Tarnsman of Gor

I've wanted to read a Gor book for ages, based on their weird reputation and the fact we had a bunch of them in the Sutekh library way back when. It's famed for it's misogyny, taking the usual Fantasy/Sci-fi gender roles to extremes. Tarnsman of Gor is the first in the series, so it seemed like a good place to start.

At first glance, it's actually very John Carter of Mars-esque - young academic Tarl Cabot is mysteriously transported to another world. It's like our world in some ways, but it's trapped in some equivalent of out ancient world - battles are fought with swords, spears, and archers. But it's also different in various fantastical ways - the world is rules by mysterious priest-kings; warriors fly about on giant pterodactyl-ey creatures called Tarns (hence the title of the book, Tarnsman of Gor), there are giant talking spiders in the forests, etc. It's not too bad (or at least, not much worse than other similar portal-into-a-world-with-a-bunch-of-random-sci-fi-and-fantasy-devices-thrown-in novels). The misogyny and extreme gender roles are relatively mild in this one - dodgy in a few places, such as the submissive slave girl business, and the long-winded justification the author felt Tarl Cabot needed to go through in order to hug his father and be happy about seeing him); but not as ridiculously horrifying as the later novels in the series get (it's now up to 30 novels).

I'd recommend this only if you're super-keen on both Conan and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and have run out of anything like that to read.