A Brother's Price

A Brother's Price (2005) is a standalone SF Alternate History novel. It is set in a timeline very different from our history. The monarchy is matriarchal due the much greater number of women than men. Men take care of the house and raise the babies.The oldest sister in each generation of a family becomes the Eldest. She and her Sisters marry one or more husbands if they have the money to buy them. The monarchy is ruled by the Queen Mother Elder of the Royal Family and her generation of Mothers.In this novel, Rennsellaer is the current Eldest of the Queens' daughters. She hasn't always been the eldest sister in the family.Halley, Odelia, Lylia, Trini are the other Elder Sisters of Queens. There had been more, but they were killed earlier.Jerin Whistler is the oldest boy in his household. He has three brothers. He works hard and gets along with his sisters, but Corelle gives him a hard time.Corelle Whistler is the leader of the middle sisters. She often criticizes Jerin.Summer, Keria and Eva Whistle are also middle sisters in the family. They always follow Corelle's lead, but Summer does not do so blindly.Heria is the oldest of the younger sisters. The others range in age from toddlers to late childhood.In this story, the Elder Mother, her sisters and the older of the current generation are away. Corelle and the other middle sisters are left behind to protect the youngest sisters and the boys. Corelle is viewing a magazine of men's fashion and telling Jerin what he should wear.Jerin is only two months away from being old enough to marry. He is afraid of being married to a local family of ugly sisters. Corelle is fascinated by the boy in that family.Jerin stops Corelle by pointing out that she shouldn't have the magazine at all. Corelle goes over to visit the boy and takes Summer, Keria and Eva with her. No one is left to protect the boys and the little ones.Heria hears someone in the woods, so she take a rifle and goes for a look. She sees riders attacking a redheaded woman in the creek. She fires a shot at the riders and then another. The riders leave the site and Heria props the women up so she won't drown in the water.Then Heria returns home and tells Jerin what happened. Jerin goes back with Heria and carries the woman to the house. Since she had been so nasty, Jerin put the wet and dirty woman within Corelle's bed.Heria rides to get the Queen's Justice troops from the local garrison. Then she fetches Corelle and the other middles home. Corelle doesn't notice the horse in the stable and doesn't believe Jerin. After Jerin finishes the tale, the middle sisters all run upstairs to see their guest in Corelle's bed.Then an Army troop appears looking for the woman. The troop had been searching for stolen cannon, but then she had disappeared. Ren tells them that the woman is Princess Odelia. Corelle figures that Ren is also a princess.The Whistlers do not allow the Army troop to enter the house. Then the Queens Justice troops appear and the Army troops are allowed entry. Ren goes upstairs to see Odelia.Odelia is less than pleased with the appearance of her sister. She had wanted to see more of Jerin. Since Odelia cannot ride, Ren and her troopers stay a bit longer.This tale causes Ren to become infatuated with Jerin. Odelia also likes him. Ren arranges for Jerin, his eldest and two sisters to come to the Royal Palace,Lylia approves of Jerin and eventually Trini gets to know him. Ren has their approval of marrying Jerin, but the Queen Mother Elder insists on also getting Halley's approval. Ren tries to find Halley.Yet Halley has already found Jerin. This novel does not have a sequel, but the author has also written the  Ukiah Oregan  and  Elfhome  series. Her latest novel is  Eight Million Gods .I had already read the other novels, but somehow overlooked this one. It is an interesting satire on patriarchial society. This tour de force is well worth reading.Highly recommended for Spencer fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of gender reversal, political intrigue, and a bit of romance. Read and enjoy!-Arthur W. Jordin

This is a novel of gender role reversal, and I guess we could say, of court politics. But instead of a few characters reversing our culture's gender roles, it is an entire culture.In this world, men are rare and valuable, so women form 'families' to share the men available to them. Generally there is one man for however many adult "Sisters" not related to him. While the founding groups of 'sisters' may not have started out as blood relatives, the families over time do become true genetic relation. Families who have historically been able to produce male children gain status, influence and are considered wealthy.The men, however aren't in the catbird seat here. They are virtual prisoners of their families from the moment they are born till they die and rarely leave their homes. Because there are so few men, they can't be risked in dangerous occupations. The early death of a husband before his children, male or female could secure suitable spouses could mean the death of an entire family, and certainly it would mean a lost of wealth, prestige, and influence.Men are largely uneducated, work as homemakers, and are pretty much sold and traded between families. I got the feeling that the culture was largely lifted from that of the ancient Greeks, though this culture was more technologically advanced.In the beginning, even though I have been reading Science Fiction and Fantasy for over 50 years, and consider myself reasonably skillful in making the mental and emotional shifts required by that genre, I found myself almost quitting the book. However, I'm glad I didn't!My sense of disorientation and 'wrongness' was pretty strong at first. Stuff like this shouldn't happen to a strong male character. I had to read almost a third of the book to really 'get into' the situation of the novel. And there ARE some minor flaws in the book that didn't help, though i'll point them out in a bit.This character is a young man from a reasonably prosperous, but backwater family of no particular influence. about to come of age and facing dim and dismal marriage prospects when he happens to save a princess of the realm. This changes his life and propels his family into the always dangerous world of court intrigue for which they are un prepared and unwilling to enter in to because of who the recently deceased father of the family was. They are backwater for a reason.As I said in a prior paragraph, there are some flaws, and they kept it from getting a full 5 stars. Fist and biggest in my mind is why does this male shortage only happen to humans? Why aren't the other animals affected? Was it a disease? Are the people of the story not really humans but some similar species? It wasn't ever explained or even addressed. And no one even wonders aloud why this discrepancy even exists.Another flaw that I chose to overlook because I thought it would get in the way of the story, is that in such a world women would evolve to be larger and stronger while the men would become smaller and weaker. The men are physically weak, while the women aren't really described at all. Yet the young man is able to fight off the attackers of the princess and then Carry her BACK to his house, without breaking a sweat. That seems a flaw in the story logic to me.I think this weakens the story, in our world, where men are expected to do the fighting and the dangerous jobs, men are VERY much aware of other men's physical size and ability to do violence. The author might have two women meeting for the first time, think she seems strong, and capable, but I think it far more likely women would notice if the other woman is a leftie or a rightie, any limps or weakness in the limbs. that sort of thing.Now this last 'flaw' might have been overlooked on purpose since the author, Wen Spencer couldn't know at he time she wrote it, if people would perceive it as a serious work or an attempt at highbrow erotica. I have no way of knowing. But I think in a world where there are so FEW men, female homosexuality might well be more culturally accepted even among women who were not really lesbians.We have precedent in that several of the ancient Greek societies seemed able to accept homosexual behavior in men who weren't committed to that life completely. The book might have hinted at it once, but I think considering there didn't seem to be any overtly religious objection to it, this might have been a bigger part of the cultural, political, and economic life of the society in the book.On the whole, I thought this was a pretty good book, and I'm glad I read it. If you're worried about it, it isn't a particularly titillating story, but it will hold most people's interest.

First thing: I enjoyed "A Brother's Price". I like Wen Spencer's work, my favorites are the Ukiah Oregon books and I really, really hope she will continue that series. So liking the author I bought "A Brother's Price", but then I left it a long time on the shelf.The whole "a society dominated by women / men have no rights" concept usually doesn't work . At least not for me. Either the author uses the story like a club to make it clear what she thinks is wrong with men or you get stupid amazon-fantasies (where the male hero loves = f***s the amazon queen in a better understanding of the female role). Or you get a story suffering from terminal lack of logic. Yeah, I read my share of them and then I put them in the category: No more. A rule I didn't break for maybe 30 years.Then I read "A Brother's Price", trusting Wen Spencer and I had fun.Wen Spencer manages to evoke a world where men have no rights and - big point - are told that the whole way they have to live is in their best interest. And they accept it. We can accept it - the author makes it believable: Men are so rare, that the crime of "raiding for a husband" exists. Fear of disease explains, why a man has to live chaste and be a virgin when entering marriage. If his reputation is in doubt, the family can't marry him off, but marriages are important: A Brother's Price - the money a Family gets for giving up a brother in marriage makes it possible to acquire a husband of their own. Boys don't go to school, because somebody might snatch them. Keep the males safe. Yeah, I hear echoes of keeping the little woman safe. Wen Spencer could have taken the concept und turned it into another "women's right" rant (deadly serious or bitter sarcastic, thank you very much). She wrote a mix of adventure and love story. I for one am all in favour of that mix.There is another controversial idea in this story, which receives quite a twist: Polygamy. This is always seen as one man having the privilege of owning more than one woman. Wen Spencer turns it around. Men are rare, so women share. Not one man owning several women, but several women co-owning one man. Sisters marry one husband. So one man might be married to 10 wives or more who are all sisters. And the one man (Jerin) really, really hopes that he won't be married off to a family with 20 or 30 sisters.You can take the whole story dead serious and get upset - or maybe you can hope that men and women reading the book will grasp that wrong is wrong, no matter who does it to whom. Or you simply can enjoy the interaction of likable characters and evil villains. I like the Western style background with paddle steamers and a technology level above the usual sword and sorcery. Makes a nice change.The role reversal works without turning the women into Monsters or the men into weird weaklings. So in this story the woman steals a kiss and the boy wonders, if he should have said no, don't, my reputation. Men fear rape by women (drugs make it possible). But the hero is neither the poor abused underdog nor the brainy rebel, he is not a poor starving thief ... let's not list all the clichees. So 5 stars for a story that could have gone so wrong and works out so right, at least for me.

It's okay. I enjoyed it for what it was, but if it didn't have the gender role reversal it probably wouldn't have worked as a novel.I never personally had a problem with the main character (at least not until about a third of the way through the novel when he started acting like a baby)-- I bought into the whole men being feminized and all--but some readers might have a problem with men acting too much like women and women acting too much like men.It's normal to see women kick ass on television today, so I quite bought into the kick ass part and matriarchs slash gunslingers wanting their men beddable and biddable. The problem I had I would like to believe a female led society wouldn't simply be your typical "man" civilization only run by women. It would have been nice to get some backstory of why most male babies don't normally survive to term. Has it always been like that or was it a recent mutation? There was no explanation. I had trouble believing women would have been able to create the same type of architectures men have created in the past as they just don't have the physical strength (the mutation being recent would have explained this). Otherwise, this could have been delved into.I didn't want women to simply act like men, which it what they did here a bit too much. I would have thought there would have been more physiological warfare than actual warfare. I also had trouble believing a woman would be able to carry off a man due to size and physical strength difference. Maybe the men of this world are smaller, less heavier than men in the real world due to maybe diet, not being allowed regular exercise. Something like that to help explain this. A group of women could certainly carry off a man in a husband raid, but not one by her lonesome as is explained in the backstory.Nevertheless, it's refreshing seeing men relegated to the domestic home front for once. As a male it's interesting seeing typically female issues being projected onto men IE. the woman having to stop if the man says no, men being slut shamed, etc. No matter how efficient this book is certainly relevant in today's society.

It would be quite a nice romance, but there is some not quite consensual stuff,which I do not like. However, I guess men and especially teenage boys will like the novel, as the protagonist is admired by no shortage of beautiful women. Solidly good written plot, no lengths, and realistic protagonists.It remains unexplained why exactly all those women are immediately smitten with the protagonist, but that is no different from other romances, and at least there IS something to fall in love with about him - the problem is that most of his admirers don't know all that much about him before they fall in love.Women who like romance might also like the book, IF they can get used to the polygyny aspect of the whole thing.Das Buch hätte mir voll und ganz gefallen, wenn die Frauen darin den Protagonisten nicht so sehr bedrängt hätten. Ich nehme an, männlichen Lesern wird das nichts ausmachen,und sie werden sich nur zu gern in diese Position versetzen, denn die Frauen (zumindest die, in die er sich dann auch verliebt) sind natürlich allesamt wunderschön. Leserinnen könnten sich jedoch an unschöne Begebenheiten aus dem eigenen Leben erinnert fühlen, was meiner Meinung nach in einer Romanze nichts zu suchen hat. Darum nur fünf Sterne. Ansonsten fand ich das Buch angenehm romantisch, ich hatte mit etwas mehr Fantasy gerechnet, aber die Einführung einer leicht fremdartigen Welt lässt noch genug Platz für sowohl eine schöne Romanze als auch einen spannenden Krimiplot.Dass der Protagonist in mehrere Frauen gleichzeitig verliebt ist, ist gewöhnungsbedürftig, aber dass es um Polygamie gehen wird, wird angekündigt, ist also keine Überraschung.

Je doit admettre etre fan de Spencer. Je ne veut pas ruiner l'histoire pour vous qui vont le lire en disant trop. Ce livre est VENDU comme un romance entre riche et pauvre, mais en faite c'est un tour de force sociologique. Le question est: qu'est que arrive a un société ou il y 20 femmes pour chaque homme? Les hommes sont les denrées rare, a être protégé par les femmes. Ils sont aussi les esclaves, clôturer et traiter comme des femmes dans les payes islamique. Le héro a la chance que ces mères ont lui appris a lire etc. Il s'agit d'un histoire qui tourne nos préconceptions sur la tête et puis donner un demi tour contre le montre.En plus, ces la bonne aventure avec beaucoup d'action. Note: je suis un mec mariée

Not mentally taxing, only a couple of hours to read the book. Generally light science fiction romance with good thinking behind it. I'm finding this author is writing consistently entertaining books, which are unfortunately not all easy to get hold of.