One of the strengths of the book is its exploration of gender roles. Glass does a good job of showing how women were expected to conform to certain standards of behavior and appearance, even in the military. She also shows how women's roles were changing during this time period, and how they were challenging traditional gender norms.

Another strength of the book is its well-developed characters. Cassandra and Rosalind are both complex and believable characters. Cassandra is a strong-willed and determined young woman who is trying to find her place in the world. Rosalind is a more experienced and cynical soldier who has seen the horrors of war firsthand.

However, there are some things that could be improved about the book. For one, the pacing is a bit uneven. There are some slow sections in the first half of the book, and the plot doesn't really get going until about halfway through.

Additionally, the ending felt a bit rushed. There are some loose ends that are never tied up, and the conflict between the two main characters is resolved a bit too easily.

Overall, The Women's War is a good read, but it's not without its flaws. It's a thought-provoking and well-written novel that explores the themes of gender, war, and power. However, the pacing is a bit uneven and the ending feels a bit rushed.

One of my most anticipated books! I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

Wow... what a fantastic book! Hopefully it's not too much of a spoiler to say that the ending was brutal in more ways than one. I was expecting some sort of upheaval, given the circumstances, but this? It was far more devastating than anything I imagined might happen. That event changes everything. Things cannot proceed as I'd thought they would... not after this.

I won't say anything more, other than I'm very much looking forward to reading the second book in the series.

(The above was written on Goodreads immediately after I shelved it as read.)

Highly recommended!

I received an advance reading copy of this book courtesy of Del Ray via Netgalley.

I don't normally read epic fantasy but as I found out, Jenna Glass just happens to also write as Jenna Black. NOW we are back in my domain. As Jenna Black, the author wrote two urban fantasy series about a decade ago that I loved: Nikki Glass, PI turned immortal huntress, and Morgan Kingsley, professional exorcist. Knowing how much I enjoyed those series, I decided to take a chance on The Women's War.

There were certain things I loved about the book. The world-building, the magic, even the characters.
What I didn't like about the book overwhelmed those things. Yes, this is a feminist epic, but my god, the trigger warnings. Suicide smacks you in the face in the first pages. I get the "ultimate sacrifice" but this book is just depressing. Women are repeatedly raped and the reason for the suicides is so women who are raped will no longer have to bear their rapist's children. Women can be sent to the Abbey when they are no longer wanted, to be sex workers for anyone who will have them. There are no nonbinary aspects at all. Everything is feminine or masculine. There's one fat character and guess what, they are evil. Maybe later books in the series are more progressive, but I won't be finding out.

This one just really missed the mark for me.

What happens when women regain bodily autonomy to determine the future of the mankind? The beginning of the end of the patriarchy, perhaps. Unfortunately, the patriarchy never wants to go without a fight.

The Women's War has a super intriguing premise, but ultimately it left me a bit wanting. It's a fantasy story set in a highly misogynistic world, where women are bartering chips valued only for their ability to birth children, that gets turned on its head when a magical implosion makes it such that all women can control their own body's ability to conceive. It's a great concept, but in execution it faltered a bit.

I like the approach of seeing how various women in this society reacted to the change, and how there wasn't a unanimous opinion because it was so hard to imagine a world without the patriarchy. A character in her forties like Alys would have a different perspective from a character who is still a child, like Ellin. I also enjoyed the way the magic system was set up.

Ultimately, though, I felt that this particular book suffered from a limited perspective. This is the story of (presumably white) aristocratic cishet women. For one, I was keenly aware of the lack of queer representation. After all, this is a book published in the 21st century, and it feels hollow to examine feminism without intersectionality (something that Margaret Atwood's work contained over 30 years prior to this book's publication). Since the premise hinges on "what if women could control their uteruses' ability to carry children?" it ends up hyperfixating on the gender binary where all women have uteruses and all people who possess uteruses are women. The book also hinges on the idea that ALL women are sexually attracted to men and must reconcile this with their growing autonomy, which is just wild to me when gay marriage is already legal in America. There's also no discussion of how women of color are doubly beaten down by the patriarchy thanks to the double-whammy of racism and sexism together. I'm not saying that Glass needed to deep-dive into the heart of the struggles of both queer people and/or people of color, but weaving those into the book would've enriched the themes and offered a more nuanced look.

There's also what feels like a gratuitous amount of sexual violence. I was able to get through it, but ultimately it may be too much for some readers and I wasn't sure that all of it was necessary. Half of the graphic assault could have been cut and I'd still get the gist of it.

Still, the plot was interesting enough and I would hope that later books expand on the themes of intersectionality that I mentioned above. There are several plot threads all weaving throughout the book that I'm interested in following, though the book felt a bit bloated.

For anyone looking for a feminist read, I do recommend this, but for me it didn't go far enough in its explorations of its themes to truly wow me.

I received this E-Arc from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book took me a while to get into. For some reason, I couldn't keep characters straight in my mind. Therefore, it took me a while to get through. However, after I finally got everything straight and followed the plot, I loved it!

This books follows several characters in different parts of the world, and in different levels of society. In this world, women are treated poorly and are only really valued for the ability to bear children. A complex spell is woven over many generations and when it is finally cast, women have the ability to choose to become pregnant or not.

I enjoyed all of the different perspectives we followed in all of the different areas of the world. And the ending left me absolutely speechless! I can't wait to continue on with this series!

I recommend this book to those who like fantasy that takes on sexism at it's core; The Handmaid's Tale, Vox, and The Power. And also to people who enjoy multi perspective political fantasy.

#The Women's War by author # Jenna Glass is her first in a new epic fantasy series. A wonderful entertaining read with women being the center of attention. And what I just really like is when l was finished I was able to start the second book. # Queen of The Unwanted is next and it's just as great as the first. After all who can turn down a little bit of magic..... 💜🐾🐾

Thank you for the advance copy,
#Netgalley, # Jenna Glass, and # Penguin Random House

Reminiscent of both C.L. Polk’s The Midnight Bargain and Louise Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan, this world’s women, although as capable as men of using magic, are denied its practice. Their value lies in the marriage alliances they can bring and the magic their sons may inherit. In the dominant Western European-style realm, even women from rich and aristocratic families are treated as chattel, discarded at whim into The House of the Unwanted and a life of prostitution and economic slavery. The story weaves together the lives of a number of women caught in different ways in this pernicious system: the widowed daughter of a king, despised by her half-brother and desperate to protect her children; one of the Unwanted, thrust from sex slavery into leadership, for which she feels singularly unprepared; the despised wife of the heir to the throne who sees her only worth in her unborn child; the princess royal of a small kingdom, destined to save her people by sacrificing love for marriage.

The world changes dramatically when several kinswomen, who have been practicing and refining their magic secretly, enact a curse over all the realms, and then perish. With their deaths, no one can reverse what they have done. The curse ensures that no woman shall be pregnant unwillingly. Across the realms, women who are not truly willing to bear children either miscarry or fail to conceive.
Political chaos threatens. Scapegoated and then exiled, the surviving Unwanted journey to a barren land, that guarantees extreme hardship and poverty. What they discover there will change their world even more than the curse.

The women and their plight, their courage, and most of all, the way they learn to work together swept me up from the first chapter.

I really liked this book and want to continue reading it. I love that it's a feminist story, and that the main characters are women. I love the power struggles between the women as they come into their own, and the men who are used to running the world with little thought to the women. In that respect, much about this book will feel uncomfortably familiar. I like that the author does not shy away from making some tough choices. I did have some quibbles. I feel that Delnamal is so quintessentially bad that he's on the verge of becoming a caricature. How can he possibly be loved by the woman who appears to love him? (Also, such a point was made of him being faithful to his wife, and then when he finally has a chance, he is immediately unfaithful to her, which didn't seem in character.) And the way he's able to find out about and somehow thwart two spells that are not previously known to his world, esp the second one, felt forced and not believable to me. It felt like that needed to happen instead of him dying in this book. I'm sure the author had her reasons, but I'd rather have seen him taken off guard. I don't actually feel like he's as smart as people keep saying he is. He's just some dumb lucky (presumably) white man. I feel he's the weakest point in the book. Still, I want to continue reading this series, so in that regard, this book did what it needed to.

Why? Why? Why? I don't understand the purpose of the rape scene? I hate that the message was "the trauma of rape doesn't matter because the trauma of being a woman is already so bad.' I can not believe she wrote a book with zero queer characters in a very queer setting - really? None of the abbey full of noblewomen are lesbians? Come on.

I received this book for free in exchange for a honest review from NetGalley.

This book has a great premise. What would happen if back in the day, women had the power to control their fertility? I was ecstatic to start this book. The cover was amazing, the premise was intriguing, and best of all there was magic afoot.

Unfortunately, this book did not meet my expectations. The premise is still present and presents multiple complications. This book has plenty of fantasy elements to it and again, it was well built and thought out. The characters, especially Alysoon, is well developed.

The problem I have is that there are way too many main characters. We get multiple perspectives which isn’t my thing, but I am willing to give it a shot. However, in this case, we get everyone and their parents perspective. This leads to slowing the plot down and difficulty getting attached to any character. I wish the author would have just stuck to three main characters, especially since she keeps going back to them and only jumps into a new perspective when it deals with the abbey or political intrigue which is interesting. I just wish it was less prevalent in the book.

Another issue I had with the book is the pages upon pages of information dumping and inner dialogue. It was too much. I understand that we should get the characters thoughts once and a while. I also understand that world building and character building are important, but if I am midway through the book and there are still pages upon pages upon pages of information about the characters life, then there has to be a stopping point. It it too much. And it slows down the plot. Between the multiple perspectives and the characters inner thoughts and information dumping, the plot suffers overall.

Speaking of plot, that problem starts in the beginning of the book. All of the aforementioned problems slow the premise to coming to past. I was literally waiting and waiting and waiting for the inciting incident which took way too long. I don’t understand why the author didn’t just start with the premise right out of the gate. You could even do like, hey this wasn’t like before where our magic was like this. Now our magic is like this. That could have solved the info dumping right there. But alas, this is simply not the case.

Overall, the author had all the right ingredients to make a well thought out book. Great premise. Well developed characters and world building. In the end, it was the multiple perspectives and the information dumping that stopped this book for me. In the end, I cannot in good faith recommend this book unless these issues do not bother you. I wish the best of luck to the author in their future endeavors.

I wanted so hard to love this book. And I wanted to much to finish it, but I did not. There are a lot of things to like about it, there are some very interesting concepts in it, they just seem to be handled clumsily, and take forever to get from here to there. At first I though it might be more of a YA book until reaching the almost sex scenes and rape scenes, and did I mention societally endorsed forced prostitution? At least it seemed to me that emotionally it was written on a YA level. Characters were written as pretty black or white., not much nuance.

I read it at a snail's pace thinking that eventually things would turn around and the pace would pick up, but it did not. So eventually I had to set it aside about two thirds of the way through, which is pretty far to go and then not finish it. At least for me.

I wish the author well, I think there is a lot to say there, but the writing needs to be tightened up.

This is a heavy book with a theme of the oppression of women and includes descriptions of violence and abuse of women including violet r*pe. There is also violent death and just the casual oppression of women who are valued only for being able to produce heirs.

The book begins with a woman casting a spell so that women can only get pregnant if they want to. Which causes wide spread chaos in a world where women are mainly seen as a way to have an heir. The spell also causes massive earthquakes which kill many people creating even more chaos and killing most of the ruling family of Rhozinolm leaving only Ellin, a woman, to take the throne. This is a feminist book at it's core with the message of equality and that those changes must be fought for. The level of oppression showcased in this book makes just reading it made me feel trapped and helpless as many of the women in the story are.

I think this is a good book and I will be reading the sequels as I have grown attached to the characters. But anyone thinking about reading this book needs to know it is not an easy read and may be book some people need to avoid all together.

Review: 5 Stars

I always love a great epic fantasy novel and while The Women’s War looked like it might be intriguing I really didn’t expect much when I picked it up. I am so glad that I gave this one a shot because it really was just incredible. The Women’s War had me captivated from the very beginning and even though it was over 500 pages I didn’t want it to end! I am so invested in this world and all of these characters and I can’t believe that I just happened to stumble upon this book.

The world built in The Women’s War is so cool. The magic system is really unique and spells and potions are almost like chemistry experiments. Potions are made out of elements that can only be seen when someone’s mindseye is open. It feels a lot like science and requires some experimenting. The world is very complex and the story spans several different kingdoms all with their own complex politics. This book is full of political intrigue and there are several plot lines and points of view. The world is built slowly throughout the course of the novel so that the reader is never overwhelmed with information. It all comes together to make a world that feels incredibly real and one that I found myself wholly absorbed in.

The story is told in multiple places from multiple points of view and there are several plot lines. In a book of this scale you might think that you would lose track of who is who, but all of the characters are developed well and fully fleshed out. I grew really attached to all of the characters that it’s hard to choose a favorite. I loved watching Ellin grow throughout the novel the most though. Each one of the women were inspiring and courageous in their fights for justice and freedom in a world where women are second class citizens.

The plot was incredibly well crafted and was quite the emotional roller-coaster. I always worry when picking up a political fantasy that I might get bored, but all of the issues were so intriguing. It’s like reading the political issues that a women’s rights crusade causes and it was incredibly compelling to read. In books with multiple plot lines I typically enjoy one plot line more than the others, but that wasn’t the case with The Women’s War. Each plot line was so intriguing that I was never bored and they all came together for a phenomenal ending.

I have been addicted to this story and I’m so glad that the sequel is already published so that I can pick it up right away. I’m so happy that I stumbled upon this epic fantasy novel about a world where women fight against injustice and for freedom. If you’re looking for an epic fantasy novel that will completely absorb you and has a really unique magic system then I highly recommend you check out The Women’s War.

In this world, you can open your mind's eye and see magical particles. Some are 'masculine', some 'feminine', and some 'neutral'. Only men can learn magic and work it. No polite woman would open her mind's eye in public (or, anywhere, depending on the country). ...However, women who are already fallen, who are part of the Abbey—disgraced, disowned, divorced, whatever—can learn some 'soft' women's magic without coming under scrutiny. But no one would call them privileged in any way. Women are, as often throughout history and the world, fairly powerless.

Until three women sacrifice their lives to cast a spell that can not be undone, one that gives women... additional powers, particularly over men who have wronged them. And it acts as an impetus for change.

Alys is the daughter of a king who divorced her mother and disowned the children in order to make a political marriage. The son of that marriage is now in line for the throne, and he doesn't need one more reason to hate his half-siblings. ...And it's Alys' mother who cast that particular spell. Alys is in a precarious position now, as a widow (with no husband to protect her) and mother of two children of her own. She seeks to learn magic and make a stand, but it might cost her more than she would have chosen to pay.

What stood out to me in this book is the magic, which I really enjoyed. It's not explained much, which is probably a good thing, but it is visual and has room for fun things.

I liked the main characters well enough but found most others shallow. And some of their decisions just happened too fast and I wasn't sure why... but oh well. The book isn't long enough to dive into a terrible amount of detail.

I normally avoid any book that says 'feminist' because I find them over-the-top or including a bunch of extra issues and people types and whatnot just for the heck of it. I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It championed the empowerment of women in different situations, without trying to cover EVERYTHING. (I've seen several reviewers angry there weren't any gay women. There are like a handful of characters here, you aren't going to get everything in the world with them, and I really don't think their sexuality was an important part of the story.)

Be warned there is some violence and rape but it doesn't go into too much detail thank goodness. There's a rather important battle which I was actually curious to see take place, and (sadly, for me) it's basically all glossed over.

I hadn't realized it was the first book in the series so I was surprised by the ending. It came quickly—and abruptly.
I would like to read book 2, and I hope it goes into the magic more, and that the characters actually get somewhere with their new crusades.

An interesting start to this adult high fantasy series. I will admit that the world-building kind of hit me like a ton of bricks and I do wish it was less info dumpy. But overall, i liked it.

This was a good, solid read. I found the magic system fascinating. The use of male, female, and neuter elements was an intriguing way to mirror the deeply misogynistic society of the novel. Alys is a sympathetic main character, and it was refreshing to have a female fantasy protagonist in middle age. I also enjoyed seeing the development of her daughter, Janelle, and I was rooting for both of them by the end of the novel. I had two main concerns with the novel, and these were the reasons I gave it 4 stars. First, there were too many POV shifts. I often found it jarring to be in another character's head, especially when that character was a minor character or someone we never see again. Second, I did not appreciate that the book ended on a cliffhanger. This is personal taste, and some readers won't mind that. But I like trilogies that at least attempt to present the novels as standalone works. Still, neither of these concerns prevented me from enjoying the novel and the world that Ms. Glass created.

I really enjoyed this book.
This patriarchal world in which men control magic, at least in theory, experiences an upset when a spell is cast which makes women fully able to choose whether they want to conceive a child or not, and rape has potentially fatal consequences... for men.
The world shows us a thought experiment about what would really happen if women were in charge of their own fertility, and what a threat that could be to men. As there are different political realms in the story, and women in different political and social stations, we see the perspective of a falling patriarchy from many different angles.

The only problem? It ends on a serious emotional cliffhanger- so be prepared to pick up book 2!

An interesting feminist perspective given voice in this fantasy story. I wasn't sure what to expect, and was surprised that I not only liked the book, but really enjoyed parts, but felt it did drag a bit at times, and parts didn't hold my attention as well. Still, a powerful story, and great start to getting more perspective and narratives out there!

I really liked this book! At some points with some of the characters, there was a very Tudor-ish feel to them. The women suddenly have the power of choice after three women cast an unbreakable spell, and suddenly the women who have been treated as property for endless generations suddenly have all the power. This is not a "I know I have power now and will become super strong and take all of the people who have oppressed me down!" story. Instead, it is about women starting to gradually become aware of the fact that they can change how they are treated and desire to make changes around them and for other women in the world. I will keep this review short and sweet because, trust me, you just have to try it. I would have rated this book four stars if not for the "what in the Hades just happened and how is that okay?" kind of ending. It ends on a small cliffhanger and leaves room for the sequel. But, dang! Now I have to wait forever and a day to see some revenge! It is slow growth for the women, and we get the advantage of being in different character's heads. The women grow stronger, even the weakest among them, and learn how to find their own identities and strengths. Warning: you will not like being in the man's head. That is a horrible point of view, albeit necessary, and I hope he drops like a bag of rocks in the next book.