Tal Goreans,

Greetings visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. As winter begins to bite I gratefully turn my back on the freezing fog outside my study window and open the covers of the sixth volume of the Gorean cycle; but before I do, let us digress briefly on the progress of the series so far.

The author has his characterisation and his parameters well established. He has the marvellous world of Gor, and has both familiarised us enough with its normal workings that we can know what to expect of it and left himself room enough for all the esoterica he likes given that much of Gor is terra incognita. He has the square-jawed hero Tarl Cabot, already well-versed in the art of narrow escapes from certain death, a thoroughly decent twentieth-century all-American hero (I for one, English myself, find Tarl's claims to share my country of origin less than convincing) able to appreciate the rugged honesty of Gorean society while having a certain chivalry and naive innocence to commend him to our modern Western sensibilities. As to the state of the story, Tarl has restored good relations with the Priest-Kings, on whose orders his city Ko-ro-ba was destroyed - and he has, while he was at it, disposed of a Priest-King tyrant and assured the survival of that godlike race - and seen the emperor Marlenus restored to his throne in circumstances that suggest he has had time to learn humility and may be less of a threat to the freedom of Gor's lesser cities than was formerly the case.

Tarl has learned by the way that there is an alien race at large in Sol system, known only to him as the "Others", who according to Misk the Priest-King are covertly waging war for control of Gor, not risking outright armed conflict with the Priest-Kings but instead trying to subvert a city at a time through agents. Tarl has just foiled one such attempt in the preceding volume. His original love-interest, Talena the beautiful but wilful daughter of Marlenus, is still missing, but he has a romantic sidekick in the shape of Elizabeth Cardwell, an Earthwoman still getting used to the ways of Gor but quite courageous, and also, of course, extremely beautiful and headstrong.

The stage appears to be set for many adventures in which Tarl, aided, abetted and occasionally hindered by Elizabeth, will foil the plots of the Others in city after city of Gor, while Tarl enjoys James Bond-like romantic encounters over and above Elizabeth's considerable charms and sees many a deserving and brave slave girl restored to freedom, escapes from hair-raising dangers and finds himself unexpectedly assisted by people much better clued-up than he about what is going on. He will surely make occasional progress towards the eventual discovery of his lost Talena, despite his many worries as to the fate of a defenceless woman on Gor. But as to what is actually going to happen...

In this book, unusually, the author does not number the chapters as they come, but only on the Contents page; for the convenience of the reader, I shall number as we go along, and also give the names of the chapters.

Chapter One - The Blood Mark

Tarl paddles a canoe through the reedy waters of the Vosk Delta. He's alone, on a journey to Port Kar, where he is to meet Samos, a Slaver and one known to Tarl as an agent of Priest-Kings, who bought Elizabeth and the two other Earth girls with her at the Curulean towards the end of the previous story (and returned them to Marlenus's keeping). The journey through the marshes doesn't provide him with much plot, so he fills in time by telling us a great deal about the long bow, variously called the great bow or peasant bow on Gor. This weapon is on the whole not much respected by Gorean warriors, but this is a prejudice that Tarl doesn't share and he is, of course, extremely skilled with it. There is meanwhile neither sight nor mention of Elizabeth.

He comes across a boundary marker, a piece of white cloth made of the rence reeds which are the principal crop of the Delta - it can also be used to make paper, provides a food that is probably not unlike sago, and has a number of other uses; it has an entire Caste devoted to its harvest - but ignores its silent warning to keep out, and carries on towards Port Kar, with the cries of marsh gants in his ears. And when he finds a red cloth, he ignores that too.

Chapter Two - The Cries of Marsh Gants

Continuing his journey despite the warning, Tarl soon finds himself in the company of a girl, who views his approach with equanimity and a marked lack of fear. He affably assures her that he means no harm and wishes only to pass in peace, but no sooner has he stated his destination than the girl calls to hidden ambushers to "Take him!" and the deed is done without a struggle on Tarl's part. Not only does he mean no harm to the locals, but they have overwhelming numbers on their side. The rence folk, as Tarl learns, have been communicating with each other by means of bird whistles. They are uninterested in talking with Tarl, at least here and now, but strip him of both clothing and weapons.

Chapter Three - Ho-Hak

A little later Tarl is taken to the floating reed islands of the rence folk. Here he is brought before the throne of the local chief of the rence-growers, a man who is introduced to us as Ho-Hak. (Evidently he has already been introduced to Tarl "off camera".) The throne is only a giant clam-shell (a Vosk sorp, to be exact) and the stronghold Tarl expertly assesses as useless against a well-armed assault and superfluous against other rence-growers, who don't normally make war on each other; but he is just as surely at Ho-Hak's mercy as if he were once more in the House of Cernus when that villain was Ubar of Ar. Ho-Hak has two peculiarities: unusually large and odd-shaped ears, suggesting that he was a slave bred as a curiosity, and a rusty iron collar with broken chain fragments attached to it, indicating that he made good his escape, probably from Port Kar's galleys.

For all this, Ho-Hak's conduct during the interview suggests that he is a thoughtful soul and does his best to be just, but neither he nor his people have any love for those of Port Kar or anyone who would deal with Port Kar as anything but an enemy. Unfortunately Tarl is bound not to reveal that he is going there on business for the Priest-Kings, even if his word on such a matter would be accepted and the rencers would let him go for that reason. Ho-Hak comes to no speedy decision, however. First he examines Tarl's longbow with interest, not as one who suspects that Tarl would have used it on the rencers but simply for the sake of finding out about the weapon, which until now has been known to him only by reputation. But he is quick on the uptake and, after both the decoy girl and another local chieftain have failed to string the bow, Ho-Hak does so. This is, as anyone knows, physically the most difficult aspect of bowmanship. He expertly equips himself with tab and bracer and fires a shot off into the wild blue yonder, which attracts much excitement and seems to give him pause for thought.

The rest of the rencers don't seem to follow Ho-Hak's train of thought - that at last a weapon is within their grasp that would enable them to fight off the predatory slavers of Port Kar whom they so hate, and that they also have a teacher of that same weapon in their hands - for they don't consider themselves Peasants and won't embrace the ways and weapons of that caste. The debate that follows is short and fairly conclusive, and Ho-Hak earns some scorn for even entertaining the notion in the first place, which so clearly marks him out as one not born to the rence. Ho-Hak's principal gainsayer is the other unnamed chieftain, who has a pearl headband, and who could not string the bow.

That attended to, Tarl's fate comes to the head of the agenda. Though some voices, mainly the man with the headband, are in favour of torturing him for the amusement of the rencers, and though the decoy girl would have him enslaved, it is it the way of the rencers to throw intruders to the marsh tharlarion, though they may be killed first as a favour if they ask nicely. Tarl briefly struggles to escape his bonds, but they are too strong, and as the girl repeats her demand to keep him as a slave, and the man with the headband shifts his ground to the tharlarion option, Tarl suddenly butts in and pleads to be allowed to live. This seems to disappoint Ho-Hak.

Frankly, I share Ho-Hak's disappointment, although for a slightly different reason. The rencer chieftain is disappointed with Tarl's show of cowardice, and I with the author's clumsy treatment of this development in Tarl's career. It hasn't been entirely unheralded, of course. There have been suggestions from time to time in the earlier stories that Tarl is just a little too squeaky-clean to be for real, and that this couldn't last indefinitely. But this is the same Tarl who has lived through a long list of impending dooms each more horrible than the last. In the first book he survived a fall from his tarn saddle, the Frame of Humiliation, an intended execution by Marlenus and his men, the tarn death, and a duel to the death with the "unbeatable" swordsman Pa-Kur, Master of Assassins - and he also survived unharmed when Ar's High Initiate bid him die the Flame Death. Subsequently he survived the cruel Amusements of Tharna, escaped that city's inescapable silver mines, became the first man to enter the Sardar and leave again after failing to have his brain burned out by Sarm the Priest-King or be slain by him in more conventional fashion, and surviving a hi-tech war by his wits, courage and no small amount of luck. He entered the lands of another thoroughly xenophobic people, the Wagon Peoples, in pursuit of a hopeless quest to recover the last Egg of Priest-Kings, and not only was not put to death in horrible fashion but won their respect within minutes of making their acquaintance. He escaped the bizarre Yellow Pool of Turia, a thing no-one else had ever done, nor would again. As recently as the last book, when he was to be consigned to the arena to fight Taurentian swordsmen while he was blindfolded, his luck managed to turn this into a "mere" fight against odds and against the cream of Ar's military men. And as to the more conventional battles he has fought, their name is legion and this is also conveniently the approximate size of the smallest military unit Tarl would ordinarily be troubled by.

To reiterate, I share Ho-Hak's disappointment, for a different reason. That Tarl should have been captured so easily; that he should have failed to charm his way into the affections of even the unusually inhospitable rencers; that he should be unable to convince them of his usefulness as an ally, challenge them to a fight against odds, or persuade them to give him his freedom and a knife with which to fight the marsh tharlarion, that they should have the sport of watching him fight for his life; that he should be unable to sway Ho-Hak to defy the rencers' knee-jerk rejection of the splendid peasant bow which he would be so well able to teach them (and Ho-Hak was very thoughtfully considering the logistics of the matter only moments previously, and the weapon got a big build-up in Chapter One); that Tarl, in such a pinch as this - a daunting one, I grant - should find no other way out than snivelling "No, I do not want to die" in agonised tones that emphasise how much against his nature such begging is; this strikes me as lazy writing, at the very least. Very well. Norman has decided that his hero is due for a character development that will have a massive impact on the future of the series, and this shall be brought about by having him beg for his life and voluntarily submit to slavery; but it reads falsely, especially in view of the light-calibre opposition compared to what Tarl has already thumbed his nose at. It is as though James Bond, having blundered into a clumsy ambush by some barely competent goons with guns and not much else to recommend them, can think of nothing else to do than to betray Her Majesty's Secret Service and everything he has fought for. I spent the next chapter or two waiting for the punch-line.

Rail as I might, this is how it falls out. Tarl does indeed beg for his life, to the disappointment of Ho-Hak, who points out that the tharlarion would have killed him swiftly (and he could have had a still more merciful death for the asking), and that he expected more from a Warrior. And as Ho-Hak points out, once he has directly asked Tarl if he begs for slavery and received an affirmative answer, he could perfectly well be slain anyway - and no sooner has Tarl so begged than he finds he does not much care whether he lives or dies. But he is not killed at once, but given to the decoy girl, who ritually feeds him, scornfully renames him "Bosk", and leads him away humiliated and broken.

Thus for the downfall of Tarl, who will not be going by that name again for a while; and how the newly-named Bosk will take to slavery, what his new mistress's name might be, and what is to become of him, we shall find out next month.

I wish you well,

Socrates