Warrior Woman

This is not a typical Marion Zimmer Bradley novel; it's the result of a bet between her and Don Wollheim, who edited her Darkover novels at DAW Books. Additionally, it's her response to the Gor novels that were also being published by DAW. So, yes, this book does start out with a heroine who has been captured and is being sold as a slave, who has amnesia and remembers nothing of her life before the trip across the desert with the slavers - and, due to a head injury, remembers mercifully little of that. But she does know that she would rather fight in the arena than be a harlot for the men who do, and that choice changes the rest of the book. In a Gor novel the woman would become less her own person, eventually learning to be a contented and obedient slave. In this book, even while the heroine remains a slave, she is something quite different from the typical 'slave girl' - she grows and develops, always searching for her memory and her past, convinced that this is not how her life is supposed to be. And, of course, she's right.