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kirstencholewa's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual content, and Murder
Moderate: Death of parent
deedireads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
TL;DR REVIEW:
Scorpica is a solid epic fantasy novel that brings a fresh take to some tried-and-true tropes. It sets us up well for book two, and I’m looking forward to it.
For you if: You like epic fantasy with vast, sweeping worldbuilding and multiple POVs.
FULL REVIEW:
Thank you to Saga Press for the advanced copy of this book! I really enjoyed it.
Scorpica is the first book in a new epic fantasy series by super-successful historical fiction author Greer Macallister, writing here under the pen name G.R. Macallister. As soon as I read the premise — a matriarchal society of five queendoms in which girls stop suddenly stop being born — I was in.
Each queendom in this world has a specialty: battle, knowledge, trade, agriculture, and magic. The one that gets the most focus in this book is the warrior nation Scorpica, which of course is the title. We follow a handful of POV characters, including two Scorpican queens, a few Scorpican warriors, a mother and her daughter (one of the last four girls born) from Sestia (the queendom specializing in magic), the Sestian queen, and our villain.
This is a solid epic fantasy novel, and if you like books with sweeping worlds and lots of characters, I think you’ll like it. While the “each country has a specialty” trope is well-worn, I found that the twist of the fully matriarchal society helped it feel fresh. What’s especially noteworthy is that women didn’t have to take power in this world; they simply are more powerful and always have been, a true gender role reversal.
There are plenty of open questions and plot lines that set the next book up nicely; no cliffhanger, but not quite a tidy ending either. We also hardly got any worldbuilding outside Scorpica and a bit in Sestia, but given that the first book’s title is Scorpica while the series is called The Five Queendoms, that makes sense, and I think we can expect a lot more to come.
I’ll be watching for book two!
Graphic: Death, Blood, and Violence
Moderate: Grief, Sexual content, and Pregnancy
bookaddictkatie's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Violence and Sexual content
Moderate: Blood, Kidnapping, and Gore
Minor: Pregnancy and Abandonment
poppywarphan's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Sapphic rep, lots of politics, though women, betrayal and blood. The story takes place over multiple years and follows multiple characters. There was a lot of describing and less dialogue. The beginning was very hard to get through and I almost dnf'd this. After my initial struggle I did come to quite like it however it still kept occasionally throwing some weird fertility/sex/impregnation/birth stuff, that made me uncomfortable, into my face. I'm not a fan of how the author decided to construct her matriarchy. I was hoping for a functional harmonious society not a flipped patriarchy where men are the ones who have to fight for equality and are used only for siring children and as lovers. The personal relationships between the men and women felt shallow. Women either discarded them or they themselves left because they were neglected/dissatisfied.
In this world there are five queendoms. Scorpica - warriors, Bastion - scholars, Arca - magic, Sestia - religion or something, Paxim - diplomacy. Girls and women are valued while the men are deemed week and useless. Newborn boys are sold or traded (at least in Scorpica). Girls stop being born which is a catastrophe especially for Scorpica because men aren't allowed to be warriors. (One does show up and asks to be one but the queen just kills him.) In fact, girls are so needed the scorpican queen decides they will take them from elsewhere (and declares them her daughters because she's love/attention starved.) and causes a war to start brewing.
The characters:
• previously mentioned scorpican queen and her new daughters
• a girl with all-magic (which makes her a threat to the queen of Arca. Something about having a claim to the throne) who was in hiding with her mother and some buff woman who had decided to take them under her protection
• the queen of Arca and her daughter
• the previous scorpican queen, her daughter and her advisor best friend
• a sorceress who wants to take over all the queendoms
This was mostly the first half. I did add details after finishing the whole thing but didn't summarize the 2nd part because I got lazy. It wasn't clearly explained why the girls had stopped being born. Some magic?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this.
Moderate: Death, Pregnancy, Body horror, Child death, Murder, Blood, and Sexual content
Minor: Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Torture, Trafficking, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Medical content, and Slavery
gcjay1994's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Blood, Death, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Pregnancy, and Violence
Moderate: Sexual content
irl_bookworms's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
First off, I love to see an author who is unafraid to kill, harm, or injure their imperfect characters and Macallister is that kind of author. We follow an incredible cast of characters from Queens to slaves, an ancient god, and even ragtag group of bandits. And I devoured every single POV.
Graphic: Pregnancy, Death, Blood, Slavery, Violence, and Sexual content
ariel790's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Moderate: Death, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Violence, and War
m_________'s review against another edition
2.0
2 stars
Content Warnings (may contain spoilers): Death/Death of a Parent/Death of Children, Violence, Gore, Body Horror, Sexual Content/Sexual Violence towards a Minor
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
While there were some parts of this book that I had a fun time reading, I think all of its elements were unfortunately at best just okay.
The book takes place in five matriarchal queendoms, and follows the lives of a primarily female cast, as well as the reactions of the rulers of these realms, when AFAB children stop being born.
While there was a large cast of characters, including many different POV characters, I really never found myself growing attached to any of them, connecting to them, or even rooting for them to succeed in their chapters. All of the characters felt very flat, and underdeveloped to me, and all of the POVs had the same voice, which resulted in all the different characters feeling inauthentic and indistinct. As well, after finishing the book, it felt to me like a lot of the POV characters did not have satisfying conclusions to their arcs, and that the purpose of their chapters was mostly just to introduce other elements of the book, which in my opinion is indicative of poor narrative planning.
I think a lot of my issues with the characters come down to the author primarily telling the readers things in the prose, and not showing them. While I didn’t have any issues with the prose style of the book, we as readers were told a lot of things about the personalities and motivations of various characters in the novel, but it was less common for these characteristics to be displayed through their actions.
The pacing choices for this book were interesting, and the end result of the plot made me feel like this was almost more of a prequel to the series than the first book. (Which is completely okay! Just something to expect before you start reading so you don’t feel dissatisfied with the ending.) To that end, while the book was, in my opinion, fairly fast paced, it was very episodic, in that we would follow a particular character for a chapter and then not jump back to them for several years in the world’s timeline. There were a lot of time skips, and, as I mentioned before, a lot of POV characters introduced who were only included in a few chapters, which contributed to the prequel-esque and episodic feeling I got while reading. Again, not a bad thing! Just something to be aware of before starting to read.
Another big critique of the book was the limited world-building. While there are multiple queendoms, they all seem to operate in essentially the same way and we don’t learn a lot about the culture, magic system, and history of the entire realm beyond what is required for the plot, or the distinct natures of each of the queendoms, besides their focus on different industries. This is always one of my favourite aspects of fantasy books, so I was really disappointed that it wasn’t included very much here. I was also really hoping the book’s focus on women would result in it displaying different sorts of matriarchal societies in the different queendoms, which wasn’t really the case. As well, I was hoping there would be a more nuanced examination of gender and gender roles in the book. The difference between a person’s sex and gender is never really brought up, and children are determined to be male or female at birth. There is one non-binary character in this book - albeit a priest who exists mainly outside of the queendoms’ society - so I hope that in future books the author will critique the gender binary which seems to dictate a lot of the society’s operations. However, I should add that I am cisgender, so I would suggest referring to a non-cis reader for a more nuanced examination of these themes within the novel, as I don’t want to speak for or over the trans and non-binary community with regards to this topic!
There was a huge focus on sex and sexual content, which is fine, but I did find it strange that in a novel where this was such a key focus that there was only one minor f/f relationship, and other non-heteronormative sexualities were basically ignored.
The following section contains minor spoilers for the book, but I found it very concerning, so I felt the need to include it in my review.
Graphic: Blood, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, and War
Moderate: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Kidnapping, Murder, Pregnancy, and Transphobia
Minor: Alcohol and Alcoholism