i was given an arc-copy of this book in return for a review

overall I would give this book 3.5 stars

positives:
- the premise was incredibly interesting and I really liked it's execution. the concept of matriarchal Queendoms and how no girls being born would influence the politics and social structures in the different cultures was something that is right up my alley
- the worldbuilding also was very interesting. this does not have the hardest magic system out there, but since that isn't what I'm looking for in my fantasy I didn't mind that. overall I enjoyed the politics between and also within the Queendoms and learning more about them, altho I do have one or two things that I wish were done a bit differently. Generally tho I liked that we mostly focused on two of the five Queendoms bc I think learning about all would have been too much for a first book
- the characters: I really enjoyed the characters, I maybe could've done with a few less one off pov side characters but overall I found most of them really compelling. Also after waiting a bit for them I was pleasently surprised that we did get a few pov characters
-the plot: this did something I really enjoy in a lot of first books in fantasy series in that it kind of mostly had it's own contained story while also setting up enough story beats that you're interested to continue on and see where the story leads in the future
things that maybe I'm not the biggest fan of/woud wish they were done slightly different
- LGBT, so the premise of the book leads to the setup of the story being very binary and also cis-gendered. We know there's no girls born anymore,, does that mean people assigned female at birth? we don't know but we have to assume bc we're never told different. There is a very minor twice mentioned character with They/them pronouns but aside from that we also don't know hoy identities outside the binary are handled here. Maybe i'm also a bit harsh bc one of the societies in here is very amazon inspired and last year I read an amazon book with a ton of gender rep, so that's kind of where my standard is now. But generally I hope we might get a bit more in this direction in book 2
-POVs and writing: in terms of writing most of this book is very straightforward just writing as a tool to tell the story type writing rather than focused on language, which I honestly don't have a problem with. The only thing that sometimes caught me a bit off guard was that we sometimes jumped pov mid paragraph, which could be kinda confusing.
-worldbuilding: sometimes i felt like the book either added too much or wasn't long enough,, which is generally a good thing bc I wanted to know more but also sometimes things where added that maybe were't needed right there and so felt out of place or on the other hand we had too much we needed to cover but not enough pages to cover it all. So the thing i have to say about that is that hopefully book 2 is longer i guess

overall I really enjoyed this, maybe not a new fave but definitely a series where I'll be keeping an eye out to see when the next book is coming!

Scorpica tells the interwoven story of five matriarchal kingdoms facing a strange cessation of female births. It is a story, from my point of view, long and tedious, with a few exciting and attractive moments, a long list of characters and situations that hardly add up to the story and an ending that leads noisily to a huge cliffhanger. I think that this type of book should carry a warning that the reader will arrive unsatisfied at an end that will leave him with more questions than answers, although the plot seemed promising...

I'll be honest - this book was a struggle for me which is disappointing as I went in excited to dive into an adult fantasy story that featured matriarchies. I started it and set it down, started it and set it down, started it - and you get the idea. It's not a badly written book by any means, it just could not hold my interest much at all. I still think others should give this a chance and I might try to give it another reason sometime in the future to see if perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood for it originally.

I was pretty much instantly captivated by Scorpica. It’s a powerful fantasy novel, with lyrical prose, vivid imagery, romance, discussion of topics like race, gender, and class, while being situated in a desert environment where power and magic are central themes. Top reads of the year for me %100.
Full review to come on YouTube.

I was very intrigued by this fantasy with a matriarchal society and how different fates are interwoven. I’m often sceptical when it comes to a gender somehow not being born anymore and was curious to see how it would be handled here. There were a lot of things I liked, but probably just as many I didn’t like.

I don’t think I can write this review in a “I liked – I disliked” way because most times, I liked one aspect of a thing but didn’t enjoy another. Let’s start with the society. Or societies, for that matter. The realms of the five queendoms have had peace for hundreds of years. I liked that the women were powerful and shown as the leaders. But in my opinion it was a bit too much. It felt a lot like “What if women acted in a matriarchal society like men do in a patriarchal?”
Basically, the women saw themselves as better and often acted upon it, abusing their power. Men are there for pleasure and to make more girls and maybe to work for women but that’s it. While the societies are different in each queendom, they have that in common. Especially the warriors of Scorpica don’t have any use for men, selling off their boys and killing men wanting to become warriors.

I had some trouble understanding the world and how the society came into being. What exactly happened before the peace started? Through one of the characters, we get a few glimpses here and there, but that’s it. While the book is quite character driven, I would have wished to get more background on the different states and how they came to be. A bit of history would have been nice.

I liked that the story was character driven though. Scorpica is told from several PoVs and each of the characters gets a lot of page time and thus becomes complex and full of facettes which I really enjoyed. That I didn’t really like any of the characters much is a whole other matter. I also found the book lacked some dialogues. There are many monologues and even more scenes where it’s just descriptions of what’s happening and how a characters feels about that. This slowed the pace of the book immensely.
The pace wasn’t fast to begin with. I had trouble staying concentrated until about 40% of the book. Until 30% I still felt like I was reading the prologue, mostly because Part 1 of Scorpica retold what was said in short on the first page.
When the characters’ ways finally intertwine, the story picks up speed. I started liking the book from this point. The characters finally revealed their motives, they finally interacted with the others.
I found in some other reviews the comparison with Game of Thrones and it’s true, it felt the same with the many PoVs that seemingly don’t have much to do with each other and show places from different endings of the world. Contrary to Game of Thrones, though, Scorpica got to the point much faster and thus could keep me interested. Still, it felt like the story wanted to tell too much at once with a lot of info dump and long chapters that made it sometimes exhausting to read.

I don’t know how to summarize my feelings for this book. On one hand, I complained to my boyfriend all the time how slow it was and how I didn’t want to continue reading, on the other hand I really enjoyed reading about all of these characters and what they have to endure, how different their lives are and how similar. I wanted to know how Scorpica progresses, how these characters would develop. If you’re a fan of slow, highly detailed fantasies with well developed characters, this book is definitely for you. If not, well, I’d say don’t bother picking this up because you’d really have to fight to get through the first 100 pages.

“She had all-magic”

📖Scorpica by GR Macallister
🌟🌟🌟💫

The first book in The Five Queendoms series, Scorpica is an epic fantasy set in a world ruled by women. Each of the Queendoms, not only ruled over by queens but where women are the center of civilization, relies on the others to Mai took the delicate balance and prosperity achieved by all. Suddenly the world is thrown into uncertainty when girls stop being born and an ancient power awakens which seeks to ascend over even the queens.

Scorpica is told through multiple interwoven story lines, each complex with interesting characters. At times, action packed and left me holding my breath, at other times it’s a slow world building saga.

Overall, I love the plot and the display of women-power and am definitely going to read the next book. However, it took me a long time to get through this one. I don’t have much attachment to many of the characters, although they are all interesting, and the pacing was jarringly slow between the action moments. I also loved that this is a women-forward fantasy novel and even though this first book left me unsatisfied, I’m looking forward to the next book.

TW: murder, child abuse, child abandonment, human saceifice

Challenges:
Popsugar: set in a non patriarchal society
Kats: multiple POVs
52: less than 2022 goodreads reviews

Solidly established debut. I read the first quarter, and if it continues as it has, it’s a solid three stars and likely four stars for our readers interested in young adult fantasy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery books for the ARC.

I absolutely fell in love with the author's writing style throughout this book. However, I was super confused with the worldbuilding throughout this book. I feel like that is 100% a me thing and not a problem with the book.

A very interesting concept with strong world-building makes this fantasy novel feel like something new and fresh. The story centers on the struggles within five queendoms, where women hold all positions of authority and power, and what happens when baby girls stop being born. I look forward to see where this series goes next.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Scorpica

Author: G.R. Macallister

Book Series: The Five Queendoms Book 1

Rating: 2/5

Recommended For...: can’t recommend, DNFed

Publication Date: February 22, 2022

Genre: Fantasy

Age Relevance: Can’t recommend, DNFed

Publisher: Saga Press

Pages: 448

Synopsis: A centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born in this sweeping epic fantasy that’s perfect for fans of Robin Hobb and Circe.

Five hundred years of peace between queendoms shatters when girls inexplicably stop being born. As the Drought of Girls stretches across a generation, it sets off a cascade of political and personal consequences across all five queendoms of the known world, throwing long-standing alliances into disarray as each queendom begins to turn on each other—and new threats to each nation rise from within.

Uniting the stories of women from across the queendoms, this propulsive, gripping epic fantasy follows a warrior queen who must rise from childbirth bed to fight for her life and her throne, a healer in hiding desperate to protect the secret of her daughter’s explosive power, a queen whose desperation to retain control leads her to risk using the darkest magic, a near-immortal sorcerer demigod powerful enough to remake the world for her own ends—and the generation of lastborn girls, the ones born just before the Drought, who must bear the hopes and traditions of their nations if the queendoms are to survive.

Review: I had to DNF this read at 24% in. I couldn’t make it through the book. I thought it was incredibly slow and confusing. The book wasn’t striking any interest in me and while I do love the premise of a matriarchal society and I felt like the strong narrative will make for a striking book, this is something I can’t devote time to at the moment.

Verdict: It was not for me but maybe for you!

This book crossed my radar and I was ambivalent. On one hand, the description didn’t do a lot for me: it read like your fairly standard fantasy novel with the twist that the society is matriarchal rather than the mostly patriarchal ones we see. On the other hand, I was feeling some epic fantasy, and I wanted to see if Scorpica might pleasantly surprise me. You might say I am an optimist. Well, G.R. Macallister’s story has some intriguing parts to it, and her characters definitely very dynamic. Overall, though, the writing, characterization, and a lot of the worldbuilding choices just didn’t work for me.

Thanks to Saga Press and NetGalley for the eARC.

There are five queendoms: Paxim, Bastion, Sestia, Arca, and the eponymous Scorpica. Each queendom is known for certain traits and jobs; the Scorpicans are warriors. Each queendom is also matriarchal: there are matriclans, each one is ruled by a queen, and men in general have a lower standing in all five societies—for example, in Scorpica, only women can be warriors, and indeed, the nation actually sells their boy children to other kingdoms for a profit. Ok….

I’m rather torn by Macallister’s depiction of a matriarchy here. Look, I get that it is important to show that women in positions of power can be just as awful as men—and that’s what’s on display here. The gender swap in this story is basically, “what if women were in charge and were just as awful and oppressive as men are in our world?” That doesn’t interest me, though—the whole deal with patriarchy is that it is a form of structural oppression that exists beyond any individual person; if you gender swap it into an oppressive matriarchy, you’re not making any specific comment on our society beyond maybe that power corrupts. I am far more interested in depictions of matriarchy that push the boundaries of our understanding of power, etc. And we have those in fantasy already—fantasy has arguably long had traditions of strong female characters, warriors or otherwise, breaking the mould of what it means to be a hero. Scorpica feels very disconnected from those traditions, however, very much like it thinks it is different and edgy and cool when in reality it’s a couple of decades too late.

Similarly, the whole idea of nations that are so incredibly specialized just feels tapped out. We’ve done this before, over and over, and sometimes it leads down interesting avenues but it doesn’t seem to in this case. Even the title of the book is questionable given that a great deal of the action takes place in Paxim and Arca, and four or five of the main POV characters are Arcans. Beyond that, however, lies the main problem with this world: it’s boring.

The cookiecutter nations are actually a symptom of a larger problem, which is a lack of depth to the entire world. This is evident in the way that Macallister has structured the story: every five years, the queens meet to perform ritual child sacrifices to the gods. In between, we get precious few details about what these queens do or indeed what’s going on in any of these nations. When we are with Jehenit and Eminel and the Rovers, we’re told they are travelling bandits in the otherwise generic land of Paxim. Tamura and her warriors train and fight and hunt and fuck, I guess. We’re told Arca is a nation of magic, that pretty much every woman has some kind of categorized gift—but we never really see what this means, never really understand what kind of culture this has created among the Arcans, aside from the small glimpse we get into Mirriam’s bloodthirsty games of palace intrigue.

And then we come to the main plot: the Drought of Girls. The book starts with the last girl being born in a long time. Over a decade passes, and various nations start to get desperate, Scorpica most of all. I will give Macallister this: it’s a great setup to sow conflict among five peaceful countries, to be sure. Deprive them of a valuable resource, set them at each other’s throats. It’s not a bad plan by the Big Bad (and she would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those kids…). Again, though, despite the vast number of perspectives and the epic timescale of the novel, we see precious few examples of how the Drought affects day-to-day life in the queendoms aside from the existential worries it creates for some of the queens.

Plus, of course, as a trans woman, this kind of gender-essentialist plotting and worldbuilding always makes me uncomfortable. To be fair, Macallister does explicitly signal the existence of genderqueer people in this world—there is an agender priest who uses they/them pronouns, and at one point the book acknowledges that some people are “neither man nor woman.” Nevertheless, that is pretty much “the bar is on the floor” kind of territory these days; acknowledgement doesn’t do much to fix the larger issue, which is that for the purposes of the story you’ve created, it’s just more convenient if we largely ignore and erase trans, non-binary, and genderqueer people. I can’t get behind that. If your story relies on us existing only in the margins, you are actively marginalizing us, and you should find a better story.

My final critique is just that the writing itself didn’t work for me. This book is so heavily weighted towards tell over show. The omniscient narrator spends a lot of time explaining this world to us, instead of stepping back and letting the characters do so through dialogue and action. I suspect that’s what makes my observation earlier about the shallowness of the worldbuilding all the more poignant for me: it didn’t have to be that way. The writing style practically begs for a much deeper world to explain to the reader. Instead, it remains all surface-level stuff, and the dialogue between characters is … lacklustre at best.

Now if you have read up until this point, you might think I hated Scorpica. Understandable. Truthfully, though, all these complaints aside … I still kind of liked it? There’s charm to it and a strange kind of appeal to the journeys of some of these characters. Macallister has some kind of interesting story here; it’s just never fully realized. Queen Mirriam of Arca, for example, has a fantastic journey that sees her verging into straight villain territory—yet it is squandered in a confrontation with the main antagonist, who herself feels defeated too easily at the climax of the book.

I guess my verdict, then, is that Scorpica is kind of a hot mess of epic fantasy—but I respect that, because as I have said in the past, I prefer big swings and misses over books that don’t swing at all. I think there are a lot of problematic elements here, from the uncritical replication of oppressive power structures in a gender-swapped world to the erasure of trans people to the casual way children are sacrificed and sexualized (there’s a scene late in the novel where a girl who is maybe sixteen or seventeen years old has sex with a woman in her twenties—the timelines and ages of people are a little hard to follow, but it’s the kind of thing where if you start to think about it too much you’re like … oh). For these reasons, I find it difficult to recommend this book. At the same time, I can see what others might see in it. It was a pleasant diversion for a couple of days—but it didn’t get me excited, and in some ways, it left me cold.

There are plenty of epic fantasies out in the world that readers can select from. Most will give the reader inventive worlds, complex character relationships, and a good versus evil scenario. For a writer to enter into this genre they must be fantastically creative and imaginative. They also must ensure that they have the skills necessary to world build while moving the story along with a purpose. Macallister has marched herself into this genre and made a statement! For starters she creates a tale woven from not one, not two, but 5 matriarchal societies! While there is the expected Amazonian styled warrior clan, the others aren't quite as predictable. Each character introduced provides context for her society. Every relationship is centered around the unprecedented scenario taking place within the realms, baby girls have ceased to be born. The ultimate question is why and can the societies continue to prosper or even exist if baby girls aren't being born. The magic of The Five Queendoms has only just been revealed to us and it's going to be one hell of a ride!

I received a copy of this title via NetGalley.

I just wanted to start this off by saying how much I wanted to love this book. The idea and cover really captivated me but the execution left me less excited. I'm stopping now at the 40% mark. Scorpica by G.R. Macallister creates a fascinating world where women rule, are warriors, magic wielders, politicians, and more.

I found myself intrigued by each of the five queendoms and the curse resulting in the Drought of Girls. Macallister writes great action scenes and I got great Amazonia vibes during some one-on-one fights early on. Overall, I felt each queendom was unique with its own set of magic and rules.

Unfortunately, even though the prose was gorgeous and descriptive, the book really needs some character-driven dialogue. I found myself growing bored in-between moments where there was little action because I just was not connecting to the many women who star in this read. The one character I really was enjoying died early on and then everything else just fell flat after that.

I, personally, felt like the men in the story did not have to be relegated to such subordinated stature in order to show that the women in this novel were just as capable or even better at certain aspects.

I would definitely check out future books by the author as I think her writing holds great promise, unfortunately, this one just did not hold my attention.

I was given a free E-ARC of Scorpica by G.R. Macallister (author), Gallery/Saga Press (Publisher), and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. Scorpica is the first book in the Five Queendoms series.

This review will be spoiler free.

I would characterize Scorpica as the start of the sprawling high fantasy saga.

The story takes place in what I believe to be similar to ancient Greece or Egypt. The setting is five separate empires and each of them is ruled by a queen. Each of these five queendoms is a matriarchal society which I found to be very interesting and exciting to read. One of the queendoms is called Scorpica and is a warrior society.

Besides the matriarchal societies, Ms. Macallister created an interesting situation by something called the "Drought of Girls." In other words, what happens to a matriarchal society if there have not been any daughters being born in any of the five queendoms for significant period of time and how having no daughters impacts each of the five queendoms.

The magic system appears to be innate and the queens and a few other characters have the ability to use magic.

The story features a large cast of characters and several of them have points of view. Each of the characters has her own voice, unique, interesting, compelling. One thing I had an issue with regarding some of the characters is they are featured through part of the story, then they disappear, not to be seen again in the story.
Another issue I have with Scorpica is I could not determine who are the main character or characters.

As I read the story, I could not determine the overall story arc or plot to the story. I thought many of the scenes were interesting but I did not see how they were connected. I also felt I may have missed somethings while reading because I did not understand some of the aspects of the story such as the motivations of primary antagonist and some of the other characters.

I thought Scorpica had an ending that completed the book, but Ms. Macallister including a part of the scene at the end of the book that set up the sequel.

I would recommend Scorpica to readers who would be interested in stories featuring interesting and compelling characters and a focus on matriarchal societies.

I rate Scoprica 3.5 stars.

Even with the minor issues I had with Scorpica, I found several of the characters to be compelling and want to read the sequel to continue to follow their journeys

I would like to thank Ms. Macallister, Gallery/Saga Press, and Net Galley for the free E-ARC.

Scorpica is richly-drawn fantasy centered around what happens to matriarchal societies when no more female children are born. A quintet of women rule their individual kingdoms, the borders and characteristics of which were set by treaty centuries before. There’s enough swashbuckling swordswomanship, political intrigue, magic (good and bad), heroines, villains, and family competitiveness for Scorpica to be enjoyed by feminists, by Game of Thrones enthusiasts, and by DC Comic’s Wonder Woman aficionados.

Author Macallister creates a delightful fantasy realm, a vast geographical world and a time frame that spans centuries is filled with five different cultures derived from the characteristics of each kingdom, each with a special skill, craft, or resource. Scorpica is populated by intelligent Amazonian females who play all these roles: fierce warriors, evil sorcereresses, and treacherous queens plus miscellaneous thieves, goddesses-to-be, magical healers, and ill-fated teenagers.

I am eager to read future books in this series.

Scorpica is a epic fantasy that folllows a matriarchal society. There are five queendoms that were at peace until one day no other girls were born.

I really don't get the comparison to Circe aside from being from the focus on powerful female main characters. Whilst Circe works as a character study that we really get to know her, to empathize with her, and see her reclaim her worth and her fate, in Scorpica we follow already established female characters that don't go through any sort of development. The characters are already well-formed and they don't really deviate from how they were in the beginning; the challenges that they have to face don't really impact them as people, nor change their trajectory. There are, in theory, Big Things happening but I couldn't really see the effects in their lives and in the plot itself. I really didn't felt compelled by any of the characters and there were some events that just came and went and nothing happened because of them; it seemed the author just wanted to show how ruthless some characters were and wanted to throw some plot twists but it just felt out of place. The main "antagonist" was kept away from the main threads until it was convenient and this character just felt like an one dimensional mustache twirling villain that was extremely power hungry, just to be power hungry.

The world is extremely interesting but we don't get to see much of it; we mainly follow 2 out of the 5 queendoms. I liked what we got to see from Arca and Scorpica, even though I found Arca extremely more interesting than Scorpica. I wonder if the author is going to explore the other queendoms in the next novels. And if the threads that were completely abandoned are going to be picked up again.

By the end of it, even though I liked what we got to see from the world, I couldn't care about the characters and I found the plot really lackluster.

Thank you Netgalley, author, and publisher for the ARC.

Thank you, Saga Press and Netgalley, for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review! All thoughts are my own.

I heard this book was comparable to Game of Thrones, so I was excited to dive into it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story!

The world-building and political intrigue was *muah muah* chef's kiss. It wasn't UK/western world-centered, which quite a bit of fantasy novels can base their worlds on - I really liked that aspect, as it made it more unique within the fantasy genre. Additionally, the magic system everything you want in a fantasy novel that centered on queendoms and gods. It is a very diverse, character-driven plot where you are taken through multiple points of view. I enjoyed the various viewpoints, as it aided with the character development and gave intrigue to their journeys. Although not important to some readers, the characters were likable and you truly routed for each of their success. There's sapphic representation that was done really well.

I'd definitely recommend, and I'm very much looking forward to the other books in the series!

Scorpica is everything I want in epic fantasy—world-building that still makes characters the focus of the story. G.R. Macallister creates entrancing characters in places I’ll never forget. She’s billed this as book one of a new series—The Five Queendoms—and I’m already counting the months (or years?) until book number two.

Scorpica is a book about women in power, in a society where that’s 100% normal. In the Five Queendoms, women handle all the vital roles. They are warriors, diplomats, scholars, healers, and magicians. Like reality, some women are more good than evil and vice versa. The women marry men, who then fulfill child-rearing and housekeeping roles. And it’s been this way for five hundred years.

However, the queendoms are in crisis. In order to continue their legacy, they need female babies to be born. Instead, there’s a “Drought of Girls,” meaning only male babies are being born. This threatens everything about the countries’ sense of peace and normalcy. Everyone is on edge, from the queens on down to the lowliest common people.

And if you happen to be a young girl in this time, you feel the pressure intensely. So naturally, Scorpica focuses on these girls and the people who protect and love them. She also delves into the characters of the queens. It’s the perfect balance between the two types of power.

My conclusions
I already know this is a book and series worth recommending over and over. I already enjoy Macallister’s historical fiction work, and she slides effortlessly into writing fantasy.

What I loved most was how Scorpica balanced world-building and character development. The characters are the absolute heart of the story. And the world-building is detailed enough to give your own imagination a starting place. But it never overtakes the plot or the characters.

As for the plot, it centers on several elements from large to small scale. Will the Drought finally lift? And will its destabilizing effects escalate into dramatic conflict? On the small scale, we meet and come to know the youngest girls born just before the Drought. Everyone wants them because they are the future of these nations. In a sense, they hold considerable power, despite being children. It’s an intriguing premise.

Of course, I also loved the matriarchal aspects of this book. Macallister writes as if this kind of society is completely normal and common. Thus, it’s a fresh vision of fantasy, with strong roots in the work of Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler. But I wouldn’t call it a feminist fantasy. To me, a feminist book would be about resisting established patriarchy. It would be about fighting for equality and power. Instead, Scorpica focuses on an established matriarchy threatened more from within than from outside. I love that about it.

This is a wonderful book for both fantasy lovers and those who wouldn’t normally choose a fantasy book. Come for the matriarchy and stay for the amazing characters and story.

Acknowledgments
Many thanks to NetGalley, Gallery Books / Saga Press, and the author for a digital advanced reader’s copy in exchange for this honest review. Scorpica debuts tomorrow, Tuesday, February 22, 2022.

I was pleasantly surprised to find this was an easily binge-able book, even at nearly 500 pages long! It was hard not to be intrigued by a book featuring five queendoms, an entirely matriarchal society, and a sudden drought of female children with no end in sight. What happens when society is suddenly changed in such a drastic way? Scorpica explores the reactions of the five queendoms to this “Drought of Girls” and follows numerous characters over a span of many years and through many lands.

This story is so broad and intricate that it is a little difficult to put into words a good summary beyond that of the synopsis. It perfectly encompasses the scope, so I won’t try to create an inferior replication. Let’s just jump right in and talk about what I liked!

The detail that went into creating the five queendoms and their separate traditions was evident right away, though there are two queendoms in particular that receive the most attention. Scorpica is the warrior queendom, ruled by Queen Khara who has only borne sons up until the story begins. Scorpica sells these unwanted sons to the other queendoms where they might be adopted by a family or selected for various jobs. The daughters on the other hand are trained to be the mightiest warriors and after training they are sent on assignments or stay at home to guard their land and train new generations of warriors. One could imagine how a sudden lack of new girl-warriors might affect such a land. 

Arca is the queendom of mages and everyone, even the men, are born with a certain level and type of innate magic fueled by the sands. The queens have always been selected from the rare girls who are born with all-magic, meaning they are able to use any type of magic from fire to healing to mind-reading. Queen Mirriam already has an adult daughter named Mirrida who possesses all-magic, but she still takes in any girl who is born with the power so that they might be trained. As one may expect, there are benefits to this that aren’t wholly well-intentioned. This is exactly why a healer in one of the Arcan villages hides her daughter Eminel’s gifts when they emerge and she eventually flees the country.

Following the trajectory of these two queendoms, and through them the paths of the other three, was a fascinating tale that was made even more complicated by the early introduction of Sessadon. Sessadon’s role isn’t immediately apparent, but it sure is weird because she’s a desiccated corpse in a cave who uses what little power she has remaining to bring herself back to life. She’s ancient, from before the existence of the queendoms and is out for vengeance against a long dead sister who stole what she considers her birthright.

Scorpica has numerous POVs and as of yet I’ve barely scratched the surface on a few of them, particularly Eminel. While she is central to the storyline, her POV is really a way to bring some humanity and depth to the story. It’s also interesting to see how a young girl, clearly one born just before the drought, is treated in a society that holds them to be tremendously valuable. 

This is a book I did expect to enjoy, but I suppose I was surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did. I do kind of have a thing for intensely political fantasy books where maneuvering and plotting are central. It ended with a bang and will definitely have a sequel, which I hope addresses what happened to Queen Khara’s young daughter who just sort of fell off the radar. I’m looking forward to continuing this series, if only to see how the whole saga plays out but this is a book that stands strongly on its own!

G.R. Macallister’s debut fantasy novel, Scorpica imagines a world where women hold the highest roles in society. Over the five queendoms, the author weaves a tale of family rivalries, betrayal, magic, and secrets. With each chapter told from the perspective of a queen, a warrior, a healer, a magician bent on revenge and a young girl with a secret, they find their worlds turned upside down when the Drought of Girls spans an entire decade. With the possibility of the female race dying out, it’s everyone for themselves, no matter what they must do to assure their own survival.

The descriptions of the world that G.R. Macallister has created and the characters that you will either root for (or hope for their destruction) really makes this book a must-read for anyone who is looking for an escape into another world if only for a little while.