Queen High by C.J. Carey

(Quercus, 2022)

Reviewed by L.J. Hurst

Although not the first alternate history in which a Nazi leadership sits in London, Queen High is interesting among feminist visions of it. And “interesting” needs a list to explain why.

First, note that this is a sequel to Widowland, in which Rose Ransom and her friends and family were introduced. Rose works as a civil servant and literary censor. Her responsibility, though, is more like Winston Smith’s in Nineteen Eighty-Four: that is, Rose, to satisfy the aesthetic demands of (real Nazi) Alfred Rosenberg’s belief that women should be subject to men, and that literature should reflect this, re-writes the classics. The nadir of the practice can be read in the first sentence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a womb must be in want of a husband”.

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Review from BSFA Review 21 - Download your copy here.