 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book recommended based on your favorite book.
The Gate to Women's Country, by Sheri S. Tepper. I'm sorry, but there's no way to discuss this book, and why it so completely didn't work for me, without spoilers. The Popsugar prompt was "a book recommended by an AI chatbot based on your favorite book." I'm not a fan of AI or chatbots, especially since they sometimes recommend books that don't exist. I think I stayed within the spirit of the prompt: I looked up my two favorite books (The Handmaid's Tale and Woman on the Edge of Time), and checked out Amazon's "You might also enjoy" recommendations. I sorta see the connection to this book; it's dystopian science fiction from the same era (1988), with a lot to say about gender politics. But it went in a very different direction. It's a few generations post-apocalypse, and most technology and knowledge have been lost. The women live in cities, running society and trying to recover lost knowledge. The men live in garrisons outside, raised as warriors to protect their cities. Twice a year, men and women meet in month-long carnivals of partying and sex. Sons are turned over to their fathers at age five. At fifteen, they're offered the opportunity to return and become "servitors" for the women. After 10 years of indoctrination in the honor and glory of warriors, few do. We meet Stavia at age 37, when her son rejects her in favor of the warriors. The plot moves back & forth between the present and the past, when 11-year-old Stevia gives forbidden books to a boy, Chernin. Chernin is under orders by his commander to manipulate her, because the men are sure the women have some "secret" that keeps them in control, and the men of Stavia's city hope to overthrow & enslave the women. The women do have a secret, known only to their ruling council: the "medical exams" all young women get before carnivals are actually to give them contraception. They also have post-carnival "medical exams" - where the women are secretly inseminated with sperm from the servitors. This is supposed to breed less violent men, in the hopes that men will eventually give up their warlike ways some generations later. Handing boys over for ten years of warrior indoctrination would seem to work against this. But even on its own terms, the plan makes no sense: we see multiple examples of servitors being violent when they deem it necessary for the greater good. The women, too, commit violence when they believe the men have gotten too dangerous - including manipulating the men into wars that will wipe out large numbers of fighters, including the women's own sons. There's a recurring theme of a performance of a play about Iphigenia: the Trojan War from women's point of view. Except, the women keep insisting it's a comedy. Trigger warnings for violence, rape, domestic violence, suicide, and whatever you call the violation when a woman is inseminated with the wrong man's sperm without her knowledge and consent.
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