Book review- Selfsame

Author Eden Wolfe

Genre Dystopian Thriller( Part of the Lower Earth Series)

This was my first time using voracious readers only,  and my first time receiving a   book( free!) to provide a review. I had so many to choose from but this dystopian thriller set in a world where men are dying out caught my eye and I wasn’t disappointed.

From Amazon

Powerful. Beloved. And hunted for the secret in her blood.

Four hundred years after the Final war, eighteen-year-old Aria is poised to claim her birthright – the throne of Lower Earth.

It’s one of the last pieces of habitable continent left. Men are dying off from the after-effects of the war and women are genetically altered to survived.

But Aria’s blood is more advanced than any of them; she was designed from the genetic sequence of the settler queens.

Queen Maeva, Aria’s pseudo-mother, crushes all opposition. She has no fear of blood on her hands.

And she’s not afraid to do the same to Aria.

The threats multiply from within and beyond Lower Earth’s borders as destruction and colonization by the old men of Upper Earth approach their shores.

Aria has spent her lifetime preparing to take over the throne. Just as she is ready to fulfill her destiny, she’s blindsided.

Betrayal.

Now being hunted, with enemies around every corner, Aria must battle the very totalitarian regime she was once destined to lead.

You’ll love this complex world in which good and evil are blurred for the sake of survival. Aria is a woman you’ll want to see win.

Review

Book received from Voracious readers only as a review copy with thanks.

This was my first time using Voracious reader only- a service that connects eager readers with authors who are trying to get their books out there and I must confess to being nervous as I have read some bad self-published books in the world of Kindle unlimited. Once I had signed up, there was an influx of emails, with all sorts of books in my favourite genre but the cover and the synopsis of Selfsame caught my eye-I love a book set in a female-dominated society.

The good

The story starts off with a female warrior called Ariane with her own interesting internal monologue who is keen to fulfil her destiny of becoming the Queen. In this dystopian world, something called the mist has occurred and men are dying out leaving the predominantly female society and the remaining men to try and reverse this. This society is led by a powerful and strong Queen with her own hidden mystery and I had to keep reading to find out what her plan was. The plot threads about the Willing Women clinic with their genetic experiments was fascinated and chilling especially given this was a female-dominated society. This is something that could so easily happen ( and has happened) – the pressure on women to continue producing the next generation regardless of the cost to themselves The action picks up towards the end with a surprising twist, I didn’t see coming. The Queen  is a compelling character and I was torn between feeling sorry for and hating her.

The bad

There is a number of viewpoints from many characters, which I found confusing for the first part of the book but this is clarified towards the end. I would have skipped a few of these viewpoints in favour of more detailed and longer chapters from the main characters. This is the first book in a series, so I imagine a few of the concepts will be explained in more detail.

Any cliffhangers

Yes.  You do have to read the next book to find out what happens.

Perfect for Fans

I would say grown-up fans of any dystopian stories

Summary

4 and half stars. I found the multiple viewpoints confusing at the start but I will definitely be popping the next book on TBR pile.