A Comparative Anti-feminist Review: Terry Pratchett's "Monstrous Regiment" and Django Wexler's "The Shadow Campaigns" series

WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS!

Oh dear... I think the L space theory must be real because I've just read a parody of a book that was published 10 years later than said parody. Alternatively, Terry Prachett might have been a time-traveler. It must be either of these two things because I'm sure Mr Wexler was not so silly as to take Prachett's idea, change a few things, toss in the French revolution and make it serious. 

OK, so to start with, I guess I should provide you with a comparative summary.  Here goes:

In Prachett's 31st Discworld novel this girl Polly decides to disguise herself as a boy, join the Borogravian army and find her brother who is sort of missing. She enlists as Oliver, or Ozzer, under this great Sargeant Jackrum and this terrible Corporal Strappi. Among her fellow privates there's a vampire called Maladict, a religious loony nicknamed Wazzer, quiet Lofty and angry Tonker who always keep together, an Igor and a troll. Their "Rupert" or commanding officer is Leutenant Blouse, a very smart fellow with no real military experience, high ambition and an even higher level of autism. The current problem with Borogravia is its religion, in which almost everything is forbidden for being an abomination to their state  god Nuggan. The clergy's spies are everywhere. The country also managed to pick a fight with practically the rest of the Discworld and is in dire need of soldiers and even more so, of food. The squad of recruits, in their endeavor to reach the rest of the army, accomplish a variety of impressive deeds and gain notoriety, which helps them retake an important fortress and, having secured this strategical position, negotiate a truce with their enemies. From the shadows, unbeknownst to them they are aided by His Reluctant Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of Ankh-Morpork City Watch and diplomat extraordinaire of entirely unparalled diplomatic skills. The biggest joke of the novel, as hinted by the title, is that everyone in the squad (apart from their deserter Corporal and the Leutenant) is a female in male disguise. Very relevant to this review are the characters Lofty and Tonker, a pair of lesbians who ran away from this terribly abusive insitution, which is basically a prison for young girls. And so is Wazzer, who is like their Joan of Ark. This story marks the changing times in Borogravia by addressing the failing rigidity of its social structure and it ends with more young girls enlisting in the army.

Now let's take a look at the Shadow Campaigns. So this quiet girl called Winter runs away from this terrible prison-like institution, disguises herself as a boy and volunteers into the army to get away. She can't forget her angry lesbian lover who left the "prison" to be someone's wife against her will. In the Colonial army, she's directly under this abusive Sargeant's command but Captain Marcus is a pretty awesome officer. To deal with a religiously-motivated native uprising, a new Colonel is placed in command over the colonials.  Colonel Janus is a highly ambitious genius but he's very excentric and out of touch with the common soldier. With him arrive a bunch of new recruits and Winter is chosen as Sargeant for a squad. Among those under her command there's Bobby - another runaway from the "prison" who later becomes a "celestial warrior" of sorts.. During the series there is a chain of important events, where Winter and Marcus keep proving themselves to be great military leaders. The true enemy reveals istelf to be the Church of Elysium, (a.k.a. thinly disguised Catholic Church) but there is also a mysterious ally (the religious leader of the natives). After the business in the colony is finished, the main characters quickly go back home, where basically the French Revolution is happening, except that it is led by the royalty (a princess disguised as a commoner) against the Church spies. During these unstable times, Winter has to use this new gang of dockside women for Janus' plans and - surprise, surprise! - the gang is led by Jane, her former angry lesbian lover. Many things happen, after which we end up with a battalion of women.

Tell me, is it just me or are these stories really, really similar? I can almost match them character for character and  theme for theme. Only... Prachett's novel is a joke. It tells lies in order to reveal the bigger truth. We are not supposed to believe that pregnant women are OK soldiers or that men are so dumb they cannot realize that probably almost half of the army consists of women. We are supposed to laugh at the fact that apparently no one in the country misses or accidentally recognizes them. It's a blatant parody of the "girl disguises herself" trope, especially when it presents a clear double standard when nobody in their right mind believes a man disguised as a washer-woman. The story pokes fun at both the religious conservatives who think that a woman's place is wherever the priests tell us that her place is as well as stupid feminists who think that women are sooooo eager to go get themselves killed in war only they can't because sexism. The ultimate message of the book, in my opinion, is that war is insanity and that if women ruled the world it wouldn't be any different.

Wexler, on the other hand... Don't get me wrong, he knows how to manipulate a story to make it interesting but it appears to me that his only message is "wymyn can do ANYTHING that men can and they can do it better" as well as "gays are good" and "religion (Christianity) is bad". Reading this series, I simply could not suspend my disbelief. In my experience, women (and I know a few) are not just able to keep up marching with professional soldiers. They are not dying to get blasted by cannon fire. Most of them, in my opinion, would not take well to a soldier's lifestyle. But this book presents itself to be serious. If I were to look for other themes, I guess I'd find a few, like painful love and the question whether the end justifies the means (and I think the author is trying to say that yes, it does - scary message to tell young people, don't you think?). Still, I'd say that most of this book is pure SJW vomit. It is precisely the book that Prachett was parodying, even if it had not been written at the time.