the book of etta – Pleasant Nights

Title: The Book of Flora

Author: Meg Elison

Genre: dystopian

The Book of Flora is a direct sequel to The Book of Etta, which was a “100 years later” sequel to The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. All three of these books are fantastic. I’ve read so much dystopia, that’s it’s hard to find one that I haven’t read that’s also worth reading. Before I finished Unnamed, I had the other two on hold at my library. You can definitely just read the first without continuing, but I was really excited to see how lives had changed in the 100 years since the book ended. And in Etta’s story, we meet the characters that continue on through Flora’s story. Flora takes place immediately after Etta ends.

From Goodreads: In the wake of the apocalypse, Flora has come of age in a highly gendered post-plague society where females have become a precious, coveted, hunted, and endangered commodity. But Flora does not participate in the economy that trades in bodies. An anathema in a world that prizes procreation above all else, she is an outsider everywhere she goes, including the thriving all-female city of Shy.

Now navigating a blighted landscape, Flora, her friends, and a sullen young slave she adopts as her own child leave their oppressive pasts behind to find their place in the world. They seek refuge aboard a ship where gender is fluid, where the dynamic is uneasy, and where rumors flow of a bold new reproductive strategy.

When the promise of a miraculous hope for humanity’s future tears Flora’s makeshift family asunder, she must choose: protect the safe haven she’s built or risk everything to defy oppression, whatever its provenance.

I mentioned in my review of Etta that women were either Mothers or Midwifes. There is no other choice, but Etta made one for herself. Flora’s story lets us see even further into the gender-fluid world she lives in. Women live as men, men live as women, men are castrated and raised as women, and now it seems as though, overnight, women can turn into men during puberty. I loved this storyline exploration. Really the book is simply about Flora traveling around the country and meeting different kinds of people and seeing how they live. But the underlying plot is one of self-discovery, what it means to be a man, woman, both, or neither in the ever-evolving world.

The Book of Etta

Title: The Book of Etta

Author: Meg Elison

Genre: dystopian

The sequel to The Book of the Unnamed Midwife takes place 100 years after Unnamed, so there aren’t going to be a lot of spoilers for the first book. Just a reminder of the plot though: a fever strikes the world, mostly attacking women and children. The Unnamed Midwife keeps a diary of her travels through the country, living as a man to survive. Okay, so Etta is a raider, and like the UM, she travels as a man she calls Eddy. As Eddy, she feels much more like herself, which confuses her, and is very discouraged by others. As a woman, she is a gift to the world and is expected to be either a midwife or a mother. Etta/Eddy has no desire to be either.

From Goodreads: Etta comes from Nowhere, a village of survivors of the great plague that wiped away the world that was. In the world that is, women are scarce and childbearing is dangerous…yet desperately necessary for humankind’s future. Mothers and midwives are sacred, but Etta has a different calling. As a scavenger. Loyal to the village but living on her own terms, Etta roams the desolate territory beyond: salvaging useful relics of the ruined past and braving the threat of brutal slave traders, who are seeking women and girls to sell and subjugate.

I’m leaving off the end of the blurb because it’s a giant spoiler, which was a huge bummer to me. As Eddy roams the world, freeing women from slavers, she also trades with other cities and learns from them. I loved how Elison handled the switch between Etta and Eddy, who each have their own pronouns, sometimes going back and forth between them within the same sentence or paragraph. But that’s how Etta/Eddy feels. Very much like two people at once. I was glad to revisit the world that the Unnamed left us and see how things changed in the past century (hint: all is not perfect). I have one more book in this series, The Book of Flora, which I’m really curious about. Flora was a character in Etta, assuming it’s the same person. So I’m curious to see where Flora’s story picks up. Overall, these seem to be hidden gems of the dystopian world, but I’m really enjoying them and definitely recommend them to others.