Exceptional.

'Allie says: Then what shall I do?
The voice says: Listen, I'll level with you: my optimism about the human race is not what it once was. I'm sorry it can't be simple for you any more.
Allie says: It's getting dark.
The voice says: Sure is.' ( )

First adolescent females and later all females begin developing an electrical power that changes the power dynamics of society as a whole. ( )

So sorry and diassapointed to see that Power corrupts both sexes. Ugh. ( )

Poignant, powerful, and wonderfully different for a change. For once, women are the power hungry, the dominant, the top of the food chain. Eerily reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale and other dystopian literature, The Power chronicles the female ascent to the top. Worldwide young girls are discovering that they have the power to release electrical charges, effectively shocking other people, sometimes to death. They also discover that when they shock older women they have the power to waken the dormant abilities. Soon women all over the world have this power and for once the men know fear. Told through multiple perspectives over a ten year span we see a female mayor aspiring to be governor, a young teenage girl with stronger raw power then anyone has ever seen, Mother Eve a prophet of the power, and a journalist, the lone male voice in this book. Together their panic, amazement, and greed tell the tale of how men became the weaker sex and the movement that changed the course of history forever, Wonderfully fresh and inventive. I loved it! ( )

I'm not sure I've ever read a piece of fiction that I think would be better suited to a book club discussion. So if you are in search of such a book, you're welcome.

For the rest of you, I thought this book was more thought provoking than actually fun to read. But I like a good provoked thought, so very worthwhile on that front. The premise of the story is what would happen if gender roles were completely reversed and women were the ones with the more powerful body? The Power tries to answer that question by setting up a world where women basically have the ability to course and direct electrical power using only their bodies. The book then speculates on the fall out from that simple premise including social commentary on everything from the political structures to the criminal underworld to religion by telling the story through several different characters.

Under the guise of storytelling, the book questions whether power corrupts and whether women would somehow be more circumspect in their use of power than perhaps men have been using theirs. You can certainly read this book as just an entertaining work of fiction, but as simply that, I found the characters a little too flat/villainous, but I think fans of more genre fiction might disagree and be able to read it as more of a thriller. Personally, I thought the real thrill was in simply imagining "what if?" ( )