All over the world women are discovering they have the power.
With a flick of the fingers they can inflict terrible pain - even death.
Suddenly, every man on the planet finds they've lost control.
The Day of the Girls has arrived - but where will it end?
The Power was one of the first books in the still miniscule 'what if things were reversed?' genre. In this novel, written as a speculative history from several thousand years in the future, women discover that they can inflict pain on men - first teenagers, gradually spreading through all women. As the novel progresses they figure out ways to use this at some distance, so while they're still vulnerable to certain weapons, they're unbeatable at short distances and quickly start to overthrow men.
The novel follows several characters - a young woman who becomes a Messianic figure, a teen from a crime family with more raw power than almost anyone else, an American senator and her daughter, and a token male; a young Nigerian who is one of the first to catch video footage of the Power and parlays that into becoming the chronicler of this new age. Following different characters allows us to see the slow change from different points of view, different countries and different power levels over the ten years or so the novel covers, which is a clever touch.
If I had a complaint, it would be this; we follow ten years of women starting to gain power, becoming more secure, but the novel ends before we can see what a female led world looks like. The only thing we get is the (male) author of the novel-within-the-novel being advised to take on a female name to get his book published. What does a world run by women look like? Hopefully not the violence of the revolution, but we don't know, because Naomi didn't write that part. That's a very minor complaint, though; I do love the novel for what it is. I just always want more!
There are some fairly rough scenes where women take revenge, or vengeance, on men, so be prepared for those. However, this could bring up some great questions for a book club or gender studies group, and I think they're questions we really should be having. I'll be coming back to this one for a while.
The Power is available now. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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