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sparksofember's review
4.0
I’m a sucker for world-building and can be enticed to read almost anything if the culture intrigues me. So when I first heard about A Brother’s Price, the “what-ifs” had me interested enough to get my hands on it asap. It’s a bit different than my normal type – secular adult fiction that is not mystery or SciFi/fantasy. And I was a bit worried the romantic aspects of the story would stray into romance novel territory. Instead I found myself hooked on a unique alternate-universe set in a western turn-of-the-century time period. The women are tough and carry pistols! Children are taught from a young age how to handle a rifle and do their part – not just with running the farm or ranch but also protecting the menfolk from raiders! And the men are sheltered and precious – raised to be good husbands and fathers, traded with another family when they are of age. (This aspect I found fairly realistic. I remember reading once about India having similar problems with not enough women to go around and many families only allowing their daughters to marry if their son can wed the other family’s daughter.)
As already mentioned, I really enjoyed the culture in this world. While a bit of a ridiculous idea, I felt like the author took the premise and made it have solid potential. I also enjoyed the intrigue – I dislike political intrigue with a lot of doublespeak but this was more like spy/assassin intrigue and had me champing at the bit for the characters to figure it out. And the climactic ending was so action-packed I was wishing I could see it in a movie. It was the perfect cap on a nail-biting situation.
I did find the “he loved each girl with all his heart” bit to be total bunk. Maybe I could have bought it if we didn’t have the Bible detailing over and over again how marriages with multiple spouses never fail to suffer from jealousy and unhappiness. And while not a porny romance novel, you can’t have a story that revolves around marriage/breeding without constant references to the subject, although handled tactfully. There is also a sex scene or two, though handled without many details.
All in all, I found A Brother’s Price well written and engaging. I also learned the author, Wen Spencer, writes popular science fiction and fantasy. My library only has book two for one of her series so I’ll have to order the books or just buy them myself. Either way, if they are anywhere near as good as this book was, I know I’ll enjoy them a lot!
As already mentioned, I really enjoyed the culture in this world. While a bit of a ridiculous idea, I felt like the author took the premise and made it have solid potential. I also enjoyed the intrigue – I dislike political intrigue with a lot of doublespeak but this was more like spy/assassin intrigue and had me champing at the bit for the characters to figure it out. And the climactic ending was so action-packed I was wishing I could see it in a movie. It was the perfect cap on a nail-biting situation.
I did find the “he loved each girl with all his heart” bit to be total bunk. Maybe I could have bought it if we didn’t have the Bible detailing over and over again how marriages with multiple spouses never fail to suffer from jealousy and unhappiness. And while not a porny romance novel, you can’t have a story that revolves around marriage/breeding without constant references to the subject, although handled tactfully. There is also a sex scene or two, though handled without many details.
All in all, I found A Brother’s Price well written and engaging. I also learned the author, Wen Spencer, writes popular science fiction and fantasy. My library only has book two for one of her series so I’ll have to order the books or just buy them myself. Either way, if they are anywhere near as good as this book was, I know I’ll enjoy them a lot!
jackiehorne's review
3.0
With the exception of a society in which boys are rare and thus are treated like stereotypical women (and each gets to marry a bunch of sisters, rather than just one woman), this reads like a Western. I expected something more interesting from the gender-shifting conventions than hearing the hero praised for his fatherly skills and watching him pluckily help in his own rescue. If you switch the pronouns, you can see how conventional this is...
avalonroselin's review
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Fun and fast paced, but know what you are getting into before you start.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual harassment, Sexual assault, Sexism, and Rape
Moderate: Incest and Violence
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
sheva's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
If nothing else this book proves that you have no idea going into a book whether it'll be formative. Between reading this in middle school and Elfquest in kindergarten, I have no idea how I'm able to find any books I like, period. It has all of these elements: fast pace, light world building, institutionalized polygamy and child marriage, too-easy Cinderella-esque romance-- there are simply no other books I've read like it. It is neither fantasy or science fiction, but not concretely something else (not truly alternate history, not in a specific linchpin way). It's hard to call it fantasy when they talk about detecting syphilis with microscopes, or science fiction when the subplot features tracking a handful of cannons on rafts, steamboats, and horses. Perhaps you could simply call it romance, but I don't think looking within general romance would find another book like this-- especially since this book is an obvious and textbook "swap the genders" type deal.
The writing feels effortless and simplistic, the characters easily described to the point of shallow, but it works. I have no idea what to do with my regard for this book.
The writing feels effortless and simplistic, the characters easily described to the point of shallow, but it works. I have no idea what to do with my regard for this book.
ammbooks's review
4.0
I actually ended up really enjoying the story.... once I got past the cliché beginning. The role reversal was a riot. I will look for more by this author.
blodeuedd's review against another edition
4.0
This book was really good, it turned everything you knew upside down, and I did go all weird at one point, then I righted myself. No, not weird. We are just learned to think such in our male society.
If this had been reversed it would have been a 80s romance. With dubious content and everything. But it is not.
For every 20 women there is one male. SO yes they are the price in this world.
They are owned by their mothers, their sisters, their wives and can be sold and bartered. (nothing new there, that is the fate of women still.)
Since there are so few men sisters share a husband and guard him well. Even if it is outlawed there are still men taken captive by women who need a husband. Raped to get them with child or sold to a Crib so they can service woman after woman, hour after hour.
The men take care of the babies and cook. Women take care of the farm, the businesses or fight wars. Men are soft creatures. They are not thought to read or write. What could would a man have with such silly ideas in their heads.
They are the ones that needs to show of their assets and wear pretty clothes to catch a good family.
A man must be a virgin on his wedding night. Else he is ruined.
A man will marry at 16. His brides might be much elder (like that is anything new, girls have married older men for ages). But that is weird some of you say. Why? Then it should be weird for women to marry anyone older.
Yes see, I liked how it played with all those things. The 16 marrying someone 28 was the one thing that I found strange, before I realised that the only reason I thought that was strange was cos he was a man. If this had been a historical fic book and the bride 16 then I would not have blinked.
This was a marvelous world! And a dangerous world where I would not have wanted to be male. It was a scary world for men filled with rape threats and scary women lusting after you.
I have talked on and on about the world! Ok SO Jerin meets a princess who takes liberties and he is all in love. His family guards him like hawks and they are all trained to fight. Jerin has a great home actually, he was thought to read and write and got to play outside with the girls. But he is to marry soon. And the elder sisters wants a husband so Jerin needs to fetch a price.
There is adventure, and Jerin falling in love at every turn. Dangerous plots at the capital and scary woman wanting the pretty young debutante.
I could not fall back asleep so I listened for like 4 hours one morning to find out how it worked out for poor Jerin, and you know what, like the romance it would have been if he had been female, everyone gets HEAs
Interesting listen
Narrator
I did feel he made Jerin a bit too old, but on the other hand it worked for the life he led. Since there is like one other male present then he sure does a lot of female voices ;) Men are like I said scarce in this world.
If this had been reversed it would have been a 80s romance. With dubious content and everything. But it is not.
For every 20 women there is one male. SO yes they are the price in this world.
They are owned by their mothers, their sisters, their wives and can be sold and bartered. (nothing new there, that is the fate of women still.)
Since there are so few men sisters share a husband and guard him well. Even if it is outlawed there are still men taken captive by women who need a husband. Raped to get them with child or sold to a Crib so they can service woman after woman, hour after hour.
The men take care of the babies and cook. Women take care of the farm, the businesses or fight wars. Men are soft creatures. They are not thought to read or write. What could would a man have with such silly ideas in their heads.
They are the ones that needs to show of their assets and wear pretty clothes to catch a good family.
A man must be a virgin on his wedding night. Else he is ruined.
A man will marry at 16. His brides might be much elder (like that is anything new, girls have married older men for ages). But that is weird some of you say. Why? Then it should be weird for women to marry anyone older.
Yes see, I liked how it played with all those things. The 16 marrying someone 28 was the one thing that I found strange, before I realised that the only reason I thought that was strange was cos he was a man. If this had been a historical fic book and the bride 16 then I would not have blinked.
This was a marvelous world! And a dangerous world where I would not have wanted to be male. It was a scary world for men filled with rape threats and scary women lusting after you.
I have talked on and on about the world! Ok SO Jerin meets a princess who takes liberties and he is all in love. His family guards him like hawks and they are all trained to fight. Jerin has a great home actually, he was thought to read and write and got to play outside with the girls. But he is to marry soon. And the elder sisters wants a husband so Jerin needs to fetch a price.
There is adventure, and Jerin falling in love at every turn. Dangerous plots at the capital and scary woman wanting the pretty young debutante.
I could not fall back asleep so I listened for like 4 hours one morning to find out how it worked out for poor Jerin, and you know what, like the romance it would have been if he had been female, everyone gets HEAs
Interesting listen
Narrator
I did feel he made Jerin a bit too old, but on the other hand it worked for the life he led. Since there is like one other male present then he sure does a lot of female voices ;) Men are like I said scarce in this world.
somberlittleman's review against another edition
2.0
I really wanted to like this book. It was recommended by a friend who adores it, and moreover, the premise seemed like such an interesting one.
However.
It is at turns a pretty compelling story, and also bogged down by far too much worldbuilding. Mind you, world building is something I usually can’t get enough of, but when the world being built could easily be read as either ham-fisted and confused attempts at feminism, or as a slam-dunk for people who think the 1950s was the best era yet for gender and we must return to it posthaste? That’s not a world I want to spend time in.
One of the more obvious ‘roll your eyes and move on’ aspects of this book is the lack of queerness. Queer folks who love a high concept novel, fantasy especially, will be used to the irritation of adoring concepts and worlds which hold no concept of us; of wanting to lose ourselves in stories and magical realms which tell us that the most fantastic place of all is somewhere we broadly do not get to exist. But then this book took that a step further, by failing to mention queerness in any fashion until nearly 80% of the way through, only to immediately shrug it off as “women who lie with women are whores for the sake of others’ pleasure, nothing more” and not otherwise address it.
Yikes again. I don’t envy the random lesbian in this world, surrounded by scads of horny unmarried women, who will clearly not want a thing to do with them.
Also, unrelated to the actual structural problems of this book, this is a more petty concern but… this book takes so much care to use in-world equivalents of curses (“Holy Mothers!” Instead of “oh my god!”, etc). So why then do they turn around and say more modern things like the big four not-safe-for-TV swear words? Took me right out of the plot when I did manage to be in it for a few minutes.
However.
It is at turns a pretty compelling story, and also bogged down by far too much worldbuilding. Mind you, world building is something I usually can’t get enough of, but when the world being built could easily be read as either ham-fisted and confused attempts at feminism, or as a slam-dunk for people who think the 1950s was the best era yet for gender and we must return to it posthaste? That’s not a world I want to spend time in.
One of the more obvious ‘roll your eyes and move on’ aspects of this book is the lack of queerness. Queer folks who love a high concept novel, fantasy especially, will be used to the irritation of adoring concepts and worlds which hold no concept of us; of wanting to lose ourselves in stories and magical realms which tell us that the most fantastic place of all is somewhere we broadly do not get to exist. But then this book took that a step further, by failing to mention queerness in any fashion until nearly 80% of the way through, only to immediately shrug it off as “women who lie with women are whores for the sake of others’ pleasure, nothing more” and not otherwise address it.
Yikes again. I don’t envy the random lesbian in this world, surrounded by scads of horny unmarried women, who will clearly not want a thing to do with them.
Also, unrelated to the actual structural problems of this book, this is a more petty concern but… this book takes so much care to use in-world equivalents of curses (“Holy Mothers!” Instead of “oh my god!”, etc). So why then do they turn around and say more modern things like the big four not-safe-for-TV swear words? Took me right out of the plot when I did manage to be in it for a few minutes.
jaclynharr's review
adventurous
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
nonbinarylibrarianwitch's review
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0