An Excess Male

by Maggie Shen King

Set in a near-future China the One Child Policy has resulted in 40 million men unable to find wives. This book is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, China, Speculative Fiction, Book Club, LGBT

416 pages, ebook

First published September 12, 2017

About the author

Maggie Shen King is the author of An Excess Male (Harper Voyager), a Washington Post Top 5 Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel of 2017, a James Tiptree, Jr., and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. She is Goodreads September 2017 Debut Author the Month.

Her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Fourteen Hills. Her manuscript Fortune's Fools, won Second Prize in Amazon's 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was FANTASTIC ...... surprisingly fantastic.

I first learned of this book back in December, last year while speaking to another stranger on the airplane.

This DEBUT is a FASCINATING- FRIGHTENING-FELICITOUS-EXASPERATING- FUTURIST story.....
Lives are governed by the Communist government.....set in the 21st century China.
“China’s one-child policy and it’s cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than 25% of the men in their late 30s will not have a family of their own.”
“An Excess Male” is the story of one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated communist ideals, and social engineering”.

The leftover- excess- male is named Wei-guo. He wants to be married but he’s not wealthy enough to afford a wife.
In the meantime the country has allowed women to marry more than one man.
Ha.... are some of the women here cringing? 🙉 Or does it excite any of you? 🐸 haha!

The women who marry two men must observe the bedtime rules. She must spend equal - but separate- sex time with her two husbands - so that each man will become fathers. TELL ME THIS DOESN’T SOUND INTERESTING?
It is.... it’s is.... it is!!!

May-ling already has two husbands. They want a 3rd child. They are hoping Wei-guo will fit nicely with their family.... which includes being a man that they can trust with their secrets. Big secrets..... definitely secrets!

This becomes an absolutely heartbreaking and complicated story about a family, and how their love, and basic civil rights can thrive under an authoritarian country.
Two husbands - a wife - and 2 children connect with potential third husband and another little bambino.

Women grossly outnumber men affecting the balance of power. ( we know it’s the opposite in China today)......but this story feels relevant. Each of the 4 main characters alternate in narrating. We see every point of view.
Both sexes were each making sacrifices for their family.

If a family follows the rules, has no friends in high places with no special privileges...they might ‘mostly’ be happy. But what if one of the children was gay ... or committed a crime? Life gets very complicated.
And.....Do unmarried men - upstanding good, contributing to society - matter so little that many may be killed off?
Of course it’s what we think about - for women- in China today. Scary!

The human issues explored in this novel were genuine.....feeling all-too plausible.

Thrilled to have discovered author Maggie Shen King. She lives in the SF Bay Area, but grew up in Taiwan. She studied English at Harvard University. Very skillful writer.
I look forward to her next book - and perhaps meeting her one day. After all -The book that I have was already signed by Maggie Shen King - to another woman named Kathy.
Thank you Kathy- whoever you are for donating your book to our local thriftbox here in Willow Glen.....where I bought your clean like-new copy for a dollar. A bargain!

At the moment I have discovered that this book is a $1.99 Kindle special! Worth the pleasure - reading price for SURE. I bought it myself - so I can pass my physical copy on.


Note: do not let the words science-fiction and fantasy stop you from reading ‘this one’. It’s written with emotional intimacy of the characters. And the subject matter is relevant.

[Justine · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

A compelling and emotional read. I loved the close examination of what constitutes family, love, and happiness for the four main characters, and how wonderfully interconnected they were with each other.

The totalitarian regime combined with the regressive sociopolitical views forced by the government on the population made for a sufficiently frightening and depressing backdrop.

Definitely recommended, particularly if you like rich, character driven stories.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had an interesting premise and message though the characters left me wanting more. In An Excess Male, Maggie Shen King envisions a China where due to the One Child Policy, near 40 million men struggle to find wives and women can take multiple husbands. We follow one family where Hann, a gay man, and XX, his disabled brother, are both married to May-ling, who wants to take a third husband, Wei-guo. We follow the fallout that ensues when various members of this arrangement try to resist the oppression enforced upon them by their dictatorial government.

I will start by saying I liked the messages about the heteronormative nuclear family and the pressures related to childbearing in this novel. Are we useful if we aren’t contributing to a nuclear family in some form? Shen King interrogates this question well and explores the consequences of straying from what society expects of us.

That said, I found the characters pretty weakly-drawn in this novel. I felt like they each experienced some form of marginalization, though beyond that lacked richer nuance or depth. An Excess Male also contains an action side plot where I read it and was like… I don’t understand what the point of this is. Also, why was one of the more femme/ostentatious gay men one of the most villainous characters?? Still, I’m looking forward to discussing this book with my Asian American book club.

[Aditi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong…it is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideas.”

----Emma Watson


Maggie Shen King, a Taiwanese bestselling author, has penned a highly thought-provoking dystopian novel, An Excess Male that revolves around a not-so young man longing for companionship with a woman while getting wrapped up in a government-influenced deadly drama and scandal and is set in not-so-distant future in China, where male to female sex ration has become tremendously high, gradually making women almost extinct from the face of the Earth. This is the Handmaid's Tale for the men set the year of 2050.


Synopsis:

From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classic The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke.

Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son.

Now 40 million of them can't find wives. China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

In Maggie Shen King’s startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all too plausible future.


Lee Wei-guo, a 40 year old award-wining physical trainer has now only one dream to get married to a woman and start his loving family. But in the year of 2050 in China, when the male-to-female ratio has drastically gone up, it is real difficult to find a woman to get married to, as a result, government of China has set certain laws to maintain a balance, starting with the allowance to the handful of desirable and marriageable women left in the country to have a maximum of 3 legally-wedded husbands and to have one child with each of her husbands, not only that, the husbands must may dowry to the woman and her family while getting married to her. Yet Lee has hope that he will get married to his dream woman someday even though getting married through matchmakers is a luxury now. And he does meet the woman of his dreams with her two husbands and her child, but sadly his road to happiness become too dangerous when Lee gets caught up in a Government-initiated deadly conspiracy in a country where being gay and mentally retarded will label you as a criminal.

Its not hard to imagine a dystopian future like that, when the preference for male children has given rise to a drastically high rate of male-to-female sex ratio, turning female human species almost extinct from the world. This is a hardcore soon-to-be-reality, if female infanticide is not stopped or banned either by the government or by the world health organization. I was not at all feeling sorry for the men while reading this book, I felt like they deserved such a poor fate of not being able to get married or not being able to indulge in physical bodily pleasures in our near future. Even though I strongly condemn the issues of female infanticide and gender inequality, I know that this is how our society or the world is going to go on till the end of the time and this author has done a brilliant job in re-imagining on what might happen and how is it going to finally affect the men, if we do not stop or address to those grave issues growing like a wild fire in the societies we live in.

The author's writing style is exquisite and evocative enough to move the readers deeply with the voices of the protagonists. There is a subtle hint of a love story centered around the political conspiracy against those are Willfully Sterile men meaning gay, and those romantic scenes and emotions are dealt with utmost sensitivity and feels to keep the readers hooked on to the story line. The narrative of the four main characters are very well portrayed with enough realism and is articulately penned to make the readers contemplate with the plight of the characters. The pacing is steady and smooth, laced with gripping tension and nuances of a deadly and clever conspiracy is bound to keep the readers glued till the very end of the story.

The world imagined by the author, so rather say the future depicted by the author is logical, full of sense and is extremely believable. Hats off to the author for trying to make us show the ugly truth behind our constant preference for male children and preferring men over women. The characters are extremely well painted by the author into the story line. The voices of the four protagonists, two brother, Hann and XX, their wife, May-ling and her soon-to-be-husband, Lee, are vividly arrested by the author with layers of back story and character development to make them look real in the eyes of the readers. Hann is a headstrong man who only wants to keep his family happy, nerdy XX is busy in his world and has little to do with his wife or the child or his brother, May-ling is a compassionate and thoughtful woman who cares for all the men in her life despite of a broken past and Lee is a determined ordinary man with dreams and aspirations.

In a nutshell, this book is going to resonate with all the human beings of this world, and trust me, this is a must-read book that is an sure-shot eye-opener for many who turn a blind eye to gender inequality and female infanticide.


Verdict: A compelling, an enlightening and a must-read dystopian science-fiction.


Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Maggie Shen King for giving me an opportunity to read and review her debut book.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

AN EXCESS MALE imagines what happens in a China where the One Child Policy and the preference for male children leads to a society where men vastly outnumber women but society frowns on unmarried men. In this world, women can take up to three husbands and have one child with each of them. What's so interesting about the world King imagines is how patriarchy and bigotry still persist despite the fact that they no longer make sense.

Told through 4 different points of view, we follow Wei-guo, a single man nearing middle age as he attempts to join a family as a third husband. This family, made of May-Ling and the brothers she has married, Hanh and XX, is not what they seem. My favorite kind of novel with different points of view is one where we learn new things every time we switch narrators and realize that things were not as clear as we thought. This is definitely one of those novels, at least for the first half. May-Ling's family has secrets, a lot of them, and it's unclear whether bringing Wei-guo into their family will help them deal with their problems or create more of them.

If you enjoy speculative novels that explore gender and sexuality, this is an excellent choice. It gets overly complex in the last third, with some thriller-style plot thrown in that seems out of place with the rest of the book. But the character portraits here are very strong and well done. One character is potentially Autistic, which usually sets off alarm bells for me, but I never felt like this character came off as false and it was generally a strong portrayal of the complexity of emotion and social behaviors with neurodiverse people. 3.5 stars.

Major subplots include stigmatization of LGBTQ and mentally ill characters, which may be difficult for some readers.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have every incentive to procrastinate right now, yet An Excess Male wastes away by my bed, unfinished. I think I'd rather do the dishes than keep reading it, to be honest, which is frustrating because it really is a well-considered, carefully constructed, scarily plausible thought experiment.

The basic premise: near-future China is having a woman crisis. After decades of its one child policy and strong cultural preferences for boys ('to carry on the family name'), there are too many young men and not nearly enough women. The government's solutions to this shortage are to a) allow every woman up to three husbands; b) institute a government-run prostitution service (euphemistically known as Helpmates); and c) enlist the young men in highly competitive military games to provide an outlet for their sexual frustration.

You might think that the scarcity of women would finally give women the upper hand in Chinese culture. Wrong. Instead, they're still pawns in which their parents receive huge dowries when they're married (to someone of the parents' choosing), forced into marriages in which they could easily find none of their husbands desirable, yet have to follow strict baby-making regimes, and controlled by husbands who still have all the power. They seem to have little choice except to be homemakers with no independent income.

And men don't seem to have it all that great, either. Our protagonist Wei-Guo, a single man in his 40s, has finally saved up enough dowry to consider becoming a third husband to Mei-Ling. But as always, in Chinese culture, you marry a family rather than an individual, and Mei-Ling's family - two brothers as her previous husbands, a problem child toddler - is a rabbit warren of secrets.

This is a grim read. The culture that our hapless protagonists find themselves in is heavily repressive of anything that doesn't speak of filial and governmental piety, including homosexuality, neural atypical-ness, and independence of thought and action. Also, An Excess Male has some of the baldest, most cringe-worthy, and actually painful to read sex scenes ever.

There's plenty to admire in here: it's a bold exploration of how wrong things can go when you combine a patriarchal culture and an autocratic government. But it's not a pleasant read, and when things go sour for the characters (sourer than they started out, anyway, and no one in here was dealt a good hand of cards to begin with), I found myself reluctant to continue. The pacing also feels a little off, since over the first half of the book feels like set up...for a world I found intensely claustrophobic and a denouement I didn't ultimately care about enough to continue.

I should note that plenty of my distaste stems from personal baggage. This is at least in part the culture of my grandparents - my grandmother was from the last generation of rural Chinese women to have bound feet, and she was angry when I was born that I turned out to be another girl (and blamed my mother, which might say something of her grasp of biology). An Excess Male is profoundly uncomfortable reading for me, perhaps in part because I was lucky enough to escape that culture.

Your mileage may vary. It's not a bad book. It's just not one I care to finish.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up

THIS WAS A GIFT FROM MY OLD FRIEND CARO. THANK YOU, DEAR LADY. SUPERB CHOICE!

My Review: You'll notice that this book's review is coming out in Pride Month's Cavalcade of Queerness. You'd likely assume that, given the extreme shortage of women in the China that Author Maggie Shen King posits, there'd be quite open homosexuality everywhere because men gonna do the wild thing however, whenever, wherever they possibly can.

I speak from experience. And I am here to tell you: You do not know China, Chinese culture, or the nature of authorial sneakiness if you bought that. No, women being scarce does not give them power: It gives their fathers power. No, women being scarce does not mean gayness is tolerated by the authoritarian state: It results in social deformities and closetedness and all the horrors you see in China today.

Okay, so now that I've told you what you'll learn in the first 30-ish pages of the book. Why read it? Because it is a well-designed labyrinth that will disorient you and prevent you from trusting your own judgment of who can or should be trusted. Wei-guo is a man adrift, a man without anything to anchor himself to, and is glad to find a home with his secret-driven marriage partners.

"Are you Willfully Sterile?" Big Dad says.
...
Hann frowns with disbelief. "I'm a married man. With a child," he roars. He pops to his feet but is boxed in...

"The Lee family has heard rumors," {the matchmaker} says. "And of course, they must ask you this question. It is better they ask you directly, don't you think?" He coaxes Hann to sit.

Hann buttons up his suit coat. "You can destroy my family with accusations like that."

It is so awkward that I stand too to keep {Hann} company. Big Dad glares at us both.

"We are honorable, good-hearted people. Get to know us, and you can make up your own mind as to who we are." Hann turns to address {Wei-guo}, and for a instant his eyes soften. "If you decide that we are right for you, then know that we are a very tightly-knit, a very close and private family. Cherish us, and we will cherish you. Marrying us is not a decision you will regret."

I like what I hear, but Big Dad stands to put on his jacket, no doubt offended that Hann dares to bypass his authority and address me directly. I'm sick of him trying to sink my chances. Dad scrambles to his feet and follows Big Dad's lead. Despite my dads' brusqueness, Hann is gracious in his farewell.

This is a pivotal scene...this is Big Dad, the first husband and father/ruler of Wei-guo's future. He smells a rat. He's right. But Wei-guo doesn't care about rodentia, he cares about being in his own family, being able to make a life that isn't in his dads' control. He is, after all, forty-four years old at this point.

I don't guess most need to be told that "Wilfully Sterile" means gay, do I? Why that should be a bad thing in a society as lopsidedly male-dominated as this fictitious Chinese one is, I can't fathom. Still, there it is, with its hideous threats of "family dissolution and forced sterilization" to be enacted on the guilty.

What ensues is a heart-stopping, heart-wrenching tale of the way that authoritarian regimes run peoples' lives for the benefit of the State that makes the rules. It's not like we haven't seen this trend in action...it's the genesis of the One-Child Policy that got China into the mess this book posits. And, seeing a chance to make its control tighter over the very nature of the family, the state reverts to its bad, hamfisted ways. Prescribing and legislating and brutally enforcing "morality" is a very popular trope among authoritarians. Look at the "pro-family" drivel the red-meat right throws around in the US. And, crucially, look at whom it's directed, and from whom rights, freedoms, the very right to define and live an identity is withheld...and tell me this book should not be on the bestseller lists right now, in 2022, as midterms of HUGE importance are ramping up.

I strongly urge you to get and read a copy as soon as possible.

[RG · Rating 2 out of 5]

What starts off as a great concept becomes a rather over written slow novel where nothing really happens. Don't go in expecting a smart sci fi dystopian concept novel. Its really just a literary drama in disguise. The scifi concept is just a very fine mist. The characters are rather uninteresting and the plot overly slow. Not sure if this is based on any potential facts but it does feel realistic in the authors writing style.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

China's One Child Policy will result in around 24 million more men than women of marriageable age by 2020. That's fact, not science fiction and takes into account that the One Child Policy has been wound up. This novel extrapolates a future where the One Child Policy continued and caused lasting social adaptations, but even so, most of the underlying issues explored in this book are now inevitable, if somewhat exaggerated here.

The Excess Male at the heart of this book is Lee Wei-guo, a 44-year old moderately successful personal trainer who has acquired the means to court a wife. However, even after saving his entire life the best he can hope for is as a third husband of an already-established family. He's looking to marry into the Guo family, with the senior husbands being Hann and Xiong-xin, both in their 50s, and the wife is 22-year old May-ling. They also have a young child. But nothing is straight-forward. The Guo family have secrets, and their own reasons for wanting a third husband for May-ling, reasons that put the entire family in dangerous opposition to government policy. But government policy in this future China is regressive and prescriptive, pushing even the straight-laced and honorable Wei-guo into danger.

This is an important book, looking at a very real future that China faces soon (if not now), but through a dystopic lens. A very believable one unfortunately. The treatment that same-sex attracted males receive in this book and by this version of the Chinese government is horrible, as is the direct intervention by the government into people's marriages. The implementation of family planning policy in that country also makes the setting unfortunately plausible; with the Chinese government having form in the area.

But all of that is just background to a beautifully human story of four people developing deep relationships with each other, only one of which is actually sexual. It focuses a lot of time and energy on the inter-relationships between the spouses, many of which show simultaneously the deep understanding of each other while still showing just how annoyed or frustrated they can be with themselves. There's also great positive depictions of older gay men as well as someone with Asperger's (or somewhere on the ASD anyway), neither of which leaves out the negatives.

As I said, this is an important book for anyone interested in China and its social issues, if not dystopian science fiction in general.

[Billie · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting concept and characters get bogged down by over-writing. There isn't much that actually happens here and it doesn't happen for hundreds of pages. Part of the problem is that the book is being published by Voyager, which specializes in Science Fiction and Fantasy and this reads more like a literary novel with the trappings of S-F/dystopic fiction. Marketing shapes expectations and perception and this is being marketed to the wrong audience.

I saw all of the five-star reviews for this and thought I was missing something. Those reviews, though, are all from new or long-dormant accounts and appear to be from friends of the author, which makes me like the book less. I'm almost feeling perverse enough to give it a one-star rating to bring the overall score to something more in line with where it probably should be.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars
Video Review: https://youtu.be/Kri0TLzmctk

This was a super interesting premise. As a dystopian stemming from a real social policy, this one felt disturbingly plausible. In terms of story, this was a very dark and depressing read. I realized that is the point of a dystopian but it was a rough read. The main character is so unlikeable and the whole future is riddled with prejudice and hateful thinking. I realized the opinions of characters do not necessarily reflect that of the author but it was a pessimistic tone I just wasn't prepared to read.

[Elliot · Rating 2 out of 5]

I almost loved this book. In fact I did love it, until about halfway through when I realized where it was going. Then, not so much.

First of all this book is far more speculative fiction than it is strict sci-fi. That's actually fine with me, but since it was marketed as sci-fi (and published on a sci-fi imprint) that did throw me off a little bit. The focus in this book is on the characters, not the world-building nor plot. Thankfully King does a good job with her character development - each character was well drawn, distinct, and sympathetic even when I didn't care for them at times. (Except BeiBei - he may in fact be the most obnoxious child in literature to date.) I was invested in these people and their plights.

The core of this story, at least for me, is how these four individuals are failing to have their needs met. And this is where my feelings on this book become complicated.

Spoilers below!
What I wanted the book to be about is these four people coming together, learning how to better take care of and love one another, and forming a supportive cohesive nontraditional family unit. That is not what happens. Instead the book does something I was suspicious of from the beginning: it imperils the queer character, makes them suffer, and ultimately cuts them off from the family unit. For the last half of the book he is basically just there to suffer and drive the other characters to action. The character that was neurodivergent also has a less than satisfying ending in my opinion, failing to gain his freedom (or dogs) and spending his time trying to ward off surveillance. The only real winners are the straight couple. And while I see what King was doing, and I think the narrative was functioning correctly, this is simply a story I'm very very tired of reading. I am, in fact, exhausted.

So where does that leave me? I feel bad criticizing a book for being something other than what I wanted it to be. The book was well written, and effectively told the story King set out to tell. Unfortunately it wasn't a story I wanted to hear right now. Quite frankly it bummed me out. I would happily give King another try, as I think she's a good author, but this book left me sad and craving a story with better outcomes for its more diverse characters.


Book club - 2/19

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ended up being entirely different from what I expected. From the cover I was expecting something action packed and adrenaline heavy. It actually ended up being a character driven story.

The story is set in the future in China when there are far too many men and too few girls due to girls being killed/aborted/genetically engineered into boys. Wei-guo is an "Excess Male" and is trying to enter into a marriage contract as a third husband. While the book starts with his POV, it shifts throughout the book between him, the two other husbands, and the wife, May-Ling.

The book primarily shows how difficult it is to live in this culture when you're different. Of the two husbands one is gay, or "Willfully Sterile," and the other is a "Lost Boy," who I think was autistic. Each of the characters is desperately unhappy, which was a bit heartbreaking to see. I really liked the characters and seeing their lives progress was really interesting.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.25 stars

Better than just your four star, but not quite to the pinnacle of 5 star-ness. I have to hand it to Maggie Shen King—she takes several assumptions and trends, plays them out to their logical conclusion, and makes a dramatic book out of it. Plus I always enjoy speculative fiction that isn’t set in North America!

First, take the Chinese one-child policy. Add to that the preference for having a male child to inherit your goods. Mix in a good dose of authoritarian Communist party, which like most authoritarian regimes is ultra-conservative. This is the world that King introduces us to—where women are so scarce that men compete to be second and third husbands in polyandrous households. We meet Wei-guo, an excess male, who is rather desperate to become someone’s husband and the household that he aspires to join: that of May-ling and her two brother husbands.

Unattached young men are always a dangerous potential source of upheaval in a society, so despite the extreme shortage of women, the Chinese government frowns on single men. Many of these men, like Wei-guo, spend their free time playing war games out in the countryside, something that the government keeps close tabs on, seeing it as a potential challenge to the state instead of a way of venting aggression. Illogically, the government also disapproves of homosexuality, which really they should welcome in their demographic predicament. When the government disapproves of both of these safety values for their society, things are bound to go wrong.

All of these tensions come together to produce a human drama that is well worth your reading time.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intriguing premise (based on the 'real-life' consequences of China's one-child-policy) and well-developped characters. But quite a bit too slow for my taste and the plot is suffocated by too many (often rather boring) details.

2.5*

[richa ⋆.˚★ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25/5

Set in a near-future China the One Child Policy has resulted in 40 million men unable to find wives and where women are allowed to marry more than one man at a time. This is about Wei Guo and his quest to marry the woman he dreams to love of and have a family with.
It focuses more on the emotional turmoil of Wei Guo and the family he wants to marry into - which incudes May-Ling and her two husbands; Hann and XX. I found the writing a bit tedious to read, it was moving but it weighed heavily on my mind. I liked it but it was a bit regressive when it came to homosexuality, neurodivergence and even feminism felt repressed. The whole premise though unique failed to bring an appeasing conclusion and I felt pretty underwhelmed by the latter half.

[Jacqie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is classified as science fiction, it's a realistic extrapolation of what could happen in the near future in China, in my opinion. It feels almost as if this book is written about what's happening today.

The book revolves between 4 POV characters. Wei-guo is a fortysomething year old personal trainer who finally has a small chance at finding a wife. In this time, though, he will have to settle for being a third husband in a settled family with a wife and two husbands, since he doesn't have the status or money to try for more. Women are so scarce in China that men are forced to share spouses. May-ling is the wife in question, who has her own reasons for seeking a third spouse. Her two current spouses are Hann and XX (his own name for himself), brothers. There is also a toddler involved, BeiBei, whom I would hate to deal with, personally, due to his insistence on getting his own way and how easily he's frustrated into a temper tantrum.

I've spoilered this review because part of the reason that May-ling is seeking another husband is because she is dissatisfied with her own for various reasons. She really loves Hann and wants to be with him, but Hann is gay and only loves her platonically. XX is probably on the autism spectrum. She is decidedly not attracted to him, and he doesn't really seem to enjoy sex with her that much either. This book is all about how these characters try to get what they want with people who can't give it to them. There are uncomfortable sex scenes that are frankly coercive from both sides. May-ling is required to have sex with XX once per week despite her repulsion and she continues to try to forge a sexual bond with Hann despite his distaste for sex with her.

Wei-guo has no idea all this is going on. He just wants the chance to be part of a family, to experience love. His two dads aren't thrilled about him joining this family because they think that something is off somewhere, or maybe because they aren't happy about him leaving their household.

Wei-guo does realize that he must court May-ling's entire family, not just her. And he makes valiant efforts to create relationships with them all, including BeiBei. But there are a lot of political undercurrents in play that make it dangerous for people to be open about who they are. Homosexuality is a crime in China (this makes no sense to me, because it could solve a lot of problems, but I suppose nothing about persecuting homosexuality ever really makes sense). "Lost Boys", or people like XX, aren't allowed to have children because they possess qualities that the state finds undesirable. Surveillance is a constant, and only XX seems to truly understand just how ubiquitous that surveillance is.

What amazed me about this book is how the author managed to have such distinct voices for her characters. She sketches the difficulties and rewards of negotiating any family structure, much less one as complex as this sort of marriage. I was drawn into each of the characters' plights and wanted happiness for all of them, but there was tension throughout the entire book as to whether happiness, or even survival, was possible for all of them. In the end, this was a book about what it means to be human in the face of an implacable state which will grind individuals into dust in order to achieve its own ends. The humanity of each of these characters touched me. It made me think more about those who are forced to live under repressive regimes today, and what satisfaction or joy they might find even so.

[Sadie Forsythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spoilerish

4.5

I wavered between a four and five star on this book. It isn't easy to read at times and my first words on finishing the book were a wail of, "Hann doesn't get his happy ending." It's almost worse than that honestly, because a gay man in a family is replaced by a straight man and the family is functionally improved. It is definitely only the straight characters who get their simple happy ending, and that very much bothered me. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that I think there are more layers to it than just that.

Yes, if I took the very Scarlet O'hara-like everything will be better tomorrow passage at the end to just be a glib wrap up, then this book would fall in my estimation. Instead, however, I choose to read it to suggest that Hann is actually working with a person he could have a discreet, mutually meaningful relationship with, to bring about real social change in society that will enable him to openly rejoin his family. And this I see as a happy, if delayed ending. It's certainly the happiest ending the book could allow in the society as presented. I think it's important to remember that, despite involving love and family, this is not a romance novel. Tragic? Yes. But also hopeful.

A book isn't just it's ending, of course, and I found this one to also have a believable example of an autistic adult, poly relationships, positively represented gay men (there are mysteriously no lesbians or bisexuals, though you'd think the the latter would be ideal in such a society), beautiful writing and complex emotions. Also, I thought all the different types of love shown were wonderful. Though love was also demonstrated to be brittle and painful when not similarly reciprocated, no matter how hard the characters tried. And they REALLY tried.

All in all, An Excess Male made me think and feel and I truly enjoyed it.

[Rhode PVD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Torn. It’s a great book both as an extrapolation of how the near future may look based on where we’re going now, and also as a nuanced novel showing four adults (three men and one woman) falling in love with each other (in most cases platonically) and forming a true family unit.

We see through each of their eyes — the views through the the woman’s eyes and the autistic man’s eyes were the most engrossing. It’s well done. But it’s also hard to take for two reasons beyond the whole real-feeling privacy invading authoritarian government. The reasons are the world the characters inhabit is full of sexism and homophobia, although they themselves rise above bigotry in most ways.

I have no doubt the author is reflecting a truth about the direction modern Chinese culture may take. She’s not seemingly using the novel to put forth those views herself, but rather to combat them.

Yet. It’s hard to take in parts. When the woman is ordered to have sex with a husband she very much never wants to touch again. When she has to cook and care for a child fulltime although it’s clear these are not her talents. And, although the gay men in the book are allowed to exist but never marry or have families. (We do not see any other part of LGBTQ but given the worldbuilding, things must be dreadful in particular for lesbians)

The worst part for me: although the characters together are able to overcome a terrible government conspiracy, their family unit is shattered in the end. The heterosexual characters are able to salvage a family together and be happy — but the gay character pretty much loses everything except for his life.

A het-only HEA is sickening.

So, realistic or not, I am unable to give this book the five stars it otherwise deserves.

[K.J. Charles]

Intriguing premise of the logical extension of a one-child policy that leads to there being far too many unnecessary men [insert joke here] but it seems to be very much a character piece and I did not like any of the characters at all. An early casualty of my radical new reading policy which is "if you aren't actually enjoying it, you can stop. Yes, even if it's good."

[Megan]

I'm not going to leave a rating because even though I wasn't enjoying it and gave up, it was very much I case of my own expectations and not a flaw with the book itself. I wanted something, well, nicer. And from the setting to the plot to their people and their unpleasant, offensive thinking, there's just nothing nice here.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

“By the year 2030, China’s one-child policy and its cultural preference for male heirs will have created a society overrun by 30 million unmarriageable men. More than 25 percent of men in their late thirties will never have married.”

An interesting extrapolation of China's one child policy and how it might affect future generations. Though China discontinued the policy prior to this book being published, King undergoes a thought exercise: What does the future look like if China had maintained that policy.

King taps into an alternative history that is a bit of a horror story for women. In a patriarchy under the China one child policy parents often opt for a male child to carry on the name. In a cultural twist on the handmaid's tale, King envisions a world where men significantly outnumber women and all women must bear children. All women are married to 2 men. In this world, the gender of the child can be selected. Homosexuality is illegal yet almost inevitable as men outnumber women significantly. Families select female offspring to be be breeders and men must pay to be married. In effect, female offspring leads to family wealth. China is an authoritarian state where yes they are overly concerned by what happens in the bedroom.

The plot devices are a little trope-y with a women actually in love with one of her husbands who is gay and has no interest in having sex with her even though he loves his son. Her second husband is his brother who is socially awkward and whom his wife does not find attractive. This brother is a military man who connects more with animals than people. He does not want to lie with a woman that does not want him. The family has only produced one child so there is social pressure to have another child. Enter the "supposed" main character who is trying to become the third husband in the family. Third husbands are rare and the dowry is high to enter such a marriage. In this case the wife is very attracted to him as is her preferred husband. This family is in peril because of so many unorthodox family parts. Homosexuality is criminalized and the military environment is very strange...and this is a very militarized society.

I enjoyed the book and was enthralled with the worldbuilding. In this case, the condition that propelled the plot no longer exist in the real world, but it was a fascinating journey to the speculative near future.

4 Stars

Listened to the audiobook. James Chen, Tim Chlou, and Elaine Kao were excellent!

[Trin · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting concept -- an exploration of the possible consequences of the One Child policy, where it has resulted in a population of dangerously few women. But this is painfully slow. Scene after scene that cover the same ground, restating the characters' thoughts and motivations again and again. XX -- the character who's on the spectrum, what this dystopia terms a Lost Boy -- was the most interesting and well developed to me; sadly, the three other POV characters came across as quite flat, in particular the sole female character, who is given almost no personality at all, outside of how she relates to the men in her life.

Also this book contains one of the most annoying child characters ever, with a lot of the total page count given over to his insufferable dialogue. Dear lord.

There are some tense, horrifying passages, but also a lot of coincidences and dangling threads, and I had to force myself to finish.

[Ninitha (Niko) · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dystopian novel that doesn't explain the dystopian lifestyle in detail is a let down. There are great elements in this book, but somehow the characters feel under developed, and some plot twists unwarranted. It also seems deeply depressing that even in a matriarchal society, women are subjected to patriarchy. I'm not sure I like this book. But then again, I don't hate it either. It just all seems a little vague and all over the place, much like this review.

[Jamie Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd but interesting story, set in a dystopian future China where the gender imbalance has resulted in the official endorsement of polyandry. This focuses on one particular family where a young wife was sold into marriage to two middle-aged brothers, one of whom is gay, and the other on the autism spectrum. Her unhappiness has caused them to consider taking on a third husband, which is a risky prospect because of the necessity of keeping the nature of both men secret from an oppressive, authoritarian government.

The most compelling point of view is that of Wei-guo, the prospective third husband, who wants a family badly enough that he’s willing to take on this very troubled one. May-ling is sympathetic, but I was disappointed with Hann, who sincerely loves his family, and is understandably frustrated by being closeted, but he repeatedly risks discovery and disenfranchisement for all of them by maintaining sexual relationships with multiple people. However, I was touched by Hann’s efforts to help his brother prosper.

Much time is spent on the dynamics of the marriage, which is not without affection despite the many difficulties, but we do get glimpses of the very distressing social structure. All of the main characters have done their best (except for Hann’s sexual escapades) to conform to what their government expects of them, and yet they are all betrayed. There’s a horrifying, pervading fear of being discovered to be outside strict social norms. Wei Guo is the leader of a “strategic games” group, designed to occupy the spare time of single men, and he bravely resists when he’s ordered by the authorities to name the 5 men in his group “most in need of psychological help”, knowing that this will condemn them.

[elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

the only thing I care about in life are the bond between women, and how a dystopian as described in this book would affect those --- this book barely touches on that. The plot is always set in motion and perpetrated by men, and the sole female character is literally monopolized by all the male characters. There is very little interest in female rebellion, and the book didn't even touch on what the queer female experience must be like in this dystopian world, despite explicit and repeated discussion of the queer male experience.

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love (okay, I don't love, but I am appreciative of in a writerly sense) how even in a gender-skewed dystopia where polyandry is becoming the norm due to 40 million "excess males", women still are getting the short end of the stick and are still being pressured to produce sons. *sighs*

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard an interview with the author on the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast a while back and picked this up when I saw it at the bookstore a while later (this was all pre-pandemic, so this became part of my book hoard that could theoretically keep me reading for several years). I decided to read it now as a nod to Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

The Chinese government's controversial one-child policy began in 1979 and ended in 2015, but it will have a legacy for decades to come, particularly in the creation of a large class of unmarried men, namely, the excess males of the title.

The novel takes place in near-future Beijing and begins as an unmarried middle-aged man, Wei-Guo, meets with a prospective bride, May-Ling, and her two husbands, Hann and Xiong-Xin (aka, XX). Each of these four characters gets POV chapters, some first-person and some third-person. And you probably noticed that polyandry has become accepted as a way to deal with the excess males (polyandry has been practiced in China, Tibet, and other places in the past). As the novel unfolds, we learn that May-Ling is unhappy in her marriage, largely because she doesn't find XX attractive and Hann is secretly gay. The main arc of the plot involves the various dramas surrounding each of the four characters and their dealings with the authoritative Chinese government (Hann cares about his family despite his secret, XX is a weird computer nerd, May-Ling is overwhelmed by her husbands and her young son, and Wei-Guo just wants to get married).

A comparison with The Handmaid's Tale comes to mind, but it's not entirely apt. The government is plenty dystopian here, but the characters are actually really likable as they try to live within this system. This also isn't a Hunger Games type story of outright rebellion, at least not quite so overtly (there is a bit of a small-scale rebellion later that I won't spoil).

I found the likeability of the characters most surprising. Hann, despite being less than happily married to a woman, loves his family in a thoroughly Confucian way that I find endearing. Wei-Guo and May-Ling might even, as unlikely as it seems, fall in love. But my favorite is probably XX, who starts off as the type of abrasive, socially-inept tech nerd who has no friends for a reason and eventually won me over as the type of friend I might love even though he makes me roll my eyes at his awkwardness.

The novel does lag quite a bit in the middle after we get to know the characters and before the plot picks up toward the end. The end was interesting, but I think my favorite part was getting to know the characters in the first 150 pages or so.

Philosophically one interesting thing is that this is obviously drawing on dystopian science fiction in some ways, but it's also within the Confucian context of modern China (yes, the government is officially Communist, but Chinese Communism does include Confucian elements. President Xi, for example, regularly extolls Confucius. And a few decades of Communism can't undo millennia of Confucianism). Confucianism is far too complicated to summarize here, but one might say that this novel dramatizes two different poles or interpretations of Confucianism. On one hand, Confucianism can be interpreted as an authoritarian philosophy of deference to traditional authority in the name of the greater good. On the other hand, Confucianism can be taken to propose an ineliminably social vision of human nature that takes seriously deep-seated human intuitions about the value of family. The brilliance of this novel is that it shows both of these interpretations at work.

I'm not going to defend the one-child policy, but in the face of massive population growth I can understand the rationale for it in terms of using the state's authority for the greater good. This is obviously abhorrent in terms of Western individualism, but the novel shows that it might have unacknowledged consequences in terms of human sociality and importance of family that are recognized in traditional Confucianism. What happens to all these middle-aged men without wives or families? What happens to women pressured into complicated family situations due to these demographic considerations? How do polyandrous (or polyamorous?) families figure out how to work in differing cultural contexts?

One thing I think even the most individualistically-inclined Western reader can appreciate is that we are all embedded in families, even if our families are chosen rather than biological. And this novel shows that our families create plenty of drama and love no matter where or when we live.

See also my blog review: https://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/2...

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Handmaid’s Tale is an apt comparison for An Excess Male, a dystopic sci-fi novel that extrapolates the results of China’s One Child Policy.

An Excess Male centers around one family and Wei-guo, an “excess male” who hopes to join that family. In the future imagined by King, China has turned to polyandry to deal with their skewed sex ratios. Legally, a marriage is allowed to have one wife and up to three husbands. Wei-guo, a forty-something bachelor dreams of having a family, but even entering a marriage as a third husband, his chances at marriage are still slim. But hope is in sight: the family of May-Ling, an attractive young woman with two husbands, is interested in taking him on. But the family has secrets of their own, secrets that could destroy their household if ever revealed…

I initially thought that, given the premise of the book, women would have more power and equality. Turns out that’s not true. The future imagined by An Excess Male is just as patriarchal as our present. Women are placed on a pedestal. They might be more valuable objects, but they’re still objectified and denied equality. In the society of An Excess Male, women are confined to the home and the roles of wives and mothers. In fact, having multiple husbands makes their lives worse, if anything, as their marriage contracts stipulate that a wife owes each of her husbands a child and outlines bedroom schedules she’s obliged to follow. See why I said The Handmaid’s Tale comparison was appropriate?

It’s the elite, married men who have the power, especially those wealthy enough that they have a wife all to themselves. It’s sort of like the people already in power find ways to keep their power and keep their bigotries in place, no matter how illogical it may be. For instance, in An Excess Male, gay men are basically second-class citizens. They have to register with the government as a “Willfully Sterile” and are then surgically sterilized. Despite that, even registered gay men are at risk of getting swept up by the police, and those who aren’t registered can have their entire lives destroyed if discovered, being prevented from ever seeing or speaking to their children again.

In addition to being super sexist and homophobic, the society of An Excess Male is also super ableist. Like gay men, the neuroatypical are at risk of forced sterilization and, in their case, forcible commitment to an institution. The government deems all neuroatypical men “Lost Boys” and calls them a plight upon society, one they are determined to root out.

Thus the problems of the family our story centers around. Wei-guo is an excess male, which the government sees as practically disposable. May-Ling is terribly unsuited to the role of a housewife and primary caregiver for her rambunctious toddler. Her first husband, Hanh, is a closeted gay man who keeps his sexuality a secret because of how much he wants a child. If discovered, their family unit will be dissolved and he will never see his son again. XX, Hanh’s brother and May-Ling’s second husband, is most likely somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and he also would face dire consequences for failing to “pass.”

The narrative of the book alternates perspectives between the four characters. Interestingly, Wei-guo and May-Ling’s chapters are in first person while Hanh and XX’s are in third. I don’t know why the decision was made, but it worked out well enough. I enjoyed all of the characters’ chapters, and I never found myself wanting to skip one to reach another. An Excess Male is mostly a family drama, centered around these four people and their lives under a dystopic, authoritarian regime, although some other elements come in to play during the second half. From the very first chapter I was hooked and had trouble putting An Excess Male down. I ended up reading all of it in under twenty-four hours.

Forewarning, there’s some problematic/ambiguous consent stuff in An Excess Male, although I did get the feeling that the narrative was aware it was problematic. Again, Handmaid’s Tale comparison. May-Ling is sixteen when her family basically sells her in marriage to Hanh and XX, who are both substantially older (in their 50’s or 60’s, I think). If you’re thinking, “yikes,” I am too. There’s a lot of really uncomfortable sex scenes in this book. May-Ling knows Hanh is gay, but she continues to make sexual advances, and sometimes he’s too tired to fend them off. Also, XX doesn’t want to be married at all, but he’s basically stuck with the situation since divorce is extremely difficult and would cause all kinds of exposure to the family.

Probably my biggest issues with An Excess Male relate to how it handles queer issues. In short, not very well. The notions of sexuality presented are very binary — gay or straight. At one point in the story (when May-Ling is saying she and XX could divorce, she could then marry a straight man and Hanh a gay one), it would have made a ton or sense for it to acknowledge bi or pan people exist, but alas. Even if the society in the book thinks of sexuality as binary, I expect a novel dealing with these themes to recognize greater complexity. For a story with a major subplot about homophobia, it just doesn’t make any sense to only mention gay men as existing. Does the government similarly recognize lesbians? They’re never mentioned. My guess is that they aren’t recognized the same way and are forced to get married, because that’s what benefits the straight men who rule everything. The final straw for “this book doesn’t handle queer issues well” is the ending Hanh receives relative to the straight characters in the book. I won’t get into spoilers, but I was raising my eyebrow.

I would have liked more female characters as well (I’m not sure this book passes the Bechdel Test), but I can see why they were absent, since that is the basic premise of the novel. I still would have liked to see more relationships between women, but I guess that would be a whole different book. Maybe King will write another story set in the same world? I think there’s plenty of room for it, and I’d love to read it.

An Excess Male is a very complex story, dealing with issues of sexism, homophobia, and ableism. I think it actually works as a literary fiction/science fiction cross-over that could appeal to other groups. Although judging by other reviews, there’s some conflicts there. Some readers found it too genre while others found it too literary. Although I don’t think it handled the issue of homophobia super well, An Excess Male is still worth reading. It’s a story I’d recommend (maybe with a few caveats attached), and I’d love to see it get more attention from the sci-fi community.

Review from The Illustrated Page.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me on a journey. It was a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. And I don't mean that in a good way. Frankly, there were parts of this book that could have made it 5 stars, or at least a high 4. But other parts were worth of a 1 or a low two. Despite my 3 star rating, there wasn't much in between.

The initial chapter was everything that I'd dreaded based on the marketing copy for the book (N.B. I read it for my book club). I can't say that the marriage prospects of someone desperate to get married for the sake of marriage (rather than, you know, because you've found someone you want to spend your life with) really had me interested. I thought I was in for a slog.

For some reason, the most interesting and compelling aspect of the narrative--and really the chief source of conflicted--is barely hinted at in the blurb (and the title), even though it quickly becomes apparent after the first chapter.

The established family that our excess male wanted to marry into is hiding secrets--namely one of the husbands is gay, and the other is autistic. What makes this interesting is that their government strictly forbids members of either group being married, for fear they will pass on those traits. The best part is that this all feels like a generally realistic totalitarian state, unlike a lot of dystopian fiction.

But I say generally for a reason. Though it feels a lot more realistic, the nature of this totalitarian China diverges from realworld totalitarian China in some plot important ways. 1. One child policy. It doesn't exist anymore. It stopped existing 2 years before this book was published, and it was on it's way out for a while. 2. Then there's China's relations with the LGBT community. While by no means liberal, it may be best to compare their policies to don't ask, don't tell. China doesn't want to say no, but they don't really want to say yes either. They just don't want to be involved. They hide information about LGBTQ issues on the internet (but what subject is that not true for?), on the other hand--unlike the US--in every province it is possible for trans individuals to legally change their gender.

But occasionally gay stereotypes (e.g. bad at sports, sharp dresser) and autistic stereotypes (e.g. savant and antisocial) crop up. This is all the more problematic because most of the time the gay and autistic husbands are well characterized. Even more disgusting, the autistic husband was written in the 3rd person to deliberately put distance between him and the reader. Yeah, she was deliberately othering the autistic. (While in the final drafter, the excess male and the wife are written in the 1st person, and both the gay husband and the autistic husband are in the 3rd person, original drafts had the gay husband also in the 1st person)

When those issues didn't crop up, the book was good (in the middle). Mostly the characters are well written and their storylines compelling.

And then it rather suddenly changes into a political thriller, throwing me out of the book, changing the nature of the totalitarian threat. It was simply bizarre. Did some reader tell the author that more interesting things needed to happen? Because the banality of evil was doing well driving this book without the need for mass murder.

In the end though we are, despite the totalitarian threat, delivered something of a happy ending. At least it's a happy ending for the excess male, and the wife he now marries. The autistic husband gets a decent ending (in his stereotyped anti-social way). The gay husband has to flit from tree to tree (sadly, not in a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon kind of way) in order to even see his son.