A GENTLE TYRANNY

Reina Pierce lives in Nedé, a 200-year-old matriarchal society founded in response to the atrocities in the old world.

In Nedé, Gentles—male-born people—are “gentled” to rid them of their Brutishness and ensure the safety of girls and women. Approaching her 18th birthday, the age when Nedéan women choose their careers, or destinies, Reina can’t help but think that no one option fits her exactly. Before getting to choose, Reina is told that she has been selected as a Candidate to succeed the current Matriarch—the supreme ruler of Nedé, who also happens to be her grandmother. Shocked and unprepared, Reina quickly realizes that she has a lot to learn, and throughout her Apprenticeship, she becomes aware that the virtuous society she thought she lived in is not as just as she had been taught. Corban paints a world that, on the surface, is an inclusive utopia for girls and women but which includes starkly different treatment for boys and men. Themes of justice, equality between the binary genders, and abuse of power are developed in this well-written novel. Corban’s post-apocalyptic dystopia includes a cast of characters with a range of skin tones; Reina has brown skin and hazel eyes. Readers will be enticed, though gaps in worldbuilding and plot leave unresolved questions waiting to be answered in the next volume.

A series opener with an intriguing premise.