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A review by finalefile
A Brother's Price by Wen Spencer
4.0
I'm giving this book 4 stars because I enjoyed it and would read it again, but it left me with a lot of confusion and questions!
- Why was the audiobook narrated by a man when most of the characters were women? And why did he use so many different accents for people from within the same country? Also, I thought the voice he used for Jerin made him come off as a "stupid country boy" when we soon find out he's actually much more than that. I just found the whole narration to be annoying.
- The worldbuilding was not strong enough. It seemed like a combination of a medieval world with a Wild West/cowboy world, and I was never really sure how I should be imagining it. Details of characters' appearances were often not revealed until long after they'd been introduced. I imagined the characters dressed similarly to how they'd look in a typical story (such as women with long hair and wearing dresses) and then it would mention a princess wearing trousers or a family of women who had short hair, and I was left to wonder if that applied to all women in the story or not, and why I hadn't been told sooner. (I partially blame this on the audiobook cover, which is much different than the print book cover.) I was also confused about the state of science/medicine - some things seemed pretty advanced, while others weren't.
- How did this society come about? Why are there so many more women than men? Was it always this way or are men just genetically dying out over time? I assume that the men in this world are still generally bigger/stronger than women, yet the women are still the ones doing all the "manly" jobs, like soldiers for example. I know this story is built on reverse sexism, but some details like this seemed rather absurd. As far as I could tell, all the men in this society were either carefully guarded husbands, or prostitutes. That's less freedom than women have in real life, even in a lot of oppressive real-world societies!
- Would a society run by women really be as violent as one run by men? There are several mentions of a man who was raped and killed by female criminals...that just does not seem realistic to me. I'm also not a fan of rape in stories to begin with, and here it didn't even seem to have a point beyond showing "in this world, women are just like men! Women can be bad too!"
- I was not happy about Ren's "seduction" of Jaren. His consent was very dubious. I also didn't expect it to be "love at first foreplay" when it started off with such a rapey feel. Again, it seemed like an example of "Women are so powerful in this society that they can get away with raping men." Why not... y'know...write about a world where rape doesn't happen in the first place???
- The fact that large groups of siblings sharing a spouse is the norm in this society - I could handle this until I thought about it affecting myself (having to share a spouse with my own siblings) and...ewwwwwwwww, gross. It would have been interesting to hear different points of view from characters who were interested in different relationship dynamics than the normal polygyny.
- This is very random, but when the secret passageway in the husband's quarters was first mentioned, I was hoping that the missing princess Hallie would be hiding out in there, like Bruno in the movie Encanto.
- Why was the audiobook narrated by a man when most of the characters were women? And why did he use so many different accents for people from within the same country? Also, I thought the voice he used for Jerin made him come off as a "stupid country boy" when we soon find out he's actually much more than that. I just found the whole narration to be annoying.
- The worldbuilding was not strong enough. It seemed like a combination of a medieval world with a Wild West/cowboy world, and I was never really sure how I should be imagining it. Details of characters' appearances were often not revealed until long after they'd been introduced. I imagined the characters dressed similarly to how they'd look in a typical story (such as women with long hair and wearing dresses) and then it would mention a princess wearing trousers or a family of women who had short hair, and I was left to wonder if that applied to all women in the story or not, and why I hadn't been told sooner. (I partially blame this on the audiobook cover, which is much different than the print book cover.) I was also confused about the state of science/medicine - some things seemed pretty advanced, while others weren't.
- How did this society come about? Why are there so many more women than men? Was it always this way or are men just genetically dying out over time? I assume that the men in this world are still generally bigger/stronger than women, yet the women are still the ones doing all the "manly" jobs, like soldiers for example. I know this story is built on reverse sexism, but some details like this seemed rather absurd. As far as I could tell, all the men in this society were either carefully guarded husbands, or prostitutes. That's less freedom than women have in real life, even in a lot of oppressive real-world societies!
- Would a society run by women really be as violent as one run by men? There are several mentions of a man who was raped and killed by female criminals...that just does not seem realistic to me. I'm also not a fan of rape in stories to begin with, and here it didn't even seem to have a point beyond showing "in this world, women are just like men! Women can be bad too!"
Spoiler
- I was not happy about Ren's "seduction" of Jaren. His consent was very dubious. I also didn't expect it to be "love at first foreplay" when it started off with such a rapey feel. Again, it seemed like an example of "Women are so powerful in this society that they can get away with raping men." Why not... y'know...write about a world where rape doesn't happen in the first place???
- The fact that large groups of siblings sharing a spouse is the norm in this society - I could handle this until I thought about it affecting myself (having to share a spouse with my own siblings) and...ewwwwwwwww, gross. It would have been interesting to hear different points of view from characters who were interested in different relationship dynamics than the normal polygyny.
- This is very random, but when the secret passageway in the husband's quarters was first mentioned, I was hoping that the missing princess Hallie would be hiding out in there, like Bruno in the movie Encanto.