Scorpica
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3.8 • 10 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born in this sweeping epic fantasy that’s perfect for fans of Robin Hobb and Circe.
Five hundred years of peace between queendoms shatters when girls inexplicably stop being born. As the Drought of Girls stretches across a generation, it sets off a cascade of political and personal consequences across all five queendoms of the known world, throwing long-standing alliances into disarray as each queendom begins to turn on each other—and new threats to each nation rise from within.
Uniting the stories of women from across the queendoms, this propulsive, gripping epic fantasy follows a warrior queen who must rise from childbirth bed to fight for her life and her throne, a healer in hiding desperate to protect the secret of her daughter’s explosive power, a queen whose desperation to retain control leads her to risk using the darkest magic, a near-immortal sorcerer demigod powerful enough to remake the world for her own ends—and the generation of lastborn girls, the ones born just before the Drought, who must bear the hopes and traditions of their nations if the queendoms are to survive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The people of the Five Queendoms lose the ability to produce girls in this refreshing epic fantasy from Macallister (The Arctic Fury). No one knows the cause of this so-called Drought of Girls, but it is devastating for the matriarchal societies. Of the queendoms, the Amazon-like Scorpicans depend the most on their ability to produce daughters, and as their nation dwindles, unrest grows in their ranks. The magical Arcans, meanwhile, hunt for an all-magic-girl who can inherit the throne of the Daybreak Palace. Record-keeping Bastion, agrarian Sestia, and trade-hub Paxim do not have such specific needs, but are ruled by women nonetheless and depend on daughters for heirs. As the Drought stretches on for a decade, the long-standing peace between countries teeters in the balance. Macallister twines the stories of women from each of these societies as they struggle with loss and search for solutions. She does a good job keeping each perspective as exciting as the last. The page-turning plot and intricate worldbuilding makes this a must-read for fans of Game of Thrones and Priory of the Orange Tree.
