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    A Brother's Price
    A Brother's Price
    A Brother's Price
    Audiobook9 hours

    A Brother's Price

    Written by Wen Spencer

    Narrated by Travis Baldree

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In a world where male children are rare, a man is a valuable commodity-to be sold to the highest bidder . . .

    It isn't easy being the oldest boy in a house run by women-especially for Jerin Whistler. The grand-matriarchs of his clan are descended from soldiers, spies, and thieves. That's partly what's kept their family alive in the wilderness. But it also means Jerin's doomed to marry the girls next door-a fate he's convinced is worse than death. But Jerin gets in even worse trouble when, in the process of a daring rescue, he falls in love with a royal princess who's as high above his station as it's possible to be.

    Ren knows that Jerin is too far below her class to be an appropriate match for her and her royal sisters. But then she hears rumors of a long-held Whistler family secret-one that might provide a way for them to finally be together. Unfortunately, she still has four sisters to convince. And that's before Jerin even comes to the capital-where simmering political tensions will threaten not just their love, but all their lives . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 29, 2019
    ISBN9781977338785
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    Reviews for A Brother's Price

    4/5

    241 ratings23 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Even better as an audio book. Such a change-up from the regular romance/adventure novel.
    • 5/5
      A fascinating alternate world that is built up in such an interesting way. This story focuses on Jerin Whistler, the oldest Whistler boy of 4 sons and nearly 30 daughters. Boys in this society are so rare that they have a single role in society: father children. Jerin only hopes he won't be married to the unappealing neighbors, the Brindles. But after saving a woman in the woods, things take a turn for intrigue. I love this book. I find the world fascinating and the characters interesting. For me it was definitely a can't-put-it-down book. I finished it in a single night and I was glad for it.
    • 5/5
      (Before I start gushing about it, I should say: this book has a lot of potentially disturbing content, and basically a constant underlying threat of gendered violence/rape/etc towards male characters. It didn’t bother me, but I could easily see it bothering others.)I remembered being HELLA sad when I was done reading this book (especially after discovering there were no sequels), and, yeah, very much the case again now. I could keep following these characters and this world basically forever. I love them so much! Beautiful, clever Jerin. Eldest Whistler, Ren, and Halley giving us so many different flavors of badass! Cullen being this world’s equivalent of a tomboy, but cleaning up so nicely.The narrative voice is pretty straightforward but there’s something I really like about it? It’s so effortless to get sucked into. I love how protective everyone is of Jerin. I love the setting. I love that this is just a dumb, wonderful romance with a side of palace intrigue and military swashbuckling. I love how the gender flip plays into all this.Most of all, I just love being able to, even briefly, live in a world where the expectation of AMAB people is that they’re pretty and soft and need to be protected and cherished. That you’re expected to be more nurturing, more gentle, more submissive. This book meant a lot to me when I read it early on in college. I was in the middle of questioning my gender identity and sexual orientation, so having something that played with gender the way this did as just a baked-in part of the setting was just so exactly what I needed. As I reread it now I do find myself at timmes wishing that it had been done differently. Specifically I don’t like the idea that men had to be more scarce to sort of justify why society developed the way it did? And the society presented here does not seem to have any room in it for transgender and nonbinary individuals, or even AMAB gay people. (Nor is there much room for lesbians, though lesbian sex does at least come up a few times.)Oh, and there’s the fact that everything is based on procreation. Procreation is… not something I’ve ever been interested in. I’m ace, actually, so the whole scarcity of males and desperate need for the ones that exist to procreate would… really not work for me? So all the aforementioned is obviously not great for me in terms of wish fulfilment. But idk? Even taking it all into account, at times this book is just… perfect. I just want to slip right into Jerin’s shoes.Yeah, it isn’t a perfect fit for me, because in this fictional society boys are still expected to eventually be comfortable being called “men,” and… yeah. That one will never really work for me? I’ve tried being a cis boy, a trans girl, an enby, an enby boy… that last one has stuck alright, even if it at times has seemed ironic that I found my way back to some kind of boyhood, but one thing I have never at any point been comfortable with is the word “man”?And before you start worrying, I get that in actuality, it will be better for everyone (including me) to fight for a more egalitarian society, and I’m certainly never going to ADVOCATE for a society like this one, but… still… having had such a hard time carving out a gendered space for myself that makes any kind of sense, and having to explain and justify it all the time… it’s hard to read something like this and not wish that I could just wake up in a world where my kind of boyhood is the default assumption.(... on the other hand, I kind of love being neutered, and that is VERY much something that world wouldn’t let boys do. Shrug.)It’s a pity there wasn’t a sequel, and doesn’t seem to be any sign the author is considering one. Aside from my aforementioned misgivings about it, I really want more books in this setting. Or at least a similar setting. I’ve kind of scoured the internet for recommendations for similar books, and I’m gonna try reading a few that popped up in that search, but I’m not sure I’m gonna find anything that will quite hit this exact same spot.There’s a flippant part of me that wants to say “maybe I’ll just write one!” but I’m not going to pretend for even a second that I could do so nearly as skillfully as Wen Spencer did. On top of all the wish fulfillment, this is just such a terrific read! I just really, really didn’t want it to end.
    • 4/5
      Good, very readable. A particularly good place to examine the hero/heroine tropes, since the male/female roles have been swapped. Jerin certainly takes the traditional place of the sought-after and protected heroine, but he also seems to share the role of the hero with several of the women.
    • 3/5
      Light, entertaining read.
    • 4/5
      Interesting premise and decent world building. I'm not sure that's how women would respond to the rarity of men, or that men would be kept pure until marriage (well, women had to refrain from sex, too). But I like the story, which was kinda sweet, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader's interest. There were too many tell and not show in regard to Jerin's looks. All in all, I like it, though I like Fumi Yoshinaga's Ooku: the Inner Chambers better if we're talking about the same premise with women far outnumbering men.
    • 3/5
      An amusing read and an interesting inversion of gender roles. Which is pretty much the reason I liked it - it showcases how masculinity and femininity are socially constructed.The language is a bit difficult to follow through at times, though.
    • 5/5
      For the first third of the book, I wondered why I had ever bought it. I've read a few too many gender-bending books, and I expected this to be just more of the same. I was mildly interested in the characters, so I kept reading, wondering whether it was going to be more of a western (which I would probably like) or more of a paranormal romance (which I probably wouldn't). Suddenly, at a certain point in the book, I realized that I was reading a SFnal murder mystery. All sorts of scenes that had seemed to be picaresque digressions suddenly snapped neatly into place; they had been added to provide unobtrusive but necessary clues. From then on, I thought it was really good, so good that I reread it at once as soon as I'd finished it, just to appreciate the author's skill at clue-dropping. It's a good, solid world, too, very well built; it stands up better than most to close scrutiny.
    • 1/5
      In a world where the male/female ratio is heavily distorted towards women, men are property. At best they’re husbands to families of sisters; at worst constantly drugged and kept in brothels to be raped. Upper-class sexual morality is similar to our Victorians, though, possibly because STDs are widespread, so a respectable young man can be ruined by sexual contact with a woman not his wife. I had high hopes that the setup would do something interesting with the role reversals, but actually the plot is all about palace intrigue and our young ingenue Jerin falling in love with the royal sisters and having adventures where his plucky determination gets him through even though lesser men would fail. Though Jerin has a couple of thoughts about how much it sucks to be property and to be raped, he buys into the system, and as far as I can tell none of the royal sisters ever even have those couple of thoughts. Given initial conditions, this is plausible—Jerin benefits in many ways from being pretty and of sufficiently noble blood, and, well, they’re royal sisters. However, I hated every one of these people and their general satisfaction with their Elizabethan-lite world and their dismissal of lower-class “river trash” as worthless. While I choose to read the last happily-ever-after paragraph in the same light as “He loved Big Brother,” I rather wish I hadn’t even started. Oh and also, almost ironically, though the book specifies that men like Jerin have long tresses and military women at least have buzz cuts, the cover image shows what looks like a man with shoulder-length hair carrying a long-haired woman. Blech.
    • 3/5
      one of those books you stay up half the night reading, but wonder why in the morning.
    • 2/5
      Do you know what I hate? When you’re recommending a book to someone, or maybe you’re just telling them what the book you’re currently reading is about, and as soon as you say it’s science fiction or fantasy you get the look. The ‘oh, you like reading that stuff? Mine is a more refined taste.’ Seriously, I hate it. Half the time these people who disregard speculative fiction so readily barely read at all, or they only read what their favourite famous person tells them to, and I’d bet they’d never really tried to read a fantasy novel before.Yeah, I sure do hate those people. Ignoring that fact that, well, I am one of them. ‘What are you reading?” I might ask. (But I promise I won’t interrupt your reading to ask you because I hate that as well). “Oh,” you’ll reply, “it’s this really good romance-” Whoops, and now I’m giving you the look. Romance? Really? I don’t read that stuff myself…So you’ll imagine my surprise when a quarter of the way through A Brother’s Price I realised that what I had thought was going to be a light science fiction story was actually a romance novel. I couldn't even justify it and say it was science fiction with a romantic subplot, it was definitel a romance with a science fiction sub plot. It was trashy romance with a thin, wavering science fiction subplot.If I’m being really honest I would say that apple flavoured bubble gum has more in common with fresh apples than A Brother’s Price does with actual science fiction. Its concept- what if one man was born for every ten woman- doesn’t seem to be more than an excuse to pepper the novel with some of the worst examples of the helpless woman stereotype I have ever seen, except the helpless woman are actually men, so that makes it ok apparently.The women ride about tending to the land and keeping the law and drinking beer straight from the bottle, while the few men in the book stand about wringing their hands and getting rescued by the women. The female characters are strong and independent, while the males either passively accept what the women say is best (and are thus marked as good), or are prone to tantrums and sulking, (and so we know they are bad). What I’m trying to say is, if Price hadn’t done a gender switch this book would probably offend anyone with half a brain, or else not got published at all.Even with the gender switch, I’m troubled. Price is a decent writer, nothing overly impressive but her words are clear and the plot (what there is of it) cracks along. Her female characters have depth, believable and unique motivations, flaws and scars. So really there’s no excuse for her male characters being such shallow caricatures that always seem to be one shock away from a fit of the vapours. Possibly Price was trying to make some kind of cutting social comment that I didn’t catch, but I have a nasty suspicion that she wasn’t doing it intentionally, that it was more of a ‘oh, look, the women are acting like good strong men and the men are wringing their hands like silly woman!’ kind of deal. Which bugs me, actually.And even if we forgive this, there’s just so much potential here that gets wasted. The base concept is sound, and Price does touch upon some interesting implications of a society were men are a scarcity. The world has a sense of real history, with a major civil war that ended only a generation before still effecting the land. The problem is Price wastes much of this potential, discarding everything that does not serve the romance between a farmboy and the royal family. I think if the novel had of focused on the farmboy's grandmothers, who we learn were spies in the civil war and kidnapped a prince to be their husband, I suspect this would have been a far better book. Or if we focused on the royal sister Hayley who is AWOL on a mission of revenge for much of the book, or even if the plot between Farmboy and the sisters had have involved more than loving gazes and walks in the gardens, it would have been a better book.Which I guess is like saying if it were a wholly different book, then I probably would have liked it. If romance is your thing give this one a shot, but just don't tell me because I might give you the look...
    • 2/5
      Before I say more, I want to say that I enjoyed this. I just wish I had enjoyed it more. It's listed on the spine as Science Fiction and the author is known for her SF series Ukiah Oregon as well as a fantasy novel or two. The only thing about this book that fits the SF genre is the role reversal of the sexes.Men in this tale, which is set at past-like time from present-day Earth, are far outnumbered by the women and are, therefore, treasured. They're coddled and groomed to be sold into marriage. They take care of the children, lots and lots of children, they father with many, often dozens of wives. They are fairly docile and most can't read. Jerin is an exception in many ways.After he helps rescue a princess who's been attacked, he comes to the attention of her sister Ren who falls in love with him and him with her. But given their disparate social standings, a union between them and her sisters is unlikely to be allowed. Except....There's political intrigue, lots of "romance novel" situations made a tad uncomfortable with the young male character in the typical woman's role, and an air of predictability about this book. I figured out most of it ahead of the revelations, yet the revelations I was longing for didn't come. If these are humans, why are male births so few when in reality, the births of males to females is almost equal? Why do the men act so docile? It can't be lack of testosterone, because they look manly enough, despite hair kept long and clothes more feminine than not, and their equipment works just fine.If not for the simple fact that a woman could not service so many men at once and keep up the population thusly, the roles could be reversed without much affecting the story. I could figure out if a point was being made or if the author simply had an idea and ran with it. The characters are likeable enough, but I never cared for them the way I do her characters in the Ukiah books. I don't like reading about fainting females and I like it just as little when it's the men doing the fainting, so to speak (actually, he vomited, rather than fainted). I kept waiting for resentful men to make an appearance or for a male uprising or some such, but the story focused on Jerin, and Ren, alternating between their povs. And that led to another problem. The lack of suspense.Scenes with Jerin showing he was alive, when followed by scenes of Ren worrying that he was dead, instead of coming after the Ren scenes, diluted the tension. We the readers know he's alive so the suspense isn't there the way it could have been. Without that, the book has to rely on other factors to keep the story flowing. What works best for it is the breezy writing style that makes for fast reading. There certainly were few or no surprising plot twists to fill that role.One thing that struck me in this sex reversal is that somehow, the male gets to play hero. If the purpose is to show how harmful denying equal rights and privileges to one sex can be, I missed it. If the point was to portray women as strong and men as weak, that didn't quite hit the mark, either, as it was Jerin's specialness, the training his sister's gave him in self-defense and such that enabled him to help save himself and others. While he had to rely on the women, he still provided the necessary means to their escape and he was the one who helped uncover the truth about assassinations the royal family suffered prior to the story. I suppose if Jerin had been female, this would have shown how resourceful women can be in a world where females aren't granted equality, but here, with the male in the female role, it just seemed silly.A half dozen or so, that I spotted, grammatical errors that have plagued Spencers Ukiah books surfaced here, with sentences with repeated words ("he" before and after the verb, for ex) and other odd constructions, indicating poor editing or proofing.I suppose a good test of a book is whether or not one would read a sequel. I would read one to this, but mostly to see if some of my questions are answered. If you're looking for a quick read, a book that poses an interesting situation and you don't mind that its potential isn't fulfilled, you might enjoy this. It can certainly help pass a lazy, hazy summer day.
    • 4/5
      Intriguing concept for a world - women outnumber men nearly 10:1 - with engaging characters and a satisfyingly complex plot.
    • 5/5
      An interesting look at an alternate "old-west" society. It is an interesting adventure story . However, the surprise was how well it presents a gender twist that made me more aware of some cultural gender biases I didn't realize I had.
    • 1/5
      I absolutely love Wen Spencer's other books, especially Tinker & the Ukiah series. This book left me completely cold. It felt to me like a book she might have written during high school, and was finally able to publish now that she had a good reputation. Sigh.
    • 3/5
      One of the things I like about fantasy is that it allows us to explore our real world by creating mirror worlds and seeing what leaps out at us about our beliefs and prejudices. In this world, men are rare, the birth rate feels like 10 female babies to every male baby. The result is that clans of sisters marry one man, but instead of him being in control of a hareem, the woman are in control of him. He is fragile, not allowed out of the house unveiled, groom knapping is a real danger. He is prized for beauty and because he is housebound, he becomes what we might think of as the traditional wife - he cooks and the manges the children (all zillions of them, the sisters are often 10 or so) and the home, while the women farm, fight and earn all the money. As an idea, it was interesting, and definitely worth staying with the book for that. However, the idea of a 15 year old boy being essential sold (or traded) into a marriage where he has a minimum of 5 but occasionally far more women to please and service all of whom are about 10 years older than him, made me very uncomfortable. This bordered on child abuse. Our hero was sweet and beautiful and also smarter (he could read shoot and ride!) than most males, and has some good adventures, but the entire world setting made me uncomfortable. This is not a critique of the writing - this is in a way a compliment to the book as a whole, because it flows well and I read it in a day and it gets you thinking, as the best fantasy should. I enjoyed her Ukiah Oregon series better, but I really loved that series, so it's a high bar. B
    • 4/5
      This was certainly one of the more unusual books I've read. Although it is categorized as a sci-fi it really doesn't fit into my idea of that genre (technological advances, space ships, robots, etc.). Nor would I really consider it a fantasy, although that might be a closer categorization. Basically the story is of an alternative society (not necessary one on Earth) where men are an extreme rarity that are coveted by women to the point of near obsession. The society is more archaic, more resembling the American West in the 1800s than anything else I can picture. Families consist of large groups of sisters and their daughters with the occasional son. Male children take on many of the responsibilities we would associate with woman during that time period. They are used as chattel, sold for money or traded for other men to be husband to the Eldest daughters. In this book we are not really asked to take on the morality issues of this society, but to go along with the characters acceptance of how things are. In this story Jerin is the oldest son of the Whistler Clan, former thieves, turned Knights, turned farmer over generations. The Whistlers have been blessed with not one but four sons who they plan to receive fair compensation for. That is not to say that the sisters do not care for their brothers, but that it is just the way it is. On a day while the Eldest sisters and their mothers are away one of Jerin's middle sisters witnesses a brutal attack. Knowing that they are obligated to help Jerin insists they go help the injured party. The young woman they save is none other than Princess Odelia and soon her royal sibling arrives at the Whistler home to claim her younger sister. Despite his sisters' best attempts to protect him, when Jerin sneaks down for a snack he winds up meeting Princess Renssalier, who is immediately smitten with the intelligent, beautiful boy. Despite her feelings for Jerin, Ren is aware that any husband for her and her sisters must be of royal blood. Luckily, Jerin has just such a claim of being the grandson of a missing Prince. As Ren works toward garnering the approval of her mother and sisters for a marriage to Jerin it becomes clear that there is more at stake than just a marriage. Somebody is trying to sabotage Ren's family and Jerin could wind up being their pawn to destroy the royal family. This story was interesting in more ways than just an adventure or a romance. I'm not usually a big fan of world building, but in this case it was not at all boring. I really enjoyed all of the characters, even the minor ones such as Eldest Whistler and Cullen. The idea of more than one sister sharing a husband was a tad strange, but it wasn't at all tawdry or unpleasantly presented. I would certainly suggest this book to anyone with interest in alternate Earth scenarios or those who would like to read a fantasy involving gender role reversal instead of witches and wizards.
    • 5/5
      I liked this book and have already re-read it. A NICE read!
    • 3/5
      Scifi/fantasy fans will be better off thinking of this as a romance novel rather than sf/f, otherwise you will be disappointed. The concept is interesting, but the execution is a bit bland. As a romance novel, it's well-written and fun to read, following most of the general conventions; most of the plot twists are totally obvious, but it still held my interest.If you're a fantasy/sf fan looking for some more thoughtful commentary on the nature of gender roles in society, this isn't the book for you. Yes, the author has taken a traditional western/romance novel and reversed the genders -- but there isn't much analysis, much texture to give us the idea that she has actually thought through what that could mean in a larger sense.
    • 1/5
      I really disliked this book. The world is interesting--females severely outnumber the males, so the males are precious, coveted, and protected by their female family members. But I was extremely annoyed the dynamic of all the females with the main male lead. Everything he did was amazing, or incredible, or endearing. He was easy to fall in love with, blah, blah, blah. If he were female, he'd be a Mary Sue. I wasn't impressed. There was nothing really intriguing about the novel except that the genders were reversed.
    • 3/5
      While this wasn't the clever feminist parody I expected after reading the first page, it was enjoyable. A standard love story set in a society where gender roles are reversed - men are scarce, treasured, housekeepers. While the roles played by men and women are amusingly portrayed, There was nothing within the text that challenged the assignment of roles based on gender. The story played out with stereotyped roles, just not the stereotypes I'm used to. I almost hesitate to put the tag feminist on it.
    • 5/5
      Easily the scariest book have read this year,The first book to promote a gut reaction and rethink on gender issues from me in years. This pouports to be romance in a world where women outnumber men at least twenty to one. Are romances different there? You bet but not always in the way you expect.While I find it hard to believe that romances could happen in the way described in such a world. I finds it all to easy to beleive that the romance writers there would claimed it did. This was on the Tiptree awards reccomended reading list. Why didn't it win?
    • 5/5
      Going solely on the blurb, one could be forgiven for suspecting Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price to be a badly written romance. This is far from the case. In fact, while it features a bethrothal and a wedding, it is barely a romance at all. This is a tale of society and manners - tipped upside down, turned inside out and shaken firmly just for good measure. Spencer has taken a relatively simple idea - what if, in a society just becoming industrialised, women seriously outnumbered men? What kind of society would develop? How would men be considered and treated? Would things be any better or any worse with women running everything. And while it does, I suspect purposefully, follow a number of romance clichés, each is used to make the reader think about the things we've come to take for granted in such a novel. Her men are kept in seclusion, jealously guarded, although the hero, Jerin, has had a more liberal upbringing than some. When he rescues an injured princess, he is suddenly thrown into high society and struggles to find his way. The many characters - a necessary number when a brother might have as many as twenty or thirty sisters (to one father and a number of mothers) - are still well drawn and engage the reader's interest and sympathy. I've read books lately where the author has struggled to interest me in her hero and/or heroine as much as Spencer does with her minor characters. Jerin is lovely; a mixture of innocence, brains and courage. The royal sisters are all individuals, fiercely loyal to each other and the past tragedies in their lives have truly shaped them, rather than just being thrown out to the reader without any strength or emotion behind them. Don't be put off by the blurb or the concept. Spencer isn't writing a specific social commentary here, but she explores her society with a deft hand, making it work in all its complexity, its positives and its negatives. Go along for the ride and enjoy. I can't quite see how she could write a sequel, but if she ever does, it'll be on my auto-buy list.