What to Read After Gor: Fantasy Books for John Norman Fans
There is a particular problem that comes with finishing John Norman’s Gor books: what exactly are we supposed to read next?
It sounds like an easy question until we try to answer it. There are endless fantasy novels. There are sword-and-sorcery books, erotic novels, harem stories, BDSM fiction and modern adventure fantasy. Yet Gor occupies such a peculiar intersection of all these things that very little scratches exactly the same itch.
If you are a John Norman fan looking for books like Gor, I suspect you are not simply searching for another fantasy world with swords. We want dangerous men, strange civilizations, slave girls, hierarchy, adventure, masculine ambition and cultures that do not feel like the modern world wearing sandals. Many of us also want the sexual implications pushed considerably further than Norman was willing to put explicitly on the page.
That is the reader I had in mind when I began writing the Hyperborean books.
My Gerard stories are not Gor fan fiction and Hyperborea is not Gor under another name. The setting mixes Gorean influences with sword-and-sorcery, prehistoric Earth, Lovecraftian cosmic horror and explicit erotica for men. But if you have finished Gor and are wondering what to read after the Gor series, Gerard of Stone is where I would invite you to begin. That is also precisely the audience my wider body of work is built to reach: readers looking for Gor-inspired fantasy, explicit sword-and-sorcery, slave-girl fiction and male-oriented erotic adventure.
What Do We Actually Miss When We Finish Gor?
Before recommending anything, we should probably identify what we are trying to replace.
For me, one of Gor’s great strengths is that Norman understands a fantasy world must actually be different from our own. Its customs are not decorative. Its attitudes toward power, sex, status and slavery shape the people who live there.
We remember the kajirae because their slavery is embedded in the civilization. A collar matters because everybody knows what it means. A sword matters because violence remains close to the foundation of authority. A city feels strange because its people have assumptions that belong to their own culture rather than ours.
This is the quality I try hardest to preserve in Hyperborea.
Gerard does not arrive in a pseudo-medieval theme park. He arrives somewhere profoundly alien. Dura contains boats that would not look out of place on the Nile, prehistoric plants, giant insects, slave markets, temples devoted to beings we know from Lovecraft, and people snatched from wildly different periods of human history.
Very early in Collar and Cage, Gerard looks across the river toward ancient ruins and observes:
“We were not the first wave of humans here. Nor would we be the last.”
That is the premise opening underneath him. Hyperborea is prehistoric Earth, but human civilizations have been appearing and disappearing there for thousands of years because cosmic creatures keep stealing people from other periods and depositing them there.
If what you liked about Gor was the sensation of entering a fully separate civilization, that is the first thing I would want you to find again.
Start With Gerard Because He Is an Outsider Like Us
Gerard works particularly well as an entry point because he begins on our side of the divide.
He is not Hyperborean.
He knows what cars are. He knows what antibiotics are. He remembers the internet and modern employment. He has all the cultural baggage we have when he encounters this world.
That gives us someone to travel with.
In Collar and Cage, only four months have passed since his arrival. He was sick, confused and completely dependent upon strangers. Scar, a local ironmonger, took him in and Gerard repaid him with labor. He learned to run the forge, cast chains and collars, make weapons, and eventually introduced Scar to steel.
Already the modern man is changing.
Their friendship also tells us what kind of books these are. Scar greets him in the wonderfully Hyperborean fashion:
“Painful words from a man who carries my best blade at his side. Have great Dagon and Cthulhu cursed me with ingratitude instead?”
They are standing beside a forge in a Bronze-and-Iron-Age town three hundred million years in the past, casually invoking Lovecraftian gods while Gerard carries one of the first steel swords in the world.
That is fairly representative of what follows.
Gerard Does Not Stay the Outsider Forever
This is important to me.
An outsider protagonist becomes dull if he spends twenty books standing at the edge of the culture insisting that everyone else is doing civilization incorrectly.
Gerard adapts.
At first, he survives Hyperborea. Then he begins enjoying it. After that, he begins changing it.
The progression matters because we get to watch a fairly ordinary modern man acquire skills, confidence, property, slaves, friendships, political influence and finally military power. He does not arrive as Conan. Hyperborea makes him dangerous.
One small moment from his early slaving expedition captures the transition beautifully. Gerard realizes that, after months of tavern girls and adventures, he is about to own a woman himself. Yet the practical reality catches up with the fantasy:
“Where would I put her? What would I do with her (when not recreating)? What if—or I suppose when—she became pregnant?”
Then comes the wonderfully human question:
“How does one pick a girl that one keeps?”
For all the brutality of Hyperborea, this is still Gerard figuring things out as he goes.
That gradual transformation is one reason I think the series works particularly well for readers who enjoyed following Tarl Cabot into Gor.
Collar and Cage Is the Natural First Stop
If you are wondering what fantasy book to read after Gor, this is where I would start with my own work.
Collar and Cage gives you Gerard while the wonder of Hyperborea is still fresh.
Dura itself is one of my favorite parts of these early stories. It is not merely a backdrop. We walk through streets, markets, workshops, bounty houses and taverns with Gerard as he learns how everything functions.
He passes giant reptiles pulling carts. Slave girls work outside forges. Reed ships dock carrying oil, dried fish and women in wicker cages. Men gamble with dice made from human bones while children run through the streets.
Then, beyond the town, the Mist Wall is always there.
Gerard describes it from a distance:
“I could see a few lightning flashes over it; a quiet day in Hell.”
That is a very Hyperborean line. The cosmic horror is enormous, but the people who live beside it still have errands to run.
One of the captured women Gerard encounters is Orla, descended from Paleolithic Siberians. Gerard gives us her people’s history in six words:
“They had hunted mammoths. Then the gods hunted them.”
That is the setting in miniature. Humanity is simultaneously ancient, adaptable and completely outclassed by what exists around it.
Then Gerard Goes Slaving
This is where readers looking for Gorean-style fantasy will recognize another familiar pleasure.
The slave trade is not merely something Gerard observes. He gets involved.
An expedition into Landing Beast territory gives him his first real experience of organized slaving. The cosmic creatures called Landing Beasts arrive from outside ordinary reality carrying humans taken from different points in history. Their cargo is scattered over enormous landing zones, and Hyperborean slavers race to reach the women before monsters, rival groups or the environment kill them.
Gerard remembers that his own arrival happened the same way. The difference was his sex.
“I was lucky: I'm a man.”
He knows perfectly well what would have happened if he had been female. Now, instead of being cargo, he is joining the men going out to collect it.
This is the kind of moral and cultural transformation I enjoy writing because Gerard does not simply wake up one morning as a fully assimilated Hyperborean. His position changes incrementally. So does what seems possible to him.
Scar marks the occasion by giving him a present: a branding iron bearing Gerard's own mark.
“You are a slaver now, but what is a slaver without a branding iron?”
Then Scar explains that girls carrying that mark will show the world who trained them.
It is simultaneously a warm gesture between friends and something grotesque when viewed from Gerard's old civilization. Hyperborea allows both truths to occupy the same moment.
If You Read Gor for the Slave Girls, They Are Very Much Here
There is little point being coy about this.
Readers searching for books for fans of John Norman are often looking specifically for the kajira side of Gor. They want collars, ownership, slave markets, harems, training, female submission and the erotic hierarchy that Norman built so much of the series around.
The Gerard books go much further into those subjects.
Slavery in Hyperborea is economic, domestic, sexual and political. Women are captured, trained, bought and sold. Different forms of slavery develop around different kinds of work. A tavern girl occupies a different niche from a household slave, breeder or agricultural worker.
Even among slaves, social structures emerge.
Gerard notices one such miniature society and remarks:
“Even in a cage filled with girls, there is a hierarchy.”
That detail matters to me because a slave population should not stop being human simply because free people classify them as property. They make friendships, compete, become jealous, seek status and develop their own rules inside the rules imposed upon them.
This is one of the areas where my books move from being merely Gor-inspired fantasy into explicit Gorean-style erotica. Norman often gives us the architecture of sexual slavery. I am interested in living inside it.
Gerard Is Also Funny, Which Matters More Than You Might Think
Dark fantasy can become exhausting if everybody speaks as though they are carved onto the side of a barbarian temple.
Gerard is still a man from our world, and I deliberately let that remain visible.
Later, while everybody around him is trying to prepare for serious business, Gerard disappears into a blacksmith’s shed and begins hammering away at a new invention.
Fogrim and Juskar are losing patience.
Gerard's explanation for why he has once again become distracted is:
“All this adventuring is what my people call a ‘side hustle.’ Smithing is my thing.”
That is Gerard.
He can fight monsters, own slaves, become a war hero and involve himself in increasingly catastrophic political situations, but part of him remains the guy who gets absorbed in a project and forgets everyone is waiting outside.
If you enjoy the moments in sword-and-sorcery where swagger and danger sit beside absurdity, there is a lot of that here.
Sex Slaves of Hyperborea Shows Gerard Becoming Established
As Gerard's story continues, the setting changes around him.
The great Event devastates enormous portions of the world. Refugees pour into surviving regions. Trade patterns change. Dura expands. Slave prices collapse as enormous numbers of women arrive.
Gerard is no longer merely the outsider seeing strange things for the first time.
He has businesses.
He owns women.
He sits on Dura's Burgher Council.
He has opinions about infrastructure.
This is where his story begins acquiring a political dimension that, for me, makes the series much more interesting than a succession of erotic adventures.
Gerard discovers that winning a sword fight and winning a council vote require completely different talents.
Iskelda, one of Dura's most formidable political operators, explains his problem:
“You think like a rabble-rouser, but if you want power in this room, use gold, not words.”
Gerard does not take naturally to this lesson.
When a rival outmaneuvers him politically, Gerard's instinct is to reach for his sword—before realizing how useless it is:
“What would a sword have done? Damned foolishness. I had already been defeated most soundly.”
That is exactly the kind of expansion I want in a long-running adventure story. Gerard has become powerful enough that the world can now confront him with problems he cannot stab.
Power Becomes More Complicated as Gerard Gets More of It
This is where I think Gerard's journey really separates itself from a simple male wish-fulfillment progression.
He certainly gains power.
The problem is that power creates obligations.
Gerard becomes increasingly involved with Dura's refugee population. He does not always agree with how the established elites treat them, and he repeatedly interferes where sensible men tell him not to.
Fogrim gives him the pragmatic Hyperborean argument: these people are not his responsibility.
Gerard answers:
“All people are dangerous. You are right; just because they are neighbors doesn’t mean that they are community—but they’ll never become that if we treat them as enemies.”
Fogrim thinks this is naïve.
His solution is simpler:
“Everything is simple when you have a sword. You are better with that than you are with politics. It certainly made you happier.”
I love that exchange because both men have a point. Gerard is adapting to Hyperborea without becoming merely an interchangeable native. His modern assumptions sometimes make him foolish there, but they can also let him imagine possibilities the locals do not.
Gerard Eventually Becomes a Problem for Entire Governments
This is one of the pleasures of staying with the character.
The man who once needed Scar to give him shelter eventually becomes so politically dangerous that Dura's ruling class needs to find something useful for him to do elsewhere.
Iskelda summarizes the situation perfectly:
“He is a problem. The Council wants him to be a problem for other people.”
That may be my favorite description of late-stage Gerard.
The solution is wonderfully sword-and-sorcery: give him ships.
Not one ship, either.
Gerard is to lead a fleet down the River Black, restore Dura's influence, collect old tribute and attack settlements aligned with the Deep Ones.
He is told to raise:
“an army of adventurers, treasure seekers, and jilted lovers. Mercenaries, mad men, fanatics to the gods.”
That is exactly the kind of army Gerard should command.
The logic of Dura's new expansion is eventually condensed into one gloriously imperial sentence:
“Dura needs no empire, but it must have its provinces.”
Gerard understands perfectly well where sentences like that lead.
Ships move.
Men sharpen swords.
Someone else's grain, gold and women are about to change ownership.
This Is Where the Series Becomes Bigger Than One Man and His Harem
If you read Gor partly for the sense of a wider world beyond Tarl Cabot, this later Gerard material is where Hyperborea opens up.
Gerard begins dealing with river politics, rival religious factions, refugees, conquered settlements, war fleets and ancient alliances.
His reputation takes on a life independent of the man himself.
The stories people tell about Gerard become increasingly ridiculous. The local legend describes “Gerard the Lightning Shield” as a supernatural hero who has fought gods and possesses impossible powers:
“He killed ten men with one mighty slap, they say.”
Another claims to have seen him breathe fire.
The real Gerard is considerably less impressive and considerably more dangerous.
That gap between reputation and reality gives the later books a scale I enjoy. We have watched the myth being manufactured from incidents we actually experienced with him.
The Slave Girls Also Stop Being Mere Rewards
This is another reason I would suggest Gerard to a reader wondering what to read after Gor.
The relationships become complicated.
A Hyperborean may call a woman property and mean it entirely. That does not make her emotionally irrelevant.
Gerard loses a slave whose death affects him deeply. He goes alone to scatter her ashes. His friends understand that the act is unusual, but they do not mock him for it.
Juskar tells Fogrim:
“If he wants to celebrate a dead slave as if she was a friend, we would say not one word against him.”
Fogrim answers simply:
“When he is ready to speak of it, we will be there for him.”
There is a lot contained in that exchange. Gerard has absorbed an alien culture's view of women and slavery, but attachment has not disappeared. Nor has male friendship.
Those contradictions make the world feel more human to me.
There Is Much More Sex Than in Gor
For readers specifically looking for books like Gor with more explicit sex, yes, this is a major difference.
My books are erotica for men as well as fantasy adventures.
The sexual slavery, harem life, female submission and ownership themes are not merely implied. They are part of the actual narrative.
But I do not want sex to replace the adventure.
Gerard can spend one chapter dealing with slave girls and another fighting for his life. A sexual relationship can matter because of something that happened during a war. A slave market can be important to the economy of an entire region. A harem can become entangled with politics, inheritance and alliances.
That combination is exactly where I think the strongest opportunity exists for readers who love Gor but want something more explicit: Gorean-style fantasy erotica that remains actual fantasy. The source material describing my wider niche makes the same point, identifying the strongest overlap as Gor-inspired fiction, male-oriented erotica, sword-and-sorcery adventure, slave-girl fantasy and cosmic horror rather than generic erotica alone.
And There Is Cthulhu
I should probably mention this before you buy a book expecting Counter-Earth and wonder why the fish-men have arrived.
Hyperborea is a cosmic-horror setting.
The gods are not distant mythological abstractions. Dagon, Cthulhu, Azathoth and other entities or races associated with Lovecraftian horror are woven into the history of the world.
Some are worshipped.
Some manipulate human civilizations.
Some are fighting wars so ancient that entire human eras appear and vanish during them.
Landing Beasts cross space and time collecting people. The Mi-Go conduct experiments. The Deep Ones exert political influence. Strange ruins belong to species whose relationship to humanity is not always clear.
Yet people still open taverns and argue about sewer construction.
That mixture is very deliberate.
Cosmic horror becomes more effective to me when ordinary life continues underneath it.
So What Should You Read After Gor?
If you want another exact version of Gor, I cannot offer you that. I would not want to.
But if what you want is the experience behind the search—fantasy books for John Norman fans, male-oriented sword-and-sorcery, beautiful slave girls, explicit sex, strange cultures, masculine power and a protagonist gradually becoming at home in an alien civilization—then I wrote Gerard for readers like us.
Begin with Collar and Cage if you want to meet him close to the start: still modern enough to be surprised, already Hyperborean enough to enjoy what he is becoming.
Continue into Sex Slaves of Hyperborea as Dura grows around him and Gerard becomes an established slave owner, businessman and burgher rather than a wandering outsider.
Then follow the later books as his private adventures become public problems and the sword at his side eventually comes with ships, troops, political enemies and a reputation large enough to precede him.
Gerard eventually reaches a point where he can look at the madness around him and make a choice that could almost serve as the motto for the whole series:
“I didn’t choose to come to Hyperborea—but I could choose why I was here.”
That is the journey.
John Norman gave many of us a taste for fantasy worlds willing to be truly different from our own. What I wanted after Gor was something that kept the danger, the masculine adventure, the slave-girl fantasy and the obsessive worldbuilding, while going much further into explicit sex and much stranger places with the world itself.
If that is what you have been looking for too, then we have the same problem.
Fortunately, I wrote some books for it.