The Power

3.5 - overall really cool story I sometimes lost track of which storyline was for which person but that's mostly because I'm an idiot and generally not used to books where I have to follow multiple storylines and I'm an idiot. Still really enjoyed this.

Alderman does a great job of addressing the issue of radical feminism and the current gender inequality among the sexes, however, for a novel, I found this book to be a bit of a bore. There were certain POVs that I found myself counting the pages until the end of the chapter which you never want for a good book.

Moreover, this book feels more of a fictional research novel rather than a dystopian world. It has the components of a novel like “A Handmaid's Tale” by Atwood or “Gone Girl” by Flynn, but fails to present a sensational story.

That being said, this is a great book, but there is a very graphic scene towards the end so strong trigger warning because it was uncomfortable to read.

A fine read. Still glad I read this and I can see why people enjoyed this book...but not enough for me.

It's a female empowerment dystopian type...basically if women wanted revenge against the men instead of equality.

It had a few ideas I liked and really could relate to, but ultimately left me uninspired in the end. Not the kind of uninspired because it's dystopian but the kind of uninspired because I see this all the time where plot is that women would just be as bad as men because they have power over another gender now. MEH... Instead of just flipping the script I would like to see something more thoughtful...

I picked this up b/c I found it on a number of “Best of 2017” lists. It was interesting and engaging, but not really a thriller or an intense “page turner.” The genre is one that I like - our recognizable universe, but with a twist - women have an innate power to electrically shock men and cause them great pain or pleasure (or both together.) Reading this in light of the #metoo movement adds a dimension of realism about the complicated gender relationships which arise in the world of the book where women have all of the power. And like the famous quote: Absolute power corrupts absolutely as the book's world of literally empowered women becomes as violent and cruel (albeit in slightly different ways) as our own.

I am confused though by the framing device of the story being a fictionalization of events that happened in the distant (?) past. I could have done without the correspondence between the male author of the “historical fiction” within the larger novel and his female editor as this didn't add anything to the overall story for me.

Really loved this - dystopian in all the best ways. Comparisons to Atwood are completely inevitable, I think (and Atwood's blurb is on the cover), but Alderman as akin to Atwood without being derivative. Multiple narratives are deftly interwoven, the countdown chronology is the drumbeat of a propulsive plot, and there are so many interesting questions raised by the world Alderman has conceived. The only thing I didn't love was the denouement. It felt a bit didactic in a way that none of the rest of the novel did, and I think it might have been stronger without it. Still, a great read!

For me the first 50-60% were pretty interesting, though I wasn't really connecting with the characters.

The ending didn't work as well for me. It seemed that things went from patriarchy to “men have to have a female guardian” super-fast, and there was so violence. Which is fine, but I was more interested in the cultural and political development.

Very interesting examination of what the transfer of power based on sex and gender would look like - and the horrific consequences that absolute power brings.

DNF

1 star

I kept waiting for it to get better, but it didn't, so I finally gave up after some hundred pages. There was just nothing going on that was new. The characters didn't develop at all.

It was hard to read. A lot of violence. Of all kinds. Not good.

But the point was well made. Whoever has the power will use it to hurt people under the power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I also kept thinking about today's “masculinists” and how afraid they must be as their overpower is being stripped away, little by little. They don't know how to be equal, how to be a human being, or how to treat people well. How sad it is that they don't get it. You don't need to be afraid if you have never harmed another person.
Of course, a lot of harm has been done by people who look like me, and it is fully understandable that people are afraid of people who look like people who have harmed them... A lot of women are afraid of all men because a lot of men have harmed them. It isn't fair to harm people just by association, but it happens. All we can do is see we won't become them.

Amazing and horrible. Graphic, and hard to read. Thought-provoking, and thrilling. I can't say more good and bad about this book. The last pages of letters rocked me to my core and somehow pulled everything together in the most simple, yet revelatory way. I am still processing the entirety of this book, but that fact alone is enough for me to give it 5 stars (major TW for rape, genital mutilation, and obscene violence).


“Because they could.” That is the only answer there ever is.

3.5

Great premise. The pace for the first 35% was perfect and I couldn't put it down. Thereafter it slowed down quite a bit. The writing also got less appealing; I found my highlights to be a third of the ones from the first half. Got the feeling the author rushed the second half under pressure from the publisher. But hey I'm just speculating.

Recommended reading for all women though. It's a...satisfying read.

I think it took a little too long to get to where it was going, and the end was a little off for me. But I enjoyed it in general and I appreciated what it was doing, or trying to do.

Half way through the book I was thinking it was barely going to scrape 3 stars as it seemed too simple with fairy 2 dimensional character, men bad women good; however, as the book went on it developed a lot more nuance and asked some interesting questions about whether gender or power is more important in society when it comes to how we act towards each other.

The Epilogue was the icing on the cake, making the reader reassess everything they've previously read and at the same time making another interesting analogy of how different genders have been, and are, treated.

I hated it. First of all the whole premise and story is, I think, wrong already. The historical pieces supposedly found would say that this isn't a new thing. So then the whole patriarchy and all that should have already evolved and shaped differently. Also, the fact that this would result in reverse sexism is stupid, unrealistic and bad. Not to mention something I don't want to read about. 

The characters were boring and the worldbuilding was worse. This is trying so hard to make some sort of point and comparison to the real world that it just makes no fucking sense in the story. Choices that are made to show something supposedly meaningful but really it just makes no sense for the world and the characters. 

Conclusion; fuck this, fuck this world, reverse sexism would never happen and is stupid. I hated it. 

tws: rape (on-page and descriptive fyi), murder, medical trauma/non-consensual medical experimentation, drug use, violence, gun violence, death of a child, child abuse, sexual assault, war, gaslighting

the general concept of ‘women mysteriously gain the ability to release electricity from their fingers seemingly overnight' is interesting, but the execution was just not the best and honestly left a lot to be desired in some areas.

i'm interested in how this will be adapted for tv though as the multi povs/storylines/locations is just prime for a live-action adaptation and might work better in that format.

obviously this is a commentary on sexism but this was somewhat at the detriment of insights into other forms of discrimination that would have affected the characters, racism in particular. i'm not entirely surprised that the author (who is white) didn't really explore this and seemed to write some women of colour in either stereotypical or unbelievable/unrealistic ways.

the power is also v binary and is posited as women vs men, but what about people who aren't either of those genders? does the power only affect cis women? anyone who is afab? we never know because clearly in this world trans and non-binary people just don't seem to exist.

I'm not sure what I thought of this book. But I gave it 4 stars because it has made me think and I know I will continue to think.

I've read more than 2/3 of the book, or rather, forced myself to, but I cannot do this anymore, it keeps getting worse, the writing is bland -to put it nicely- and after the 2/3 mark the triteness and artificiality of the dialogue took over and I could not do it anymore. I would not be this upset if this book was not a prize winner that has been received with SO MUCH HYPE. I rarely write disparaging reviews and if I do, they usually stay private, because why spread the negativity? After all, someone spent years on producing a written work and put effort and time and money into it. But there are so many great reads out there that remain unrecognised, unread by most people. They gather dust in used bookstores because they are out of print. Or they have a beautiful cover and are fresh out of the printer's but they are from a small press and barely sell and are forgotten after a few years because they are published in the age of bookstagram and amazon book shopping, a time when most people don't go out to discover random reads or receive recommendations from booksellers or friends, a time when small publishing companies don't sell copies and independent bookshops barely make ends meet if they survive at all. So what I'm trying to say so ineloquently is that I'm seething. THIS of all books won the women's prize a few years ago? It doesn't deserve it. The premise is great but ideas are not enough to constitute a good book; I have many ideas, can someone give me a prize for them please?

RARRRAARRR SO GOOD

Amazing idea for a book, but I wish it was a different story. I had a hard time connecting with the characters, the one I liked the most was a man, funnily enough. Some parts were boring and I definitely forced myself to keep going and push through. I really wanted to like it, but it just never clicked for me.

Imagine the reversal of expectations of Blonde Roots meets the format of The Handmaid's Tale meets the sci-fi dystopia of The Fireman meets elements of the spirituality of The Parable of the Sower. In The Power women suddenly develop electrifying new abilities and patriarchal structures begin to topple as social, political, and religious are redefined. What if God was Mother? What does it mean to be a woman? Would the world be a better place if women ran the place, or is the violence known as patriarchy something beyond the masculine gender? These are just some of the questions explored by this novel. While I felt the concluding chapters went on a bit too long and were a bit too on the nose, overall I enjoyed this book. The plot was interesting and it was easy to become invested in the characters.

Well that....Was a MAJOR disappointment. Like wow. That was one of my Highly anticipated reads and was looking so forward to reading it. It had such great potential but. Well. For starters, the writing was bland. Really bland. The beginning was shaky at Best and hard to get into. There were only 2 characters I liked, and what happened to both of them was just. Bad. And the ending? AWFUL. I don't want to give anything away incase someone else reading this might like it more, but it was Extraordinarily disappointing for me. And it honestly didn't even make sense, all things considering. So yeah, that was deeply upsetting. Especially since, like I said, I was really excited about this book. But yeah. Definitely WON'T be picking this back up again.

What a mind-bender! thoroughly enjoyed examining all the assumptions I carry around about gender because of how deftly Alderman created characters and situations that mirrored/fun mirrored our own societal events. And the ending was perfect.

This book is so very good that I do not have words. If you like the framing devices of The Handmaid's Tale and fucked up dystopians that tackle gender norms, then boy howdy is this the book for you.

Read it!

Only complaint is I could have used more stuff in the future showing the fallout.

Is Naomi Alderman ok?
Does she like women at all?

So if women would possess an ability which would make them physically superior to men, women would become more agressive, more cruel and more violent than the worst type of man? Oh ok.
I like my sci fi but I could not bend my imagination THAT far.