Absolutely spellbinding.... After reading all the Mary Russell series, my expectations of Laurie King's craft were high. Califia's Daughters surpassed them all. Seamlessly transporting her reader to a post-apocalyptic world, King maintains the familiar human traits that we share in the present age, adapting them to completely unfamiliar living conditions AND societal memes. Challenging our Ingrained patterns of gender roles, sexuality, and division of labor, King asks us to take a serious look at who is in charge of our present situation and the possibility that it should all be up-ended. Not an exploration of anarchy, but a glimpse of a world that perhaps should have been - and perhaps may be yet a reality.