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Dec 18, 2017rsoccer70 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
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.