An Excess Male

Even though the plot kinda went off the rails in the final 25%, I simply had to rate this a FULL 5 STARS. Also, thank you, Claude.ai, for this recommendation. You know me too well.

So this is a speculative fic/scifi novel set in near future China, as it struggles with the (inevitable...) demographic madness of its One Child Policy + sexist self-selection (when you could only have 1 kid, most people chose a boy). This has long been known to be a big problem - see this legendary Amartya Sen article from 1990, this wiki page, and this WaPo article from 2018. There is a GLUT of men right now in China.

So this book speculates on how that could play out in a couple generations. Without giving too much away (since I do think the book is masterful at revealing the layers to its story), in this near future China, polyandry is legally and socially encouraged. We begin with a young, handsome himbo named Lee Wei-Guo and his two dads - Big Dad and Dad - meeting with a matchmaker and a potential match: an existing marriage of two men and a younger woman. Lee Wei-Guo is proposing to join their marriage, since the government has recently upped the “max” that marriages can accommodate: now THREE men can marry one woman!

I won't spoil anymore of the story, but... from this delightful social scifi setup, I was stunned by how humane and touching it was. It really is an open-hearted and wise portrayal of what marriage is, what family is, and... what neurodiversity is?!!

Anyway, if you loved Y: The Last Man and that one fantastic Ursula LeGuin novelette, then you will love this one too.