Femlandia: The gripping and provocative new dystopian thriller from the bestselling author of VOX

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The campaign "Vodka from a Purer Place" declares Finlandia to be "naked vodka" by playing up its Finnish heritage and the "pure glacial spring water" from which it is made. In 1970, Alko, the state-owned alcoholic beverage company, established the Finlandia vodka brand name. The work ended, however, in the rousing “Finland Awakes” – an optimistic look towards the country’s future.

Life outside the gates is fraught with danger, but there’s something just as sinister going on within. Press censorship was a strong characteristic of Russian rule, and in 1899 Sibelius was asked to compose some music for a “Press Celebrations” event. Starting in the mists of Finnish legend with the Kalevala-inspired “Song of Väinämöinen”, the piece moved through musical depictions of events such as the introduction of Christianity to Finland, the Thirty Years’ War and a Russian invasion of 1714.Exploring that through the concept of Femlandia, acknowledging the many hurdles that would appear, could have made this book a super interesting and important read. She specialized in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and taught at universities in the United States, England, and the United Arab Emirates. I did not like all the misandry which I felt was a bit extreme and left me wondering if there is such a thing as being too feminist.

I felt like it set the tone for the rest of the book which I did find in all honesty a bit harrowing. The start of the economic collapse was enough to drive Miranda’s husband to suicide, leaving her and Emma destitute even before everything else went to rot.Femlandia is Christina Dalcher’s third feminist dystopian fiction novel, cementing her name in the genre. Femlandia is set in an alternate near future world when society has broken down and it’s chaos everywhere. She used to laugh at her feminist friend until shit hit the fan and oh well, maybe the crazy feminist was right. The dystopia is paper-thin, the plot is one you've encountered in more practiced hands many times, and the characters are universally loathsome. On paper, it looked interesting, but I failed to engage with the characters and struggled with this.

Society has somehow crumbled, the economy has gone to shit and people almost immediately start killing each other and/or themselves. The book shifts between Miranda’s perspective (which includes many random and sometimes unnecessary flashbacks), and Win’s perspective (all in the past, leading up to Win and Miranda’s estrangement).If you have read this review and discount my opinion because I am a man, then I have no doubt that this book will tick all of your boxes. The penultimate hymn-like section is particularly familiar and soon after it was published the Finlandia Hymn was performed with various words as far afield as the USA. As the story progresses and we arrive in Femlandia, a sanctuary for women away from the harshness of what is happening to the rest of the world and away from all men. There was a bit of transphobia which I get was to make you not like a character but I was not comfortable reading it. Once she starts to dig deeper into the community, she finds a lot more than she bargained for, and none of it good.