The Women's War, by Jenna Glass (Del Rey)
Reminiscent of both
C.L. Polk’s The Midnight Bargain and
Louise Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan,
this world’s women, although as capable as men of using magic, are denied its
practice. Their value lies in the marriage alliances they can bring and the
magic their sons may inherit. In the dominant Western European-style realm, even
women from rich and aristocratic families are treated as chattel, discarded at
whim into The House of the Unwanted and a life of prostitution and economic
slavery. The story weaves together the lives of a number of women caught in different
ways in this pernicious system: the widowed daughter of a king, despised by her
half-brother and desperate to protect her children; one of the Unwanted, thrust
from sex slavery into leadership, for which she feels singularly unprepared; the
despised wife of the heir to the throne who sees her only worth in her unborn
child; the princess royal of a small kingdom, destined to save her people by
sacrificing love for marriage.
The world changes
dramatically when several kinswomen, who have been practicing and refining
their magic secretly, enact a curse over all the realms, and then perish. With
their deaths, no one can reverse what they have done. The curse ensures that no
woman shall be pregnant unwillingly. Across the realms, women who are not truly
willing to bear children either miscarry or fail to conceive.
Political chaos
threatens. Scapegoated and then exiled, the surviving Unwanted journey to a barren
land, that guarantees extreme hardship and poverty. What they discover there
will change their world even more than the curse.
The women and their
plight, their courage, and most of all, the way they learn to work together
swept me up from the first chapter.
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