and female, that she is astonishingly beautiful and inutterably desirable, in a way that will drive them mad with the wanting of her, in a way that shows them that she, too, has powerful sexual needs, and in her dance, as she presents and displays herself, striving to please them, that she wants them satisfied? Surely no virtuous woman. Surely only a despicable, sensuous slut, the helpless prisoner of her undignified and unworthy passions.

The above is lifted out of a very long paragraph that rambles on for 3 pages in this vein.

If you're intrigued by this book for the sexual fantasies, don't get your hopes up too high. The author describes the actual restraints in a great deal of detail, explaining precisely how the shackles, ropes, collars, hoods, whips, cages, and leashes are applied to Doreen and her fellow slaves. But once it's time for "the main event", it's usually summed up in one short sentence: "He put me to his uses." So if you'd enjoy reading in detail about the restraints, you'll probably like those sections which are abundantly sprinkled throughout this book and described quite thoroughly. But if you prefer the romance novel approach of describing whose body parts caressed whose in what way, this isn't the right book for you.

In Conclusion

I've read better science fiction. I've read better swords & sandals novels. I've read better "bedside titillation". And yet, despite this book's many flaws, if you explore the Internet a little, you'll find that the bondage & leather community has embraced the Gor books with enthusiasm. Obviously, despite John Norman's tedious, repetitive, rambling writing style with weak character development, his notions of a counter-Earth where women are enslaved to the desires of men resonates with the erotic fantasies of some people. I wouldn't recommend this book to most of my dance friends, but if you liked the Story of O by Pauline Réage, you might like this one too.