The Power

Um. I really, really did not like this book.

1) This book was insanely violent, with many explicit and implicit rape scenes, many dismemberments, a lot of hacking apart living bodies. It was really difficult to read. Are we really to believe that if women had more power than men, we would all be complete animals who torture and kill other people (INCLUDING CHILDREN) for FUNSIES??

2) I get that people do crazy shit in the name of religion, and that it can be interesting in a can't-look-away sense, but this book was really heavy-handed on the way power corrupts religiosity, and it didn't GO anywhere.

2a) Plus, right off the bat you've got this: religious foster parents sexually assault/abuse the teenager in their care. I HATE adoption/foster abuse tropes in books.

3) I think Tunde's and Jocelyn's perspectives are supposed to be of people that are "weak"? In that one of them is a man (a reporter), and the other's power didn't come in properly (described in a way similar to being confused about sexual orientation/gender identity, which is a whole other can of worms I'm not gonna get into)? But really almost every character is insanely power-hungry, out for all she can get, out to be in charge of as much as she can. I got tired of reading powerful people abusing their power. Where are the regular people?? The regular women, and regular families, whose daughters now have this "gift" and must be able to use it responsibly to get on with life, because not everything is starting wars and pushing drugs and starting cult religions.

4) Men's rights groups that spread conspiracy theories and bomb women's clinics. UGH.

I don't believe the world is a bad place (though it can always get better). I don't believe people are always going to oppress those with less power (though some will). The Power paints a bleak, hopeless picture in which the only way to solve anything is to literally burn it all down every 5000 years. That's not a solution, and I reject it.