A page-turner with some thought-provoking ideas about feminism, gender ‘characteristics’ and how we might all behave post-apocalypse. This particular apocalypse is one we can all easily imagine and all the scarier for that. 

A clunky, heavy-handed novel that spends every single page beating you around the head with a large ‘Feminism is evil’ stick. I gave it some grace at the beginning because I thought maybe it was designed to be a satire of the way some people view feminists, that trad-wife Miranda and her misandrist mother would meet in the middle and see each others views. I realised I was very wrong by about 1/3 of the way in, but by that point reading this book had turned in to the literary equivalent of rubbernecking at a ten-car pileup - you know it’s terrible, but you need to see HOW truly awful it is. 

It’s certainly fast-paced, but this pace is achieved by cutting out almost all character development and relationship dynamics.  Every choice made by the characters seem completely random. Why does Emma latch on to Jen Jones (the charasmatic leader of this seeming idyllic off-The-grid community, with a name so subtle she may as well just have been called Dr Evil)  as soon as she meets her, to the point where she abandons her own mother? Jen has done nothing to earn this, there’s absolutely nothing to suggest Emma supported the extreme ideals of Femlandia before all this. 

The ‘twist’ of the book was gross and not even especially clever, but don’t worry because it’s all resolved in pretty much the next chapter. 

There are some absolutely sublime 1* review for this book on StoryGraph that go in to more detail about why exactly this book is so awful, Id suggest reading them over reading Femlandia - you’ll certainly experience more nuance, structure, and entertainment. My search for a great feminist dystopian story continues. 

I might change this rating 20 more times. I don’t know how to rate this. I don’t know what I just read. What the fuck