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Well, as a palate cleanser to Joe Abercrombie, I picked the least patriarchal novel possible and then some.

First off, this book should come with heavy content warnings. There are graphic depictions of violence, murder, sexual assault and rape. Especially the latter two took the book down a notch for me, but more about that later.

The book has an interesting framing story. It's a manuscript of a male historian called Neil, to his friend Naomi. He's referencing lots of old archaeological finds, and has woven a story around it to explain things. We then get to read the story, and see some of the artwork. In the framing mail conversations it's clear it's not our world, gender roles reversed.

The story itself is set in our time, and teenage girls have started to gain a power that grows in their collarbones, electrical jolts. They can use this power to wake it in older women too. We experience this change in the balance of power from several PoVs. There's Allie, unwanted orphan, disciplined and sexually assaulted by foster parents. She uses the power to grow her own religious cult. There's Margot, a mayor in an unnamed American metropolitan area, who gains the power through her daughter, and uses it to rise in political power. There's Roxy, daughter of a mobster, stronger than all other women, creating drugs to make the Power even stronger. And last we have Tunde, a young man from Nigeria who travels the world to document the changes this brings.

I think generally Tunde has the strongest chapters. He's the most sympathetic character, and where he goes, you feel the change. He starts off in Saudi-Arabia where women rise up together, and destroy and explode all the cars that they were not allowed to drive. Imagine if women in Iran had such a power? Terrifying, but powerful stuff. Tunde travels to India where equally women rise up, and torture those who had power over them before.

Over the span of a few years, roles reverse, men become sexualized objects that women in power show off, leer at and humiliate.

So much for the good part. The plot itself here is paper-thin, and none of the characters but Tunde strong enough to carry it. Eventually, Allie aka Eve and Margot both come to the conclusion that the world needs a reset, and the artwork that is shown speaks of a Cataclysmic Era 5000 years ago. So by the end we can assume there was a nation-destroying war that we don't get to witness that leads to society as it is now between Neil and Naomi, clearly matriarchal. In condescending tone, she recommends that if he wants people to consider reading his book, he should consider picking a female pen-name.

The framing story and the premise were tremendous, and I devoured this book. However, the paper-thin plot of the main story and the seriously tremendous amount of sexual violence makes this a 3.5 stars for me. Especially near the end of the story, there was such a lengthy scene of a rape that it felt utterly gratuitous, unfortunately.

I personally loved this story to bits, even though the ending was a bit too vague for me. But other than that, I pretty much inhaled this book.

Curtis Harper is a grifter in the early 1930s. But then he finds this strange house in Chicago, and a wall of names, of girls that shine, and their mementos. The house allows Harper to travel through time, and he leaves a bloody slash through time, as he murders shining girls throughout all periods of time up to the 90s. But one girl survives, and starts to hunt him down.

I would have liked to know more about the house, what allowed the antagonist to travel through time like this? But that's not the point of this novel. Instead we get fascinating glimpses through time, of the victims. Of a woman of colour working in the arms industry during WWII. A dancing girl in the 30s who painted her skin with radium. Of an illegal abortion helper in the 70.

I was very hooked, despite the unsatisfying end of the story, in the same way Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell usually reel me in. Must hunt for her other books now.

Why do I always end up with books on my reading list only to find out it's YA when I start reading? YA is just not my favorite genre these days. I dislike the tropes, I hate the 'young but perfect' protagonists, and it's usually retreading whatever's the hip YA these days. Red Rising is quite obviously following routes laid out by Battle Royale and The Hunger Games first. It adds interesting sci-fi stuff to the mix, my favorite in the novel. And yet.

Darrow is a Red miner on Mars. He's 16, very good at mining, and happily married. But the Reds are opressed by the other ruling classes of Mars, most particularly the Gold class. Reds suffer as they mine precious metals required for terraforming Mars for the inhabitants of broken Earth. Or so they think.

It's all a kind of Truman show. Outside the mining colonies, the ruling classes have already successfully terraformed Mars and are enjoying a luxurious lifestyle on the backs of the lower classes, like the Reds, or the Pinks (basically a class of prostitutes). A rebel group called Sons of Ares adopts Darrow and modifies his body, to turn him into a Gold. He is to enter their Institute, where Gold teenagers are shaped into the leaders of the future, in a sort of Capture the Flag survival game between different houses.

I was really into it in the bits where Darrow learns the truth about the lies of the Golden, but I was not so much into the Hunger Games style Battle Royale game. In fact, I found it problematic. Female contestants get raped, of course. Because why not, modern YA must include Rape Culture. It's all whiter than white, because nothing's whiter than the Gold class. There was a passage that smelled like homophobia, when two male contestants slept next to each other and were uncomfortable with it. Eh.

Would I recommend this book? Probably not. Do I want to continue reading because I want to know what's going on with Virginia (IDGAF about Darrow, honestly), absolutely.