Women in charge

The Power By Naomi Alderman (Little, Brown; 386 pages; $34)

The winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Naomi Alderman’s “The Power” takes a simpleseeming science fiction premise — what if women were suddenly more physically powerful than men? — and spins a dystopian tale that is elegant, elaborate, insightful and frightening in its implications.

Framed as a historical novel from five millenniums hence, “The Power” follows four primary characters as they navigate a world in which women can suddenly emit lethal jolts of electricity, able to disable or kill with a touch. Florida teen Allie uses her ability to escape her abusive foster father and establish herself as Mother Eve, a new prophet for a new era. Roxie, daughter of a London crime kingpin, takes revenge on her mother’s killers and promotes herself as a key part of her father’s drug business. Margot, a middle-aged mayor with larger political ambitions, worries about her daughter’s erratic abilities, even as she tries to hide her own transformation from the public. Finally, there’s Tunde, a wealthy Nigerian boy determined to be the freelance journalist who captures the full import of this cataclysmic biological and cultural paradigm shift.

“The Power” possesses the urgency of a welltuned thriller, but it is a serious-minded examination of religion, sex, identity and politics. The author of three previous novels, including Orange Prize winner “Disobedience,” Alderman shifts viewpoints and settings with ease and builds scenes that crackle with narrative energy. Nearly every assumption about how women and men interact is challenged, sometimes humorously, sometimes with tenderness, but more often with pain and misunderstanding.

Readers of “The Power” may be reminded of not only of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” but of ancient tales such as Euripides’ “The Bacchae.” Alderman’s novel stands out in a crowded field of latter-day disaster novels, an ingenious and accomplished tale that delivers unforeseen surprises and unexpected insights to the very end.

Provenance By Ann Leckie (Orbit; 448 pages; $26)

Ann Leckie took science fiction by storm with her first novel, the genre- and gender-bending “Ancillary Justice,” which won a trifecta of major awards — Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke. Fans of character-focused space opera relished the continuation and conclusion of the Imperial Radch Trilogy in “Ancillary Sword” and “Ancillary Mercy.”

With her fourth novel, “Provenance,” Leckie now seems to want to provide a jumping-on point for new readers, while giving longtime fans a textured portrait of another section of her science fictional universe. She makes a valiant effort, but the results are mixed.

“Provenance” begins with Ingray Aughskold trying to impress her chilly foster mother, embarrass her foster brother and disrupt the plans of one of her family’s political rivals. She has somehow orchestrated the escape of an infamous art thief from a supposedly unbreakable prison and hopes to compel him to reveal the whereabouts of some priceless historical artifacts known as “vestiges.” Unfortunately, the prisoner Ingray has freed/abducted swears he isn’t the individual she’s looking for, and his presence on Ingray’s home planet threatens to precipitate an interstellar incident among various human and alien factions.

Readers not steeped in the details of the Imperial Radch trilogy may find the opening chapters of “Provenance” slow going. Ingray is an engaging young protagonist, more resourceful than she gives herself credit for, but the initial vagueness of her plans and motivations hobbles the action. While avoiding awkward exposition, Leckie doesn’t provide the details that might make the relationships between families, planets and species as clear and understandable as they perhaps need to be for new-to-this-universe readers.

Gradually, the narrative gathers momentum as the plot weaves between a gauntlet of modes: “locked-room” mystery, caper, political thriller, hostage drama and a comedy of manners. Leckie handles most of them with aplomb. She also raises provocative questions about identity, family and self-esteem.

By the end, both neophytes and longtime Leckie fans are likely to be pleased with how Ingray’s quest for acceptance resolves itself. We don’t know whether Leckie has another trilogy in mind, but for the time being, “Provenance” is a welcome change of pace.

Archangel Script by William Gibson and Michael St. John Smith Art by Butch Guice (IDW Publishing; $24.99)

With the medium’s ability to focus on intricate, telling details, it would seem that the science fictional sensibilities of William Gibson would be well suited to comics and graphic novels. There have been a few adaptations of his work, most notably of “Neuromancer,” but Gibson has not chosen to tackle the medium head-on with an original script — until now.

“Archangel,” written by Gibson and Michael St. John Smith and with art by Butch Guice, is set in two universes and two time periods. In a 2016 in which many nations’ capitals have been reduced to radioactive rubble, the political leaders devise an escape hatch for themselves. Thanks to a contraption known as “the Splitter,” Vice President Bob Henderson Junior is able to travel to 1945 in a “habitable alternate continuum,” where he and his co-conspirators can, in the words of one opponent, “corrupt an entire functioning democracy ... and f— things up all over again, just the way they like it.” Henderson’s first task is to kill his own grandfather.

Fortunately, there are brave and dedicated fighters waiting in the new continuum, chief among them Naomi Givens of the British Royal Air Force, who resembles Scully of TV’s “X-Files” in both appearance and fortitude. Along with her American former lover, Capt. Vince Matthews, Givens investigates the surprise arrival of the Pilot, a heavily tattooed Marine who has come to Berlin to interrupt Henderson’s nefarious schemes.

Dense in its details and twisty in its plotting, “Archangel” generates the suspense of an intricately planned World War II espionage novel. The narrative demands close attention from readers, but Gibson’s work always does. Guice’s highly kinetic art works in service to the story, especially when the action cranks up.

The book ends with a series of panels that set everything that went before in a new perspective. Be sure to read Gibson’s afterword for his thoughts on the revisions necessary to make the series gibe with history and reality. It may leave you as disconcerted as the time-hopping Pilot.