Was very attracted to the book from the description and the story line. Unfortunately it was not well executed. It might be that it was not the final edited version. The narrative went back an forth in time with no indication of the shift in time. That made it very confusing to follow. I found myself having to pause reading to get clear that the time had shifted. The book seemed to start in the middle with many things not explained or laid out. The glossary at the end helped once I found it, but much of that should have been part of the first section of the book to set the stage and make the story much easier to follow. A good edit and addition of more explanation at the beginning would make the book much better and earn it more stars and a better review.

S.A. Jones has crafted an engrossing page turner of a read in The Fortress. Well worth the time for the read!

What does consent really mean? There is an exploration of what it means when all your power is stripped away from you, and you have de facto agreed to accept behaviors and conditions in this book. This is about how a man changes through a year of hard labor and sexual encounters he has no power to resist. However, the change isn't viscerally felt. What is felt is the unfairness/lopsidedness of a power structure that cannot be denied. By changing the patriarchy to a matriarchy, the power structure does not get any better. I can't tell you if a look at this is the intention of the author, only what I took away from it. It's a worthwhile read, and well-written. There are some erotic scenes but they are not a main plot point.

Thank you to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of The Fortress.

I was excited when my request was approved because the premise sounded so intriguing, even though I'm not an avid reader of sci-fi, the blurb caught my eye.

Jonathon Bridge is an adulterer. And, in order to make amends with his wife, he has agreed to a life of servitude at The Fortress, where a matriarchal society called The Vaik rule.

For 365 days, he will be their subject, including his body.

It will be a memorable and remarkable year as Jonathon embarks on a journey of self-discovery, meeting new friends and encountering people he never would have met, otherwise; but just as importantly, he will understand what brought him to The Fortress and come face to face with himself and ask that question some of us do at one point in our lives: are we a good person?

The author writes well, and she paints a futuristic, dystopian world where women rule, but just a small part in which peace, commerce and a shaky alliance has been built between their peoples and the outside world.

The world building is believable, fantastic and fascinating - I wish there was more of The Vaik, more exposition, just...more about them.

The Fortress is one of those books where The Vaik are more interesting than the rest of the population, including Jonathon.

I detested Jonathon, and despite what he learned about himself, his actions and what led to his incarceration at The Fortress, I still couldn't shake off the fact that he was complicit in so many heinous acts/indiscretions. At times, i found it hard to believe his wife would allow him back into her life, but they have a child.

Life is hard and not easy for most of the population, implied by the author when she refers to people who make it out of difficult neighborhoods and into the big city where Jonathon works, not unlike our current political and socio-economical climate now.

The Fortress isn't for everyone and some scenes may make readers turn their heads; there are plenty of triggers; rape, pedophilia, sexual and physical violence, but The Fortress is well worth reading.

The Fortress is a thought provoking read, not what you would expect from a science fiction novel.

It encapsulates the various social issues inherent in our world today; patriarchy, sexual and physical violence, enslavement of mind and body, subjugation, freedom and free will, in a new way that not only makes you think after you finish reading it, but long after you have put the book down.

I wanted to read this book. The concept sounded so interesting. Unfortunately I read the content warning which prompted me to read other reviews. Usually I avoid reviews so as not to become prejudiced or spoil the story. I'm glad I did this time. I forced myself to randomly read a few pages of each chapter but could not get through it. I'm sure many will love it. If you hate men enough to completely demonize them and excuse all kinds of abuse under the name of retraining or atonement its for you. Full disclosure, I did not read the book. Perhaps 50 pages scattered throughout was enough to turn me off completely. I agree to give an honest review when I get ARC's so I am sorry to admit I can't say one good thing about what little I read. Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the advanced reading copy.

Eh. It started off fairly well, but by the end I definitely don't much care for it. Rape is rape, even if the guy getting it is a jerk, and even if he 'agreed' to do whatever they wanted at the beginning. A year of being sexually abused is not going to make anyone a better person. The writing itself isn't bad, but the plotline and general world building leave something to be desired.

“Truth. I value truth. Truth runs deeper than honesty.”

This was just weird and not in a good way. I can’t even say that I was fully invested in the story. It started off interesting but I lost interest about a quarter of the way in. I almost gave up a few times and I probably should have.

I did kind of enjoy men getting what they deserve but it just wasn’t that intriguing. Jonathon was a slimy a**hole and I felt no empathy for him. He tried to make himself sound like a good guy but he was just as guilty as the others.

This was not an impressive read and I can’t say that I’m glad that I read it. I felt like my time was wasted.
And there were too many upsetting things to handle all at once. I love the weird and the bizarre but not this one sadly.

The fortress. Is definitely an adult book. Some material may be offensive to some. When I began reading I believed it was going to be a male counterpart to handmaiden tale. But this is a fantasy of how a man is supposed to learn to be a caring thoughtful man to women. But really it is a society of domination by women. Women become the aggressor of sexuality. It was an uncomfortable book for me

There are threads of a good idea in this book, but there are so many problems with it and so many poor plot choices that it's quickly overwhelmed by poor execution.

I'm not going to provide a summary. Instead, here are bullet points of how this book fails:

- A LOT of telling-instead-of-showing. This gets into deeper problems, like the fact that the world-building is thin to the point of anemia. We get background information through long text blocks about the Vaik and their traditions, but there's very little about their interactions with the world at large until the very end of the story. That should have been interwoven from the beginning, because the book is presented as "this is exactly our world and our culture, except that there's a nation-state made up of magical Amazonians who once had a bad time with men and now they have a side business operating as a sex-heavy labor/summer camp for men who've done bad things or who can't process their feelings good". We get no sense that the real world has been impacted or changed trajectory by the presence of The Fortress beyond the protagonist's memories of his own summer camp days spent with other teenage boys telling jokes and spooky stories about having sex with scary Amazon ladies and their goddess. No. No, no, no. There would have been a much bigger impact on the outside world, no matter how much the author tries to make that not the case. The author makes sure to include a line about how men who leave The Fortress don't write about their experiences and therefore no one knows what it's like, but it's a huge ask of the audience to believe that patriarchal culture would flourish and develop in exactly the same way with this addition to their world—it rapidly becomes obvious that the author just needed the protagonist to be an asshole so he could be punished and broken down and emerge as a "new man".
- In fact, this whole book is nothing but erotic punishment porn for the #metoo era, and I use the word porn in both emotionally and sexually gratifying ways for the audience. It's really fucking weird. The author definitely set out to write this with a laundry list of casual sexual abuses and objectifying conversations that women have to tolerate in our world, but put that power and words into the hands and mouths of the Vaik for the protagonist to suffer through—while holding up the Vaik as a wise female utopia where women have complete control over their desire, pleasure, and sexual interactions. He's put in clothing that constantly shifts and doesn't fully cover his genitals, a direct analog to women feeling like their cleavage is on display, I guess? He talks about his cock and balls constantly, in the way that some male authors write a female character as being hyper-aware of her breasts bouncing as she walks down a set of stairs. He has to have sex with Vaik women at their direction, and is made to perform in what amount to live sex shows while they masturbate. He's even anally raped by one of the other men at the direction of one of the Vaik, which the author intended to be a parallel to men getting off on lesbian acts, but which adds nothing to his character development. It's just another plot point on the list of revenges that's supposed to wake him up to what women suffer, and that's not realistic. That's not how trauma works. So is it really a good idea to ask the audience to luxuriate in the way he's being treated? I mean, we are watching these magical warrior women treat him as men treat women in the real world. Are we supposed to gloss over that? Even though the narrative becomes straight up erotica during these moments? I guess the author was aiming to show how women are really treated and how men often don't have any idea how their actions are privileged and protected by our social structure, but... the response to that is to exact more of this kind of trauma, while the audience is being very overtly titillated?
- This whole thing reeks with cognitive dissonance. The protagonist is an asshole, and we're supposed to go along with this idea that he deserves his punishment of being treated like a woman. But it also has this strange, thin veneer: the protagonist has a goal on page one to emerge from this year-long captivity as a better father and a better man, which feels unearned and detached from his characterization. Where does this driving urge come from? There's a bizarre element that crops up where, a few months into his sentence, the protagonist suddenly starts believing that he can feel his wife's labor pains and psychically knows that she's about to give birth. He's suddenly wildly attached to this child and becomes obsessed with the idea of getting out and raising this baby. There's so little there—it just keeps getting stated over and over, but beyond the understandable biological urge to protect one's offspring, it just... doesn't feel like something he'd do, especially since his own parents are so cold and distant to him. And sure, the author tries to go with the protagonist trying not to be his own parents, but again—it doesn't feel so much like complex characterization as it does a plot contrivance to makes us feel sympathy toward him. I can see where the author meant for there to be layers to Jonathon, but they don't mesh well. We're clearly meant to rejoice in and feel empowered by him being stripped of power, being used as a sex object, and chafing against a matriarchal structure, but we're also supposed to root for him to finally break free of his psychological issues when those issues aren't effectively or thoroughly supported. He's a privileged jackass with issues around parental coldness, and has repeatedly cheated on his wife and even raped a coworker, but has all these epiphanies around those problems very early on, and they aren't really brought out or even resolved by the challenges he undergoes with the Vaik. We're just *told* that he sits around thinking about them and having this realizations, yet they feel oddly disconnected to what happens to him inside The Fortress.
- None of the plot points feel earned. In fact, a LOT of things feel unearned or unsupported. There's thing about the Vaik women orchestrating every interaction and how the protagonist is just a chess piece on a board, and the author is just inadvertently highlighting the fact that everything is plot-driven rather than character-driven in the story itself. The protagonist breaks an explicit rule multiple times and isn't punished. The protagonist suddenly declares that he loves Vaik society and culture in a moment where that's unwarranted and not framed like he's trying to manipulate the person he's talking to. He makes these resolutions to be totally stubborn and immovable to the Vaik women, to behave precisely within the narrow limits they've allowed him, to not respond when they punish him, but then the author gives us whiplash by having him suddenly be brought out of these sullen states because he's invested in the hard labor, or wants to help the Vaik. Or he's just bored, I guess. It reads almost like fan fiction: the protagonist is depressed and we're supposed to feel bad, but oh, we need something to actually happen now, so he's suddenly out of it and has a purpose and feels better.
- Here's the biggest one: the protagonist is forced to have ritual deflowering sex with an underage girl who is described as a child. He has a psychological issue around his own newborn child needing protection in the world running throughout the story, and sees this young girl as a stand-in for what his own daughter will be like. And then she chooses him for her first sexual encounter, stages a big production with the other Vaik, and he runs away, horrified and disgusted. These emotions are compounded by the fact that men who've committed horrible rapes and murders are frequently sent to The Fortress to live out sentences there, and there's an antagonist who raped three underaged girls living at The Fortress as well. So with all of these elements swirling together, what copy editor thought it would be acceptable to have the Vaik stage a second seduction after the big weather-event-save-the-girl climax is over? I do not understand this decision within the overall context of what the book is trying to say. That men shouldn't do the whole "greet my daughter's first date with a shotgun on the front porch and tell him that anything he does to my daughter, I'll do to him" routine? That girls should have full control over their sexual experiences? Is having a 42 year old man have sex with a child the best way for him to have an epiphany that fatherhood means relinquishing some control over how that child will become a free individual? The scene isn't shown, which is very telling—it's statutory rape and isn't okay. And yet: the protagonist is supposed to have developed from this encounter.
- I thought that the protagonist's wife was a runaway Vaik, on some kind of Rumspringa from The Fortress. She's described as different from other women, more confident in herself, she laughs louder, has a psychic pull over him, whatever. I thought the protagonist's mother was a Vaik descendant because there's a statue of a general mentioned as looking like her. If either of these things were true, I missed them because I hated this book. If either of these things are not true, I have no idea why these things were even brought up.
- I thought the protagonist would be like the fellow male inmate who is made to anally rape him, and choose to stay at The Fortress because he'd found himself and was truly free, or something. This did not happen.
- I thought the protagonist would be so traumatized by the experience that he'd just shut down emotionally and reject both the Vaik and the real world and just wander off into the woods to be alone. I think that would have been a better ending than whatever we got.
- It bothered me that living with the Vaik is treated as a valid in-universe means of bettering oneself when it's literally just... hard labor and sex. There are some conversations between the protagonist and the Vaik women about the nature of punishment, but they're couched in over-the-top violence, which doesn't do much to support the author's apparent thesis of toxic masculinity being a problem? You'd think that proving a point about justice to a man that you want to be more in touch with his feelings wouldn't involve smashing another man's face in, but there you are, I guess. There is no psychological support or encouragement for the protagonist to process or be more in touch with himself—it's as if the author is asserting that men can only truly become aware of the imbalance of power in which we live when they go back to working the fields and fucking whenever, however, and whomever they're told to fuck.
- It was weird that the guy who raped three women who killed themselves was branded (literally) as an irredeemable prisoner, and the other men avoided him, but that the protagonist raped a woman who killed herself and was treated as a totally normal prisoner. Maybe this was intended to show differences in the justice system, or something.
- I found it hilarious that in the first chapter, the Vaik woman that the protagonist is assigned to says that the relationship between Vaik and the supplicant men "isn't one of dominance and submission in the BDSM way," which was definitely the author feeling extremely awkward and a bit bashful about their sexual fantasies of a magic society of women acting out revenge schemes on powerful CEO men who willingly agree to submit to them to clear their consciences about being rude and naughty, and slipping in a disclaimer as though this is some kind of big political statement and not just a masturbatory daydream.
- Also hilarious are the numerous ways the author tries to prevent the audience from making guesses about what's going to happen. The protagonist thinks he's been drugged and this whole thing is just a psychological torture routine, etc. It just feels like our expectations are being managed and reduced for us.
- Oh, the Vaik women have a very elevated way of speaking, like they're ancient elves in Lord of the Rings or whatever, and then suddenly they'll bust out with modern turns of phrase.
- The ending was so boring. Like... it's a long description of him going through the gates of The Fortress and putting his regular clothes back on and being excited to see his wife again, and hold his baby for the first time. If the last line had been about him not being sure that he's changed, or not knowing if any of it was worth it, or some residual trauma, that *might* have been worth something.
- Dear Christ I've wasted so much time on this book and it doesn't deserve any of it

The Fortress

S.A.Jones

SCF if

rating: 2

Jonathon Bridge has a corner office in a top-tier law firm, tailored suits and an impeccable pedigree. He has a fascinating wife, Adalia, a child on the way, and a string of pretty young interns as lovers on the side. He’s a man who’s going places. His world is our world: the same chaos and sprawl, haves and have-nots, men and women, skyscrapers and billboards. But it also exists alongside a vast, self-sustaining city-state called The Fortress where the indigenous inhabitants–the Vaik, a society run and populated exclusively by women–live in isolation.


When Adalia discovers his indiscretions and the ugly sexual violence pervading his firm, she agrees to continue their fractured marriage only on the condition that Jonathan voluntarily offers himself to The Fortress as a supplicant and stay there for a year. Jonathon’s arrival at The Fortress begins with a recitation of the conditions of his stay: He is forbidden to ask questions, to raise his hand in anger, and to refuse sex.


Jonathon is utterly unprepared for what will happen to him over the course of the year–not only to his body, but to his mind and his heart. This absorbing, confronting and moving novel asks questions about consent, power, love and fulfilment. It asks what it takes for a man to change, and whether change is possible without a radical reversal of the conditions that seem normal.

My thoughts

Would I recommend it? No.

Would I read anything else by this author? No

This one was an interesting read but not interested enough to give it a much bigger than I give it which is a 2star rating.Not any of the characters where likeable or characters that I wanted to read more about . With that said I want to thank NetGalley for letting me read it and review .

I didn't connect with this. The author shows talent and writes well. I guess it was too dark for me. I'm not a fan of Handmaid, so maybe that's a hint for others. Atwood fans will probably dig this.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

This was different and interesting! I really liked the concept and characters. I did have a hard time getting into the story, it took awhile to get an idea of what was going on and it is told in a very monotone way that made it easy to set aside. (also the e-arc I had would often cut off in the middle of the paragraph).

I would definitely read more by this author though.

I wanted to like this. I did. But what started as a really interesting plot lost me after a while. Jonathan is a well written character, but going through the Fortress I thought he would be more shattered, I suppose. It felt like he was a little too resilient, too untouched.

The writing is solid, the characters are well done, the sex scenes, while erotic, were not gratuitous, I felt. Overall a solid book. Maybe having gone through my own experiences, I am coloring it with my own brush.

Interestingly enough, upon doing a little advance research on this novel, I found all sorts of trigger warnings and controversy. After reading it, while I realize the subject matter is startling regarding living conditions for anyone, I didn't find it all that shocking. Not as I read it anyway, but like so much of the story, I needed time to consider everything beyond face value.

The premise, a man who's always sort of had it all come easily to him, takes it all for granted.. getting caught by the person who allegedly means everything to him. At the thought of losing her and all that goes with her, he willingly subjects himself to a place where he gives up all his rights.. learning how the other half lives.. so to speak, in exchange for a second chance when he returns home.

I think I expected myself to be more moved by this story than I am. I mean.. it's dystopian theme is intriguing, the author is a very solid storyteller with a great command of language. She's descriptive and her scenes are of the visceral variety.. yet somehow.. they still failed to evoke emotion from me.

I'll tell you something else. I believe she deserves praise for that.

Some of the moments in the book are very dark. The society.. certainly.. is a disturbing picture, both in his regular life.. which is a stark reminder of the way we turn our heads and look away in reality.. and in his year under subjugation. Yet, S.A. Jones has written them with such a casual approach.. with the perspective that in that world everything is fine. It's as expected.. and no one blinks an eye. Unless of course, you're the supplicant.

That is what really makes what happens at The Fortress so uncomfortable. Not the specific things our main character experiences. No. It's the social acceptance.

There's some fantastic conflict, both inner (over his own feelings) and between himself and those around him. One individual in particular, but even between himself and those he grows closer with. Nothing changes their rules and their expectations.. and that's a hard lesson at times.

It is an excellent read. The perspectives so skewed at times, it's difficult to put down, yet you still find yourself pausing to just.. process it.

This book shows a religious and patriarchal world. It's kind of like a future world setting or a Dystopie. The place is run by women known as Vaik. Men have no power. They bend to the will of others. The world is still looking usual. But if a man is guilty for rape, murder or something they are assigned to The Fortress. And they where no longer allowed to hurt anyone. And if they try to do it again, they will be executed. Other ones can even choose to enter there voluntarily. Jonathan does it to save him from marriage. After he got caught cheating, But his world is change, and the men learn to be the ones that feel fear. I recommended this book. Great setting, interesting plot and good characters.