Warrior’s Woman by Johanna Lindsey
Sometimes, you read to learn; sometimes, you read to elevate your mind or enhance your appreciation of beautiful language; and sometimes, you just want to be entertained. Sometimes, I read romance novels for entertainment.
I am not alone. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books was launched in 2005, and the New York Times now reviews romance novels. Because romance novels are moneymakers, they are churned out like chum, and many have correspondingly bad writing. To weed out the dreck, I often consult “best of” lists, such as this one, published by NPR in 2015, of 100 recommended romance novels. That’s how I learned of Warrior's Woman, which is described as follows:
"There are probably more sensible books by the great Johanna Lindsey — she's better known for the pirate yarn Gentle Rogue — but none so outlandishly fun as this tale of a space-faring security officer who lands on a planet of giant leather-trousered barbarian warriors and winds up claimed by the biggest brute of them all."
To put it mildly, this descriptor is misleading. Warrior’s Woman is the darkest romance novel I have ever read.
Our heroine is Tedra, is 23-year-member of an elite security force. Her home planet is not “Earth,” but it's obviously a technically advanced stand-in for Earth that has been ravaged by environmental disasters but maintains a high standard of living thanks to technology. So far so good! I was able to suspend my disbelief.
On Tedra’s planet, there are no more families; geniuses donate their gametes, babies are made in labs, and children are raised in institutions. On the plus side, there is gender equity. On the downside, there is no greenery, and all crops are grown in space. You can’t take a bubble bath to relax; dry “solaray showers” will keep you squeaky clean. The healthcare is so advanced as to constitute magic by contemporary standards.
Our heroine Tedra remains a virgin despite the fact that free love is the norm. Her planet has “sex-sharing” clinics on every corner and – bonus! – sex androids who are custom-made to please. (Tedra’s is a bore; I wouldn’t bang him either.)
This planet’s governance is redolent of your conspiracy-theory-loving uncle’s wildest fever dreams. One world government? Yes! Mandatory sex by the age of 25? Yes! Since Tedra is 23, HER TIME IS RUNNING OUT.
Tedra is fit and gorgeous, as romance novel heroines tend to be, but she’s a tall woman – 5’10” on a planet where men top out at 6’. As an elite warrior, she can dominate any man in her world – but can any man dominate HER? The lady is a sub. She’s also nagged by vague feelings of discontent and lack of fulfillment.
I guess we need a plot device, so a disgruntled politician stages a coup on Tedra’s planet. With the support of barbarian mercenaries from a far-flung solar system, he seizes power. Despite its advanced technology, this planet’s weapons are useless against … the “special steel” of the barbarians’ weapons. I swear I am not making this up.
To reward his mercenaries, the coup leader promises that the women of his planet will become their sex slaves – starting with female security officers such as Tedra.
Tedra is alarmed! Alarmed, yet alarmingly titillated by the stray barbarian she encounters who tries to rape her. A friend launches her to safety in a spaceship before additional mercenaries attempt to “breach” her, and yes, the novel calls losing one’s virginity “being breached.” Tedra’s mission: find a friendly planet and secure assistance by promising a sweet trade deal. Tedra has an AI computer helper who speeds her on her journey … to bliss.
After a week adrift in space, Tedra’s AI helper steers her to an unknown planet – one with such historic wonders as “trees” and “meat.” Almost immediately, she meets a hot guy in the woods – a hot guy who looks just like the barbarian mercenaries who conquered Tedra’s planet. He is horrified by her naughty apparel, which sounds like “business casual.” He doesn’t believe her tales of interstellar travel because his planet doesn’t even have airplanes, but he’s more than willing to believe she’s a shameless strumpet. “Challen,” the hot barbarian, immediately attempts to “claim” Tedra.
This barbarian, like all his peers, looks like Fabio – the book seems to have been written with him in mind as the cover boy, and he obliged. Despite Challen’s size (unspecified but “very tall”) and immense musculature, Tedra is confident she can best him in combat. She is mistaken! He tosses away her phaser like a pair of crumpled panties and proves immune to all her fancy security moves. Upon losing, Tedra is bound to give him service for a month. Guess what kind of service? Just guess!
The non-consensual nature of this arrangement is elided because Tedra is finally feeling lust. Challen has put Tedra in her place – as one increasingly suspects the author believes a man should do. Tedra is overwhelmed by his sexy muscles and dominance and wants to bone him immediately. They bone almost immediately. Tedra learns sex can be fun! And she starts to learn about Challen’s planet.
This planet is primitive compared to one with, you know, interstellar space travel and sex robots, but it has running water and energy. But of course, there are drawbacks. Women have no independent rights. Because of the barbarians’ prolific sex drives, women either have to be under the protection of a man or are held in captivity. It sounds like sex trafficking to me, but this arrangement was presented in benign – nay, favorable – terms.
Do you have older family members who love Gone With the Wind? This planet also has a servant class described as darker-skinned people who were conquered centuries before. Are they dissatisfied? Grumbling about the possibility of rebellion? No! They tell Tedra about how much they enjoy their subservient lot. Ruling-class men are allowed sexual access to these servant women, but the servant men are limited to their peers.
One never gets the impression that the author is drawing intentional parallels between unpleasantries in US history and this particular social arrangement. Let’s draw a curtain over it and go back to the main plot.
Tedra has been warned that women are routinely “punished” on this planet. After sneaking out of Challen’s palace because she’s curious to explore the new-to-her planet – the nerve! – she herself comes due for punishment. (Challen, of course, turns out to be a wealthy local ruler and not simply a random buff barbarian. This IS a romance novel!)
Tedra’s punishment is this: being driven into a sexual frenzy without release. The male barbarians, despite their usual propensity for gang rape, take a drug that induces impotence to inflict this “discipline.” They sexually “tease” women to the point of near orgasm but never “allow” them to climax. It’s the standard thing they do to keep the ladies in line.
So apparently, this is a planet on which NO ONE HAS FIGURED OUT HOW TO MASTURBATE.
As this is a romance novel, Tedra falls in love with Challen. They spar and argue between bouts of (surprisingly vanilla) sex. But Tedra hasn’t forgotten her values! She keeps berating Challen about his planet’s lack of women’s rights. In return, he gives long, ponderous speeches detailing why this treatment of women is necessary. All of these diatribes boil down to some version of "we barbarian men cannot control ourselves” – this despite the existence of a drug that eliminates sexual desire – but Tedra always sees the "logic" in his position and secretly concurs he's correct.
And honey, some of us dated that asshole in college too, but thank God we didn't marry him.
Though she spends at least 40% of her waking hours having sex, Tedra is nonetheless bored since women aren't allowed any paid employment and basically just sit around gossiping or doing chores. All the other women hate her because she literally dropped out of the sky and landed Challen, the barbarian Chad of Chads. Nonetheless, Tedra finds she enjoys housecleaning when she is again punished for some “infraction” that involves a banal attempt to exercise autonomy. (Challen is out of town and unable to use his usual thumbscrews.) Those rugs aren’t going to beat themselves, Tedra!
Challen eventually learns she’s not lying about being an interplanetary space traveler, and she persuades him to help reverse the coup on her home planet. The lookalike barbarians turned out to have been abducted from a penal colony on Challen’s planet hundreds of years before and made into interstellar slaves. Challen’s wholesome horde easily bests them, although we learn in a brief aside that there were indeed mass rapes on Tedra’s planet. That seems like an odd way to incorporate verisimilitude, but okay.
Because Tedra had forgotten how babies used to be made – on her home planet, all food and water are laced with birth control – she has become pregnant and decides to return with Challen, where I presume they live in extreme boredom after the thrill of new relationship sex has passed.
And that’s … the happily ever after? The reader is obviously supposed to root for Tedra and Challen, but I did not. Both interplanetary settings seem like dystopian nightmares, but Tedra’s world is slightly preferable to Challen’s land of misogyny. At the end of the book, Tedra still thinks women should have some rights, and her hero still thinks that using sexual torment to punish women is a brilliant and appropriate strategy for maintaining their “obedience.” I’m not sure these two crazy kids are going to go the distance!
So what’s the takeaway from this weird, random romance novel from 1990? Why am I bothering to review it? Even though it fails at escapism, it does, in a rather narrow and ham-fisted way, attempt to grapple with the paradox of female autonomy. Most people’s lives involve tradeoffs; for women who want children, those tradeoffs tend to involve complicated decisions about careers and childrearing. Tedra doesn’t even have the option of childbearing until she leaves her home planet, and sure – that’s a strike against it.
But she’s pregnant, so what is she supposed do? It’s implied that abortion would be more or less mandatory on her home planet – and even if not, since all the other babies are grown in labs, it’s doubtful her job has provisions for maternity leave or postpartum recovery.
She wants the baby, but to keep it, she can’t maintain her career or her autonomy.
Women in advanced economies with democratic governance aren’t typically presented with such stark dilemmas, but that doesn’t mean we have a smorgasbord of appealing possibilities. After I had my first kid, I found myself overwhelmed by the burdens of infant care and professional obligations and promptly joined the “mommy track.” Do I recommend this to other women? It depends! (Insert boring caveat here about how many women don’t have any choice, blah blah blah; you already know this, and so do I.)
The loss of professional status sucks. It just does. No one really respects housewives – not even fellow housewives – but there’s a reason you can’t just waltz back into the workforce after a 10-year hiatus and demand the corner office. I was only briefly out of the workforce altogether, but I’d probably be heading for a more luxe retirement if I had leaned in. My kids are both in double-digit years, and I still only work part-time by preference.
Because kids are a lot of work! Poor Tedra is about to find out just how much work they are when you have no support network, since again: all the other women on Challen’s planet actively loathe her. I found staying home with my kids to be meaningful and also kind of boring. In the absence of a more energetic temperament or family care network, it just seemed like the best of the not-ideal options available to me at the time, and it probably was.
Warrior’s Woman approves of my choice. It puts its thumb heavily on the “traditional roles” scale, but the only selling points the author makes for Challen’s barbarian world are good sex and horticulture – and good luck trying to squeeze in multiple daily sessions of energetic intercourse with a newborn.
Maybe this vision was more compelling in 1990. The author, who died in 2019, may have had a deeply traditional temperament – the darker-skinned servant subplot certainly doesn’t suggest a progressive outlook – or maybe she just got carried away with her world-building. Maybe she is being more honest about societies with rigidly enforced gender hierarchies than she means to be.
In the end, she shies at the post of making the heroine totally dependent on Challen: Tedra gets to keep her spaceship. Tedra chooses planet tradwife for now, but she has a way out if she wants to take it. It’s a little sad that this may be the best of her possible worlds.