Your source for romantic fantasy on the web
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Wen Spencer
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Jess: If there was one male romance novel out there, this is it. "A Brother's Price" is actually categorized under Sci-fi, but the only thing that makes it so are some guns and steam engines. The fantasy element here is the female-dominated society. The main character is being fought over by groups of women who want to marry him (one man will be married to a generation of 10-30 sisters), including princesses. These princesses fall in love with him so quickly it flies past the believable. The political intrigue is rather lame, just more fighting over what appears to be the finest male specimen in the world. I was looking for a light read when I bought this, and that is exactly what I got. Since I have no problem reading a light romance, I did enjoy this. The story was pretty interesting and I finished the book in no time at all. However, if you're looking for an out-of-this-world sci-fi (and you're of the male species not looking for a romance novel), you'll be thoroughly disappointed in this book. 7/9/05 Karen: I really disliked this book! Reading it made me feel more than a little uncomfortable. Why? To start, the premise of the book is a world where for some unexplained reason male children are rare. The society is dominated by women who band together along familial lines. Each generation of sisters marries one man and controls the future of any brothers they may have. To this end, they either trade their brothers for or buy a husband. The husband then marries all of them. The main character and all of the other featured men in this story are little more than girls. They are treated like girls, look like girls and act like girls. The hero has long hair and is best described as beautiful. He giggles. His sisters lock him away and do their best to keep him away from other women who might steal him. When in public he wears a dress and a veil. Even though his sisters and future wives all love him they still buy and sell him. And although he marries the crown princesses of the realm there is no ambition in either him or his wives to change the system. The whole book left me with a nasty feeling for really, it really takes feminism to the extreme. It may be nice to read about strong female characters but this novel is simply role reversal and I felt that at any time the characters’ sexes could be switched and the story would be the same with the sole exception that one wife could not bear a child for every brother. So in effect, it is a harem tale where the harem members are the dominants. Weird! 7/14/05 |
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