I get frustrated with encountering sexism and today’s gender norms in books set in alternate universes, the distant future, or complete fantasy worlds. Do you have any book suggestions where the world building includes a society without gender norms or the gender norms are entirely flipped or different?
Thanks in advance for any ideas!
by MJ3900
4 Comments
A society with flipped gender norms though more equal than real life imo is Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells, it’s a matriarchal society of shifters with magical queens who can stop others from shifting and make the court (their colony) feel close to each other. The male protagonist is a (spoilers for the first few chapters) >!consort, meaning he’s meant to be with a queen by nature!<, but at the beginning of the book he didn’t know the Raksura were his species because he was the only survivor of an attack as a young child and he could never find his own people again, until he gets saved by a grandpa of his species
Probably any of ursula le guin’s novels. Left hand of darkness especifically tackles a society with ppl who dont have a permanent sex
If you like fantasy, I’d recommend the Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. It’s very good high fantasy with solid world building, and disregards gender and sex expectations while still having some interesting commentary on the matter.
If you like it there’s a prequel called Day of Fallen Night which I also really enjoyed.
Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell features a future society in which everyone wears certain jewelry to show others how they identify.
It was kind of magical homo normative…