A review by cupiscent
Scorpica by G.R. Macallister

Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.

There's nothing wrong with the writing, it's very nicely done, but the story is not doing anything I'm interested in, and I actively dislike much of the worldbuilding. I always find reductive or essentialist delineations wearisome, and this one has two - all Scorpica warriors are women and male children are sold elsewhere (ok but how does gender nuance fit into that?); and there are five queendoms and each does a separate thing. Which... oof. Seriously? It takes two months for a quick-moving party to get from the breadbasket country to the warrior country, but they get all their food from there? So no fresh produce in Scorpica, not ever? (Though they do hunt, at least, so they have fresh meat.) And Scorpica provides soldiers... to fight what? (Turns out: to keep peace, so they're more like police? Which is not what they're trained for? This whole situation seems inherently ridiculous.)

But the big kicker was that the story starts grim - with human sacrifice as a central part of the culture - and just gets grimmer, and I am not in the mood.