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★★★★☆

Wen Spencer’s A Brother’s Price starts with a familiar conceit: a young, intelligent boy from the gentry meets a princess, and both realize they’re in love, but a marriage will be unlikely as he’s barely more than a commoner.

But in this world, the birth ratio is around one male to every twenty women. Men are kept under purdah, and shared among the women of a household, unless they are unfortunate enough to be sold into ‘cribs’ where they are given drugs to induce erections for women whose families can’t afford the “brother’s price” to buy a husband.

Spencer’s protagonist, Jerin Whistler, doesn’t worry about being sold into a crib, he’s more worried about being sold to the boorish family down the road who abuse their husband and fight among themselves. A marriage to Princess Ren and her sisters means he’ll no longer have to slave to the thirty or more girl relatives.

Jerin will not change his world. He doesn’t join a men’s liberation underground. He’s smarter and more capable than other men, but that makes him all the more attractive to Princess Ren and her rival noblewoman Kij. A Brother’s Price could be a men’s romance novel from the novel’s world.

This sets A Brother’s Price apart from other science fiction novels where the social order’s inverted. In Steve Barnes’ Lion’s Blood, where African colonials in North America own Irish slaves, the book’s arc points to the eventual realization that a white slaves is as human as their Muslim masters. Even Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tiptree Award winning story, The Matter of Seggri is a Ecumen agent’s report of a male liberation movement.

For fearlessly ignoring the call to ‘set things right’, as well as being a fun and exciting read (there’s a whole subplot about a missing set of twenty cast iron cannons, and dynastic ambitions) I recommend the novel.