Genre
Science Fiction
Setting and Context
The book is introduced five thousand years into the future, but it is telling the story of contemporary planet Earth, in the twenty first century
Narrator and Point of View
The narrator is a young writer called Neil who is telling a third person narrative, but his mentor, Naomi, feels that the narrative needs to be told from a more feminine perspective.
Tone and Mood
The tone is frightening and also to an extent a journey into the unknown. The mood is both positive and optimistic, and also threatening.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Allie, the antagonist, Tatiana
Major Conflict
There is conflict between Allie and Tatiana because Tatiana has decided to cull Moldovan men and Allie does not want to see the matriarchal society she is instrumental in creating become a mirror image of the patriarchy that has been the status quo.
Climax
Allie resets the world back into the Stone Age so that she can recalibrate it and structure it as a matriarchy.
Foreshadowing
Tatiana's discovery of her own powers foreshadows the murder of her husband and her coup that sees her take over Moldova.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
Tatiana's story alludes to the genocide that took place in Moldova and its neighboring Baltic nations, the identity of the victims changed but the practice of exterminating an unwanted group of people is the same.
Imagery
The imagery created is very dark, even when the narrative is largely positive. The reader is able to imagine the world in terms of inter-gender combat and to picture a world in which everything is degenerating into violence.
Paradox
The women want a matriarchal society because they see so many things that are wrong in the patriarchal society in which they live; however once they have power some women choose to use it to create exactly the same patterns of behavior as their male counterparts, such as rape, and abuse of power.
Parallelism
There is a parallel between the way in which Tatiana abuses her power and the way in which her husband did.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The women seems to be the term used for the women who have the power to shoot jolts of electricity from their fingertips.
Personification
N/A