Dancer of Gor

I am rereading Dancer of Gor as part of my research before producing a slave training hypnosis recording. I originally read this book when it came out in 1985. It was the first book I read about erotic slavery and I loved it.

Perhaps I just loved the idea of the book so much that I didn't notice how poorly written the book was. Or perhaps I've developed a more critical eye now that I am reading to learn how to write my own novels. But now that I'm trying to learn something practical from Dancer of Gor, I find it horribly written.

The main character is pathetic and whiny; hardly sexy at all. The language is flowery, the dialog overly verbose and repetitive. Lots of run-on sentences that digress into flashbacks. Plus the electronic version that I'm reading is rife with typing errors (or maybe they're OCR errors).

The poor quality of this book is a sharp contrast to the high quality of the first book in the series, Tarnsman of Gor.

Perhaps Norman was trying to match the voice of the narration to the personality of the viewpoint character. In that, he succeeded–if he wanted to portray a character who was whiny, had no self confidence, and viewed herself only as the lowest form of chattel. I wouldn't want this character as a slave in my house. Nor would I try to write from the viewpoint of such a pathetic and annoying character.

Tarnsman of Gor was a tightly written adventure novel in the Edgar Rice Burrows tradition. It had a strong hero, and solid adventure. A delight to read. But if I weren't trying to mine Dancer of Gor for ideas for my hypnotic recording, I'd chuck it.