SECONDARY

by RAY INGLES:

A Review (No Spoilers)

Secondary is a unique read. It first captured my interest based on the (mostly) swapped gender roles. I’ve been on a nonfiction kick, often falling back to sociology and gender studies, so I enjoyed adding some speculative fiction—in some ways, historical fiction (or historical what-could-have-been).

The opening worldbuilding reminded me of Everything Matters! by Ron Currie; essentially modern-day, essentially life as we know it, but with some revolutionary scientific breakthroughs. In this case, the Time Eye, which allows for glimpses of life on Earth from centuries ago. Jim McAllister is an anthropologist helping to record scientific findings. The project is hijacked by its own leaders—women who have been greatly wronged by men—and Jim finds himself somehow transported by the eye, along with a retroactive virus that has given women altered biology with electrical power (and therefore the power to overcome and dominate men). This new world is vastly different from the one we know, and we learn along with Jim as he puts his anthropological skills to the test.

This premise, along with this protagonist, makes for some interesting interpretations and results. This book is not woman-hating or man-hating, and while this “new” society has some pretty serious faults, from our point of view (severe gender inequality, homophobia, etc), Jim—as an anthropologist—does a pretty good job of keeping us from condemning their world and just observing how different it is. He will probably, in time, be a general force for positive change, at least within his immediate circle, as he steers others away from homophobic slurs and gives his male friend the confidence to speak up more.

Secondary doesn’t simply flip our standard of gender equality by mapping it 1:1 in the reverse direction; in the new world, males are borderline (if not overtly) subjugated in a way that far surpasses the less-than-equitable social dynamics of our world (at least in the “Western” way of thinking). It is not at all a lighthearted “See how you like it!” toward men. My immediate feeling upon assessing the overall gender landscape was one of disappointment and weariness; in a world that presented women an opportunity for true equality, they had abused their biological advantage by assuming all control and belittling men—much the way that men had done in our timeline. Women can be callous and cruel, just the same as men. How true, and how frustrating.

Secondary is a book that requires your attention. Ingles packs a lot of “book per book.” That’s not to say it is overly dense, though there is quite a large vocabulary and historical background to work through. If anything, I thought the information being fed to the reader was done rather efficiently, without “wasting time.”

To choose a critique or two, I would admit that the third quarter of the book did get a bit bogged down by all of the language, names, expressions, and shorthand that Jim had learned—and therefore we were mostly supposed to remember. My memory is not as good as Jim’s (who learned a language incredibly fast), so there were a few times toward the end that I sort of skimmed along a Lihnahchoo word and just assumed that it made sense (a lot of the time, phrases made sense anyway because of the context clues).

There was also a curious thing with Manayka, where his name and pronouns would randomly change sometimes. I think once it was spelled Manaka, and several times it was spelled Maneka. My guess is that the decided spelling may have changed at one point during editing, or else maybe the book was dictated, and those inconsistencies were missed.

Briefly, I also believe this book warrants content warnings for SA and homophobia. While certain scenes of SA were absolutely plot-pivotal and moving, I would hate for someone sensitive to such issues to be surprised by them.

Overall, it was a fun read. Ingles’ online advertisement for the book reads: “I can comfortably promise you've never read a story quite like it.” I believe that to be true!

For some reason, my favorite character was Nusuku—I honestly can’t tell you why. Of course, she’s likeable, and she helps Jim tremendously, but that could be said for many more prominent characters. Maybe it’s because she’s a cop (essentially) who acts the way I wish cops acted. Either way, I liked her and wanted more. In my head, she was essentially Grayson from Arcane.

I also fancast T’ramoi as Samantha from Sex and the City (a bit flirty and liked to drink) and Manayka as Elliott from Stardew Valley (sensitive twink-adjacent), though of course they would look much different.

What I’m looking forward to learning more about in upcoming writing: