Irven DeVore writes that "Males are a breeding experiment run by females." What if, in fact, women ran everything Citadel is a metafictional apocalyptic story braided into a contemporary novel built on the science of genetics. Trisha de Tours is the acquisitions editor at Pinnacle Books. Her life revolves around drinking Chateau Vieux wine, driving her Z-Ray hybrid, picking up men at the beach.Trisha has two big problems. Her boss, Clara Kreisler, pushes her to come up with a bestseller or Trisha loses her job. Trisha meets Daiva Izokaitis, a geneticist turned novelist, who has written a blockbuster called Citadel. After successfully pitching Citadel to Clara, Trisha retreats to the Desert Rose Motel for the time and peace she needs to edit the novel. As she works, Trisha sees that in Citadel, women have not only withdrawn from the male culture of rape and violence, and are on a divergent evolutionary path, but have mastered reproduction without DNA from the Y chromosome as they create a safe, new world behind the high walls. At stake is the future of women. The questions are--what is a human? What is desire? What is love? What if a woman says No? Is it too late to stop the slaughter?Trisha reaches the conclusion that she, like the characters in Citadel, doesn't need men to find fulfillment. After a violent incident at the launch of Citadel, fiction becomes reality when Trisha and Daiva, instead of running from the men who want to destroy them, fight back by founding Citadel One, the first real-time citadel. Time begins the New Count: Foundation 1, Floral 26.
