It was going so well until it wasn't. First the good, before I lay it on thickly. Amazing prose, amazing writing, great characters and very masterful storytelling. Reading all four main characters' POVs was very interesting and I enjoyed that aspect. She does that wonderfully and links up their arcs very well.

Now quickly onto the bad, and oh I wish this book had been what it promised to be in the beginning but it quickly fell short.

First of all, and what ultimately bothered me the most, is how misleading and harmful this book was towards the feminist movement. I wouldn't recommend this book to any man or any non-feminist to read because it does nothing for the cause but skew its core message. It feels like it was written by a man and that says a lot. It tries to convince the reader that if women were the more physically strong gender, the world would quickly flip on its head. It tries to SIMPLIFY the layers and layers and generations of oppression, suppression and violence against women that FORMED the patriarchy.

It tries to say the physically stronger party is the more powerful one, so if women were stronger than men women would BE men. How are you trying to convince me that within just a few years of women gaining this power, the entire world was flipped on its head? Misogyny and patriarchy is not as simple as that, it is not just because men are physically stronger. Oppression has never been about physical strength. White people do not oppress colored people because they are physically stronger. To try to paint physical strength as the root of all evil is to try to take responsibility and agency away from the oppressor, who is in this case, men. It is not ingrained in the biology of strong people to be abusive or oppressive.

Within a few years all of a sudden women are the more violent gender, the rate of sexual assault by women has drastically increased, women are overturning nations? And enforcing military rule?? That'll bring me to my next point but hold this thought while I branch a little.

Second major issue I had was this book felt deeply uneducated and racist. Why are the third world countries or underdeveloped Middle Eastern the ones to have been thrown into chaos? The ones with women running mad and doing rituals in the middle of the street. The ones with women becoming savages and hunting men? And all these Middle Eastern nations constantly have to rely on the west for aid?

Bessapara was such a LAZY nation. The author took nations like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and simply said let's do an uno reverse. She took the oppression of real women and said well if women had this power, we'd just make the men go through all this instead just because women are suddenly physically stronger. Which is just so lazy in terms of worldbuilding and general plotting and so uneducated and so uncouth and just so reminiscent of a white superiority complex. America and England were just fine, but the Middle East was where women resorted to savagery. How convenient.

Thirdly, I did not need to read about that much sexual assault. And I did not need to sit and read about the fantasy and fiction that if women were suddenly stronger they'd be the ones committing the most sexual crimes. Men don't rape and abuse because they're stronger or because they CAN, men rape and abuse because thousands of years of conditioning has made them entitled, made them view women as nothing more than objects, because these men are sick and have no respect for women, or because these men hate women, because they do not see women as human beings or because these men simply want to feel powerful and "masculine". Because to men masculinity is associated with dominance and power over women and they take that by force. Because they. Choose. To. To try to SIMPLIFY that and imply that men sexually abuse women simply because they are stronger and if the roles were reversed women would be doing the same thing, is so tasteless and so damaging and so misleading that I'm actually stunned.

Fourthly, and this point might just be a point within a point, but this book lacks ALL nuance. People are just divided into male and female. All the men reacted one way and all the women reacted another way. Regardless of class regardless of status regardless of financial circumstances regardless of sexuality?? There's no intersectionality no pushback nothing out of the binary black and white of male and female? How flat and boring.

Fifthly and finally, and this is just a pet peeve. SPOILER AHEAD, I am not a fan of the "powerful woman losing her powers trope". Hate it. And yes I understand that that plot point might have had and served its purpose successfully, still, I am not a fan. And if you ask me it wasn't very necessary to do all that simply to show that men will never be okay with being "weaker" than women. We already knew this. Again, just a personal peeve.

I just don't understand why this book tries so hard to erase and simplify thousands of years of history and culture and psychology that has been ingrained into both women and men. If women all woke up today with skeins and powers, we would NOT all collectively BECOME MEN, or begin to treat men in the way men have treated women from the beginning of time. Women would not be able to take the world that easily or within that amount of years. Women's brains and upbringing and social conditioning would not change overnight if we were suddenly stronger, it just doesn't make any sense and it's all just so unrealistic. It is not and has NEVER been that simple. To try and downplay the generations of trauma women have endured to just "physical strength" is ridiculous. The idea and premise of the book has so much potential but was executed in such a poor way. It read like anti-feminist propaganda. Almost like a warning, almost like it's saying "this is why women should never have power, and this is exactly why the world is how it is today and why it should stay that way".

If I were to give it grace and say perhaps she did not intend to write it to read as so against woman empowerment, I'd say it read as a revenge fantasy and that's just what it is. Rape and sex and sex and rape were MAJORLY discussed in this book, which is why I can see it being written as something fueled by the need to avenge the injustice against women.

All in all I'm disturbed and a little disappointed at the direction this book took. It had its good moments, the witty moments when the author flipped the script on its head — "being seen with a man was less threatening", "a world run by men would be softer and kinder", "have you considered writing under a woman's name?", Tunde getting his work stolen, "for the first time I was afraid to walk alone at night" etc, I may have butchered all those references but I'm sure you get the idea— and it had its bad but ultimately the further I got reading this book the less I enjoyed it. Not because the prose or the plot wasn't interesting, both were incredible, but just because I couldn't get past the glaring flaws. It could have been much shorter, somehow expanding on this world made it worse.