Review: The Women's War

The Women's War by Jenna Glass
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: rape, institutional sexism.

For this ARC, the last one I finished in 2018, I'm going to give it a 2.5 and generously round it up to a 3. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot going for it, especially with its promised #MeToo and #Resistance-era political relevance. But it does have this unfortunate and persistent feeling of half-bakery underlying the whole thing for a ton of reasons. Namely, the generally slow pace, brought on by the story's tendency to wallow in long and interminable scenes when we really want to see more machinations. I mean, the book is called The Women's War, but for all the war we get in this book, that title might've been better off saved for one of the sequels.


Not only that, but I feel that the book lacks a lot in intersectionality. For there being seven different kingdoms, it feels like there's very little to differentiate between any of them, and pretty much every character, no matter what nation they're from, has no skin color descriptor whatsoever - yeah, white feminist much? To say nothing of the blurb in this ARC promising "sympathetic characters of both genders" - yeah, binary much? And is everyone straight here? Unless I've really missed something from my eyes glazing over every fifty pages or so, there's nary a single queer character in sight.

But again, the book ain't a total write-off. It's got a very unique premise, even if it has to stretch that premise super thin over 500-plus pages. The gender politics may be super-binary, but there's thankfully no binary of women = good and men = evil with no exceptions. Some men are good allies, and some women, in their experimentations with magic to upend the patriarchy, are willing to irreparably harm even (relatively) good men. And while the magic system could use some explanations - I hope there's a full guide in the final print - Jenna Glass is already making some very pretty jewelry to represent all the elemental motes and selling it on Etsy.

If you liked The Traitor Baru Cormorant as one of the bosses at my work does, you'll probably like this book too. Though I do, again, think it could've been a little less white-feminist.

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