A review by lucrezi
A Brother's Price by Wen Spencer

4.0

Basically it’s like, what if there was a world where males were so few that they would get their own harems, but it actually takes the premise seriously. This matriarchal society is actually very terrifying for the lesser sex in the book, the men. Wen Spencer truly considered the effects that a scarcity of males would have on society: treating boys as commodities, incest in the form of sons sleeping with their mothers to beget more boys, cribs (state-sanctioned “brothels” where women can sleep with drugged, imprisoned men to become pregnant), female prostitutes presenting themselves more masculine to attract clients, etc. A good chunk of the plot went to political schemes based on a historical war too. Really good world-building that didn’t feel like an info dump.

The romances (plural) were very whirlwind, but I expected that since this is a standalone and, well, these heterosexual characters don’t really have options and opportunities to meet well-adjusted, intelligent, beautiful members of the opposite sex, so it wasn’t a huge deal. Though, I think I’d have liked the main characters to have a little more personality.