Roxy Monke hides in a closet as thugs murder her mother, then uses her skein to shock the attackers.

Tunde is shocked by a girl at a hotel pool, his first encounter with the power of the skein.

Margot Cleary asks her daughter Jocelyn to demonstrate her skein and then discovers she has one too.

Allie Montgomery-Taylor kills her abusive foster father with her skein and flees into the night.

After months of solo travel, Allie arrives at a South Carolina convent and tells the nuns her name is Eve.

Roxy uses her skein to execute the men responsible for her mother's murder.

Tunde travels to Saudi Arabia and documents women's uprisings that topple the government within two weeks.

Tatiana Moskalev seizes power in Moldova and leads women to the border to establish the nation of Bessapara.

Roxy travels to Mother Eve's convent in South Carolina, and the two women form a strong friendship.

Roxy returns to London and launches the production and street distribution of the skein-enhancing drug Glitter.

Margot shocks her male debate opponent on live television and wins the Wisconsin governorship in a landslide.

Mother Eve travels to Bessapara to offer spiritual support to the women preparing for war.

Allie uses her skein to compel Tatiana Moskalev to slit her own throat and steps in as Bessapara's leader.

Senator Margot Cleary advises the U.S. President to side militarily with Bessapara, triggering an international conflict.

Roxy and her father share a drink on an island as a nuclear flash lights up the horizon.

The Power follows four central characters as women across the world discover the skein, a biological mutation that allows them to generate devastating electrical shocks. Allie, an abused foster child, escapes by killing her guardian and eventually becomes the spiritual leader Mother Eve. Roxy Monke, daughter of a London crime boss, avenges her mother's murder and builds a drug empire that amplifies the skein's power. Margot Cleary, a Wisconsin mayor, transforms the skein into a political weapon and ascends to the U.S. Senate. As the revolution escalates and the women's nation of Bessapara becomes a global flashpoint, Allie seizes its presidency and ultimately accepts that global catastrophe is the only path to a new world order. The pool ends with the nuclear flash that signals the beginning of The Cataclysm.

The rise and fall of civilization through women's newfound power.

Historian Neil Adam Armon sends his novelization of the old era's final years to his editor, Naomi Alderman.

Allie, living with abusive foster parents in Alabama, begins hearing a voice urging her to master her skein.

Margot tests her skein on a neighborhood lamppost and accidentally plunges the entire street into darkness.

The U.S. government proposes randomly testing women for the skein and surgically removing it from selected women.

Allie uses her skein to calm a novitiate mid-epileptic seizure, sparking rumors of miraculous healing at the convent.

Allie records and posts Internet videos preaching a new gospel that reframes God as a maternal figure.

Police raid the convent and arrest a young nun, prompting the women to storm the station and free her.

A woman in Delhi overpowers Tunde and sexually assaults him using her skein, introducing a new form of rape.

Margot campaigns for Wisconsin governor on a platform built around her NorthStar training camp system for women.

Roxy's brother Ricky is raped and castrated by a group of women supercharged on Glitter.

A rogue detective reveals to Roxy that her own father arranged the murder of her mother.

Roxy confronts her father directly and forces him to surrender full control of his criminal empire.

Tatiana Moskalev forces a male waiter at an international summit to kneel and lick wine and glass shards off the floor.

Jocelyn Cleary breaks into Darrell's drug factory but is caught, and Darrell's attempt to kill her with the stolen skein fails.

Editor Naomi Alderman tells Armon his controversial novel would sell far better published under a woman's name.

This pool traces the significant but less visible moments running alongside the main upheaval, framed by the novel's structure. It opens with historian Neil Adam Armon sending his manuscript to a future female editor and closes with that editor suggesting he publish it under a woman's name. In between, we see the spiritual and institutional groundwork of the revolution: Allie hears her guiding inner voice, performs apparent miracles, and broadcasts her new gospel online, while Margot quietly tests her skein and builds her political base. Roxy's drug empire grows into an instrument of war even as her family betrays her from within. The pool also captures key social ruptures, from the U.S. government's attempt to surgically control the skein, to a police raid on the convent, to Tunde's rape in Delhi, each revealing how power was being tested, abused, and contested on every level of society.

The behind-the-scenes moments that quietly shaped the power revolution.

Scientists announce that the skein traces back to an experimental Allied nerve-gas antidote developed after World War Two.

Margot Cleary proposes a statewide NorthStar camp system to train girls in the skein, effectively building a female army.

An older nun who openly challenges Allie's authority at the convent is found dead in the chapel.

Tunde discovers that a secret army of men, funded by Saudi oil money, is massing near Bessapara's border.

Tunde arranges to meet the blogger UrbanDox and hears his prediction that men will win the war with nuclear weapons.

Roxy tracks down the Glitter-fueled women who attacked her brother and cuts their faces rather than killing them.

Margot wins a U.S. Senate seat after campaigning on a platform of deploying female military power globally.

Roxy is ambushed at the Bessapara drug facility and wakes to find her skein surgically removed and transplanted into her brother Darrell.

Tunde finds his own obituary posted online and realizes his female editor is planning to steal and publish his work.

Tunde witnesses a mountain cult of women, fueled by Glitter, sacrifice a young man at a ritual ceremony in Bessapara.

Roxy negotiates with the cult's blind female leader for Tunde's release from captivity.

Roxy and Tunde flee together after witnessing a group of women gang-rape and murder two men on a roadside.

Roxy and Tunde share their most painful secrets and make love in an abandoned warehouse far from the fighting.

Factory workers discover that Darrell stole Roxy's skein and tear him apart with their bare hands.

Allie's inner voice, her lifelong guide, falls permanently silent as she fully accepts the coming Cataclysm.

This pool traces the pivotal revelations and turning points that locked humanity onto its path toward The Cataclysm. Early events establish the structural conditions: the skein's troubling military origins are exposed, Margot quietly builds what amounts to a women's army, and Allie eliminates her first rival within the convent. The middle section marks a point of no return as Tunde hears UrbanDox's nuclear threat, Roxy loses her skein through her brother's surgical betrayal, and atrocities in Bessapara escalate beyond control. In the desperate final stretch, Roxy rescues Tunde from cult captivity and the two find trust and intimacy amid the chaos, offering a glimpse of what cooperation between the genders might look like. That hope is extinguished when Allie's inner voice falls permanently silent and she accepts the apocalyptic path as the only road to a new world.