Jess Corban has created a firecracker of a new world with “A Gentle Tyranny,” the first in a new series called “Nedé Rising.” The book stars Reina Pierce, young woman who on her eighteenth birthday must choose a Destiny. There are many Destinies to choose from in Nedé, from politics, the arts, a fierce army-like force called the Alexia, and even one dedicated simply to raising children. There’s one thing in particular that makes Nedé special, however: it is entirely dominated by women. Two hundred years earlier, Nedé came to be after a special coalition of women decided that they had experienced enough tyranny, violence, and discrimination under the patriarchy of a capitalist world. Emerging in the mid-21st century, Nedé was the result of a special vaccine and ‘life serum’ which was created to help rid the world of Brutes: men. Instead, a new race of “Gentles” would be born. They would live out their lives serving the country, in essence becoming the world’s servants. When Reina is chosen as a Candidate to be the next leader of Nedé once her grandmother, the current Matriarch, steps down, she learns quickly that the perfect, virtuous world she grew up in actually holds some dark secrets. Are “Gentles” actually born gentle? And is Nedé truly any better than the tyrannical world it supposedly helped overthrow?
