The Gate to Women's Country

Imaginative but less than fully convincing feminist postnuclear yarn from the author of Northshore and Southshore (both 1987). Some three hundred years after a nuclear war, society is divided into: Women's Country, stockaded farming towns occupied by women who retain much prewar knowledge, plus a few apparently subservient, nonviolent male "servitors"; and Warrior's Country, where, in barracks outside the towns, all-male warrior clans make their living, ostensibly by protecting the women. The women admit warriors only at carnival time, when they drink and womanize and generally let off steam. At age five, all male children are returned to their warrior fathers; later, some few opt to renounce warriorhood and return to the towns as servitors. Young Stavia, infatuated with the young warrior Cheman, suspects that he's trying to winkle some secret out of her - the men, you see, are plotting to take over Women's Country. But, after various adventures, Stavia realizes that things are not what they seem: the servitors are not slavish but intelligent, highly competent, and often telepathic (by contrast, Chernon has the mentality of a rapist and the manners of a brute); and - the secret! - -the sons that the warriors are so proud of turn out to be exclusively the offspring of the servitors - the women are attempting eugenic improvements in their menfolk. Attractively presented, well told, but oh-so-sanitized - all is sweetness and light in Women's Country. A neat story, but could it - would it - really work? (Kirkus Reviews)