Mostly about loss; Not about matriarchal society

I was hoping for a thought experiment that explores how society would be different if dominated by women -maybe a modern version of ‘Herland.’ While there are glimpses of this , they are minor and easy; phones become smaller to fit female hands - not exactly a feat of imagination. That said, the book is well written and does a good job of capturing loss and grief and the feeling of loneliness that occurs despite being surrounded by others in similar situations. Mostly it is just a retelling of the plague we’ve just been through. It feels like a bit of a wasted premise. Why kill the men if you’re not really going to explore what that means? The best part is the narration; each character is perfectly performed.

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long and drawn out

the story is interesting, but it moves at a glacial pace, and the characters spend most of the book whining at how they have it rough. it could do with less pathos and more action.
on the sci-fi side, there's a little speculation and world building, it's good but it could use a lot more of it.

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Could have been good, but was very disappointing.

This is a post-apocalyptic style story in which a virus springs up, and strikes down only the evil, sorry, the Male part of the population. This could have been a really great story, it is written with multiple characters, in a testimonial style point of view (similar to that of World War Z), and mostly from the point of view of Female characters as nearly all the men in the world are dead.
However, there are multiple problems with the characters, as well as with how the story is told. Throughout the entire story, there is this underlying feeling that men are bad, with constant referrals to how men start all wars, it’s the man that ignored the woman’s advice that could have avoided all of this at the start, there is the immune male who just happens to be abusive (in a community of abusive males, before the rest die), and so on and so on. One of the only men in the book is some idiot going on about conspiracy theories and how Women did this, but were too stupid to do it themselves, and how they have been slowly setting it up so they don’t need men anymore – Seriously??.
The Author doesn’t cover that it was a woman who gave the recommendation to ignore the original Dr as she was unsound that led to the male ignoring the advice, that the DV victim doesn’t go for help, but uses the plague as a convenient excuse to murder her partner – and there is the underlying impression that this has been occurring a fair bit as the authorities have not asked any questions, just collected the bodies. As for wars throughout history – maybe the Author should try checking out a few of the more charming examples of the Queens we have had in human history??
Putting aside the Authors sexist taint and obvious dislike for men, unfortunately, the story just did not seem to be going anywhere. I have reached the halfway point in the book, and without spoilers for anyone that wants to continue further, the story doesn’t seem to have any point? Worse than this is the very regrettable character work.
Some characters are just annoyingly whiny or obnoxious (or both) like the Canadian Dr is just obnoxious, and I won’t get into her views on how she feels that people shouldn’t share research that could potentially save others lives (Thankfully no one like her existed with the COVID research – and there just had to be another dig about how the world has ignored all women and their discoveries). Then there is the Dr who discovered patient Zero who goes from being vilified to hero-worshipped, and all the while doesn’t seem to know if she is a Dr, a Psychologist, a Forensic Pathologist or what?
She flits around the place in the middle of plague, talking to all sorts of people whilst still working at the A&E of a Hospital, nice quarantine control? She complains about not being heard, whilst dumping 10s of emails to the newspapers?? Wow, don’t hold back now!! 10s, don’t make it a hundred, you might reach someone.
This book is unfortunately full of second rate characters that you really just can’t like. Every time you start to like one of them, they do something really stupid or annoying, and not in a way that you think is human nature, but is just bad character writing.
This could have been something really amazing, but it was incredibly disappointing, especially given that we are in the middle of a pandemic. The Author really should have spent more time researching her subject matter and her characters. I’m guessing she might get some positive responses from Female readers who will be happy to see a world in which all men die, but for the discerning reader, this was just a very unsatisfactory read.
For the most part, a lot of the Narration is really good. There are multiple Narrators, mostly Women given that most of the roles are Female, and they are done pretty well, with good clear and concise easy to understand Narration.
Some of the characters do quite well with the emotional aspects of their roles, I thought Elizabeth was done particularly well, providing a good amount of both sadness and joy in her role, as she brought her to life.
The character of Amanda was Narrated well also.
The Male voices were quite well done also, maybe not as emotive as the Female characters, but still clear and concise.
Overall, the Narration was done well.

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Great narration, otherwise disappointing.

I was looking forward to reading this book with all the rave reviews but unfortunately I was disappointed.
The concept is interesting, it’s written much like World War Z where you are predominantly listening to accounts of the characters experiences rather than being led through a story in real time. The narration was excellent and I would listen to any of the narrators again. The author could have done more research into the medical aspects, so much is really, really incorrect.. even a simple google search would have produced information required (a fever of 38.8 mild?? in reality in most health systems it would initiate a sepsis pathway). For me the most irritating part of the book was the character Catherine; a self involved, sulky, selfish, horrible human.. listening to her whining the majority of the way throughout the book was PAINFUL! I stuck with it because I hoped she would grow somehow throughout the book, but alas, she remains a selfish brat throughout the entire book, she is WOEFUL and unfortunately, ruined it for me.

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3 people found this helpful