The Gender Wars by Thomas C. Stone

What an interesting book and I applaud the author for such an original idea.  One hundred years in the future, women rule the United States.  I've been warning my husband about this for years, but he laughs at me.  (evil laugh)  Anyway, women and high taxes have caused all the men to head for the hills.  And the men in this book.. my gawd, they act like barbarian, evil versions of Larry the Cable Guy.  All they think about is food (of which they have none), sex (they want to rape a woman everytime they capture one), and war.  It's no wonder we take the country away from them and send them to the mountains and prove unwilling to negotiate with them . .

The men grated on my nerves, except for Crawford of course..  and I will get to that in a minute.  First, let's finish the plot:  Women and their clone like pets, called synthoids, have formed an army of women and they kill or capture the men.  There's open warfare, even chemical warfare as the women spray the renegade men with some kind of HIV virus.  Pretty dirty stuff.  But I liked about this book was there was none of this crap:

 The women in this book are all tough and they lay down the law.

Enter Crawford, a man with the Free Man's Army.  He is captured and thrown into prison and then a breeding clinic and then into a male whorehouse.  (Yep, how would you fellas like the tables turned?? Very cool!) Rave is a woman high up in the women's army.  She pays for a night with Crawford and love blooms.  Another point for the author here... this time the dude is the virgin!!

Needless to say, with men and women killing each other everyday, Rave and Crawford got some inner issues to deal with.  Just how much are they willing to trust each other?  With Crawford always being a prisoner on the run or a guerilla fighter and Rave being an officer in the NAW (National Army of Women), inner conflicts are unavoidable.  After all the "peace negotiations," bar fights, and angry bosses berating them, they are both going to have to make a decision and it's gonna revolve around some nuclear bombs. 

Very action packed and as I never read sci fi, the fact that I'm giving this a four is a compliment.  I had two quibbles preventing it from becoming a five.  1.  The men consantly wanting to rape every woman in their path.  2.  Lack of descriptive details.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the synthoids looked like until about halfway into the novel and even then, it was rather vague.  Descriptions about the main players were lacking as well.  The term "butch" just tells me that some chick probably has short hair and muscular build and that just sounds so stereotyped.  Err.. what color of hair should I be visualizing?  What are they wearing?  I don't need paragraphs, but a little more than "butch."

Still, a decent read and the ending somewhat left room for a sequel.