History Literature / ThePower

* CycleOfRevenge: Defied by Roxy. She lets [[spoiler:her father Bernie]] live, despite having just found out that [[spoiler:he had her mother killed]], because she doesn't want to start one of these that would inevitably come back around to her. Instead, she [[spoiler:forces him to give up his control over the crime family and sends him off to retire in a nice, warm-weather place]].

* DaddysGirl: Played straight with Roxy and Bernie [[spoiler: until it's subverted be her learning who had her mother killed.]]

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: AVERTED. Hard. Female on male rape is horrifying, graphic, and absolutely not sexy. The author mentioned in an interview that she made the scenes as horrific as possible, to hammer in the point that rape is about power and humiliation, not sex.

* FauxShadow: The many artifacts scattered about the book allude to events thousands of years ago, supporting the theory that women once had skeins but lost them due to evolution. [[spoiler:It's the book itself that's thousands of years into the future with the artifacts being closer to present day, after the collapse of civilization back into the Stone Age.]]

* FeministFantasy: A rather harrowing GenreDeconstruction, one that takes the idea of "what if women were on top and treated men the way they do women?" and runs with it all the way to "''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'' [[PersecutionFlip in reverse]]".

* {{Gendercide}}: Mens' Rights Activists start predicting this almost immediately after the Power emerges. [[spoiler: About a decade later, Bessapara puts it into practice.]]
* GroinAttack: [[spoiler: After humanity was bombed back to the Stone Age, a form of genital mutilation was invented that made it impossible to get an erection without skein stimulation. There are cave paintings of this practice and it's still practiced in several cultures in the modern day of the novel.]]

* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'', with Margaret Atwood's full blessing. Both deal with the subjugation of a gender and with power imbalance. But while Handmaid's Tale subjugated women, didn't last long, and needed a full dystopia to work, The Power subjugated men, [[spoiler:lasted for thousands of years, and in the end was no more dystopian than our current state of affairs with the genders switched...but which still comes off as pretty dystopian, hammering in the point even further about the nature of power and of our current society.]]
* TheCaligula - what Tatiana Moskalev becomes.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The last we see of Tunde is him being stuffed into the trunk of a car, hoping that the driver is who she says she is. Roxy later mentions she sent someone to smuggle him out of a Besapara, but his actual fate is never confirmed. This is most likely an allusion to ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'', which ends in much the same way.

* WomenAreWiser: [[SubvertedTrope No, they aren't]], no matter how much some of them try to claim otherwise. In fact, the entirety of the trope is deconstructed by the author and editor in the closing comments (albeit with a gender flip). [[spoiler: The editor argues that the partial patriarchies (obviously a stand in for historical matriarchies) were more peaceful and kinder regimes in the past as proof that men are the more moral, kinder gender. The author fires back that this was only because, as the weaker sex, any system that favored men had to be a system not built on violence. Therefore, women are wiser because they lack the ability to seize power through violence and must find it through other means. And as the book demonstrates, once that caveat is gone, they're just as evil as men were.]]

* AssholeVictim: Saudi Arabia and Moldova are the first countries to fall after the Power is awakened. Saudi Arabia being the world's most repressive regime toward women, and Moldova being the world capital of sex trafficking.

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: AVERTED. Hard. Female on male rape is horrifying, graphic and absolutely not sexy. The author mentioned in an interview that she made the scenes as horrific as possible, to hammer in the point that rape is about power and humiliation, not sex.

* {{Fetish}}: It's acknowledged that certain chromosomal abnormalities can result in a person who is biologically male but possesses a skein. In-universe, Jos dating one such person is perceived as a fetish. Allegorically, it seems similar to real-world fetishes for dominant and physically imposing women.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane - No explanation is given for Allie’s voices, and it's up to interpretation whether it's a manifestation of some mental illness or a really supernatural occurrence.
* MyEyesAreUpHere / MrFanservice - Tunde. To the point that his [[spoiler: obituary]] mentions it.

* WomenAreWiser: No, they aren't, in fact the entirety of the trope is deconstructed by the author and editor in the closing comments (albeit with a gender flip). [[spoiler: The editor argues that the partial patriarchies (obviously a stand in for historical matriarchies) were more peaceful and kinder regimes in the past as proof that men are the more moral, kinder gender. The author fires back that this was only because, as the weaker sex, any system that favored men had to be a system not built on violence. Therefore, women are wiser because they lack the ability to seize power through violence and must find it through other means. And as the book demonstrates, once that caveat is gone, they're just as evil as men were.]]

* ApocalypseHow: The main focus of the story is the how women becoming the more physically intimidating sex upends the world's social order. The framing device makes it clear that a a Class V is on the way, eventually revealed to have caused humanity to regress to [[spoiler: the Stone Age]]. The actual mechanics of said apocalypse is hinted at early, then described explicitly at the conclusion.

* BreakTheHaughty - what happens to [[spoiler:Roxy]].

''The Power'' is a speculative sci-fi novel by Creator/NaomiAlderman, based around the premise of women having the ability to use [[ShockAndAwe electricity]] from their hands. As a result, the world is quickly upended as our four protagonists watch society change.

* DirtyOldWoman: Margot

* KosherNostra: The Monkes are a Jewish crime family in the UK.

* DirtyOldWoman - Margot

* DoubleStandard: Rape, Female on Male - AVERTED. Hard. Female on male rape is horrifying, graphic and absolutely not sexy. The author mentioned in an interview that she made the scenes as horrific as possible, to hammer in the point that rape is about power and humiliation, not sex.

* YourCheatingHeart: The reason [[spoiler: Bernie had Roxy's mother killed]].

''The Power'' is a speculative sci-fi novel by Naomi Alderman, based around the premise of women having the ability to use [[ShockAndAwe electricity]] from their hands. As a result, the world is quickly upended as our four protagonists watch society change.

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: In-universe, Naomi Alderman is the editor for the book, who uses her name to disguise its male author.

* PersecutionFlip: Women find themselves the more physically dangerous sex and slowly but surely oppress men, in minor and major ways. [[spoiler:And with the world bombing itself back into the Stone Age and forcing humanity to start over, essentially all of human history has been repeated but with men as the victims rather than women.

* CripplingCastration: Roxy manages to save her brother from three girls intent on killing him, but not before this happens.

* WhamLine: When Newland reveals, under torture, that it was [[spoiler: her father who had her mother killed]].

* AndItWorked: The framing device shows that, at the cost of [[spoiler: a five-thousand year Dark Age]] Mother Eve's plan to remake society succeeded, despite Roxy insisting the cost was too high.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'', with Margaret Atwood's full blessing.

* {{Matriarchy}}: The inevitable result of the power balance shifting. Bessapassa is a straight up [[NoWomansLand No Man's Land]], and other governments are starting to shift towards women in military and power positions. [[spoiler:Five thousand years in the future, it seems to be close to modern-day patriarchy with a few exceptions, like the fact that male soldiers are almost unheard of.]]

* DoubleStandard: Rape, Female on Male - AVERTED. Hard. Female on male rape is horrifying, graphic and absolutely not sexy.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The last we see of Tunde is him being stuffed into the trunk of a car, hoping that the driver is who she says she is. Roxy later mentions she sent someone to smuggle him out of a Besapara, but his actual fate is never confirmed.

* {{Gendercide}}: Mens' Rights Activists start predicting this almost immediately after the Power emerges. [[spoiler: About a decade later, Besapara puts it into practice.]]

* HandicappedBadass: Roxy while she and Tunde are on the run in Besapara, after [[spoiler: her brother stole her skein]].

* KarmaHoudini - Bernie fucking Monke.