Dystopian novels usually start with a dystopian premise: something has happened to change the world we know into a horrible place to live.

What if government become so big and so repressive that it controlled everyone and everything?
1984 by George Orwell.

What if everyone in the world suddenly lost their fertility and stopped having babies? What would the world be like after twenty or thirty years of no new pregnancies?
Children of Men by P.D. James.

What if our world were destroyed and reconfigured by climate change and the greed of oil hungry corporations and industries? How would a future world cope with a severe scarcity of oil?
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. Semicolon review here.

What if the world seemed perfect, no hunger, no violence, no inequality? But what if the underlying mechanism that sustained the culture and kept it pure and perfect was horribly unjust and hateful?
The Giver by Lois Lowry.

What if a repressive government used cyber-tools to monitor and control all dissent and to quash freedom?
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Semicolon review here.

In Epitaph Road the premise is: what if most of the men in the world were killed by a virus that only affected males, and as a consequence women ruled the world?

As it turns out, the result of getting rid of all of the men looks pretty good at first. Poverty, crime, war, and hunger have all disappeared. I happen to think Mr. Patneaude is mistaken in his predictions of what a female governed an female dominated world would look like, but it’s an interesting proposition anyway.

Kellen Dent is one of the few, the disrespected, the males. He and all of his fellow men are restricted by law to only a few possible professions and required to have “minders” with them whenever they travel. So when Kellen finds out that the virus that killed all the men in the first place is coming back and may infect his father, it’s not easy for him to find a way to warn his dad. Then, as Kellen finds out more and more about the governing authorities and what’s really going on beneath the surface of his seemingly peaceful world, he must make life-and-death decisions not only for himself but also for the people he loves and for whom he is responsible.

The best part of this novel was the way it turned everything upside down as far as gender roles and prejudice are concerned and yet at the same time it reinforced the preconceptions that we have about the real differences between men and women. In the book, the men are responsible for all the violence and crime in the world. With men a distinct minority, women are free to walk out alone in the cities without fear, to be intelligent without caring about male competition, to go anywhere, do anything. Men, on the other hand, are restricted, discriminated against, sometimes even treated as potential criminals and second-class citizens. One of the most coveted jobs for a man is sperm donor. I really liked the way the book made me think about why we need both men and women to make a vibrant God-honoring culture and about what roles men and women play in the growth of good government and cultural achievement.

The issue that I had with the novel was that it seemed to move too fast. The characters came to decisions and acted in ways for which I, as a reader, felt unprepared. I often read reviews in which the reviewer complains that the pace of the novel was “too slow” or “uneven.” I actually felt that the pace of Epitaph Road was way too rapid. I needed more time and information to get to know the characters in the novel and to understand why they acted the way they did. Kellen was generally understandable, probably because I knew him the best. The rest of the cast–Kellen’s parents, his aunt, his two female friends/accomplices–seemed to act too quickly without adequate motivation or at least without reasons that I had enough knowledge to understand.

Still, as long as I skipped over the questions about motivation and preparation, I enjoyed reading the book. I would be interested in a sequel–if it answered my “trust questions” such as why did Tia and Sunday suddenly trust Kellen enough to risk their lives for him? And why did Gunny, another character, protect some kids he didn’t know? And why did Dr. Nuyen share secrets with Kellen when she was essentially working for his enemies?

Good solid dystopian fiction for the die-hard fan.