Review by Booklist Review
Elison's second book picks up where The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (2014) left off. Pockets of the postapocalyptic world are beginning to restore order in their own isolated ways, creating new social norms, religious idols, and moral codes. Etta's home city, Nowhere, reveres women and is organized by Hives of one woman to numerous men. Women fill key religious, leadership, and sexual roles in this city, but Etta would rather fill the masculine role of raider. Using her raiding as an excuse to present as male and travel, Etta and the new world must grapple with understanding nonbinary gender identity and transsexuality on the road. But the road is a treacherous place, as the patriarchal slave city Estiel and its leader, the Lion, threaten the safety of surrounding communities, burning and looting all who will not surrender their women and girls. Elison takes a nuanced look at the physical and psychological effects of sexual assault and forces its characters and readers alike to consider how it feels to be born with a culturally taboo identity.--Colias, Rachel Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this gritty sequel to her Philip K. Dick Award-winning The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Elison returns to her postapocalyptic American Midwest milieu, but far in the future, when the midwife protagonist of the first novel is largely a legend. The plague that destroyed human civilization lingers, killing women in childbirth, fetuses in the womb, and newborns. Far more boys survive than girls. The various pocket communities that have survived have found their own ways of coping with the gender imbalance. In matriarchal Nowhere, women collect men into "hives." In nearby Jeff City, castrati live as women, giving the illusion of gender balance. In Estiel, formerly St. Louis, a monstrous dictator known as the Lion raids other communities for their women and girls. Etta-or Eddy, as he calls himself outside the confines of Nowhere-is a young transgender man who can't find a place for himself in a world where people with wombs are classified as either baby-making machines or midwives. He's a wanderer and explorer by nature and has no interest in any other role. Elison continues to startle her readers with unexpected gender permutations and fascinating relationships worked out in front of a convincingly detailed landscape. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This sequel to The Unnamed Midwife continues the very slow recovery of a post-apocalyptic United States. In the first book, a virus killed most men and nearly all women, especially those who try to have children. Three generations later, some women survive childbirth, but the balance of male and female is far from equal. Civilization consists of a variety of social structures whereby some communities protect women while others use women as sex slaves and forced breeders. Etta is a twenty-something woman who passes as a man, Eddie, to survive outside of her hometown when she raids the dead cities for old-world trading goods and strives to rescue girls and women from slavers. Etta/Eddie identifies as both female and male and feels very much an outsider in the world and at home where women have one of two roles-mother or midwife. The book is set in the Midwest and Western United States, but, unfortunately, narrator Adenrele Ojo applies a significant Southern accent to many of the secondary characters, which is very distracting. This second series title is more personal and introspective than its predecessor and has a meandering story line. -VERDICT This effort is weaker both in form and presentation than the stronger first book. Recommended with reservations where Elison is popular.-J. Sara Paulk, Houston Cty. P.L., Perry, GA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The follow-up to The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (2014), set in a broken U.S. decades after a pandemic has killed most of the population.In the town of Nowhere, women essentially have two life paths: They can try to bear a child (an enterprise which frequently kills both mother and baby) or train as Midwives and help other women. But Etta has rejected both possibilities: Instead, she is a raider, traveling outside the town to battle slavers and rescue girls and young women from their clutches. But what no one in Nowhere knows is that Etta does more than simply dress as a man when she leaves town: She actually takes on a male persona, calling himself Eddy. Unable to face the restrictions of being Etta, desperate to realize himself more fully as Eddy and find someone who will love his true self, Eddy makes various journeys away from home on his self-imposed rescue missions, interacting with several societies that each has a different way of dealing with the realities that biological men significantly outnumber biological women and children are a rarity. Eventually, although he tries desperately to avoid it, Eddy will be forced to revisit the one place he really doesn't want to go: Estiel (the former St. Louis), the city controlled by the vicious warlord known as the Lion and the place of a devastating past trauma. Eddy is a fascinatingly complex character, shifting back and forth between female and male identities. His personal journey toward self-realization is made more difficult by the rigidity of his viewpoints about gender, love, and what values cannot be compromised, even for survival in a fairly brutal landscape. That inflexibility, plus his rape as a teenager and his strong preference for biological women, makes it impossible for him to accept the love of Flora, a transwoman and former sex slave, even though she accepts and understands him more than anyone else. Sadly, that rejection helps to hasten the plot's devastating climax and is a realistic portrayal of how one's own struggles don't necessarily instill an immediate empathy for others' situations.Pulls no punches. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
