Athena's Choice is a very unique book. I enjoyed Athena's Choice a lot more than I thought I would. There was a pandemic that caused men to become extinct. A research project has been going on for 50 years to bring back men. There is a problem with the project and Athena is brought in to help find out who is responsible? Why was Athena chosen?

I was very interested in this book from the beginning. Athena's choice is about Athena finding out who is sabotaging the genome project, as well as both sides of if men should be brought back or not.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

Thank you NetGalley and Think Books for the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I was ready to give this three stars, and then the last chapter and all its proselytizing about what feminism ~actually is~ happened, so I bumped it down to two, but now I'm thinking it's a low three for sure?

First, I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Alex Ford, was really good. She captured all of the characters well and they were all different, making it easy to know who was who.

The story is an interesting thought experiment about what would happen if all the men (and transmen and some women, I'll get there in a sec) were killed by an illness called "Y fever." (For the nerds, it's H2N5, a bird flu.) Some of the ideas were great and absolutely realistic, and I appreciate that the author never really commits to whether it's "good" or "bad" that there are no men around, but that lack of commitment also kind of feels like laziness? However, women in this new reality set 80 years in the future and 45 years after the last man died are still wearing heels, and modifying body fat percentage based on "whatever's trendy this week"? Clearly, this author has never been pressured to adhere to the standards of male gaze.

Points also deducted for gross male-written lesbian distance sex scene.

The language was a bit repetitious and the author kept saying "grey-eyed girl" in reference to the MC, and just in case we couldn't guess that she's ~not like other girls~ she had to go and literally say it in the first few pages. Can't have a girl in a society of all women be ~like other girls~ whatever that means.

Let's get to gender. This book conflates sex and gender constantly. The questions being asked about nature vs. nurture are important but feminism is not about ~embracing women's innate femininity~ it's about liberation from the patriarchy. Patriarchy being the system of male supremacy that has been oppressing and killing women and girls for eons. Gender is sex stereotypes, which men and women may or may not express according to societal expectations. They're things like "men are violent and women are nurturing" and "men are strong and women are soft" and "men like tools and cars and women like makeup and dolls." Every last one of these is reductive and damaging.

The book relies entirely on the idea that men are naturally pre-disposed to rape and pillage and cause pain for pleasure.

It also implies that transmen are actually men and not women, which...no. Trans-identified women do not express violence at the same rate as men. Testosterone undeniably has an impact on aggression, but it doesn't give you a Y chromosome and it doesn't make you a man. This is sort of explored at the end of the book, and I buy it for the most part as it says "some women" died of the virus as well. Without getting into spoiler territory, the explanation is acceptable.

My last gripe: the author vastly overestimates the number of women who would be lobbying to bring our primary oppressor, abuser, and predator back from extinction, particularly since everything is pretty cherry without them. No wars, no rapes, lots of cool technology that isn't being used nefariously (for the most part)? Sounds pretty cool to me.

But: I LOVED the idea of an app or whatever like "Walk the Past" that allows you to actively explore how things were hundreds or thousands of years ago; I have a whole list of stuff I'd like to see.

In summary: this book will have me thinking for a long time and I plan to bring it up with some friends of mine to discuss some of the questions asked. The premise is incredible, the delivery is a bit meh, but I'm not sad I read it.

I received a copy of this audiobook for free from NetGalley and Thinker Books in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.