When You Had Power (Quinn)

When You Had Power
(Nothing Is Promised #1)
by Susan Kaye Quinn (2020)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I write. I don't sell a lot of stories but I write as many as I can. When I look at the markets open to me, a couple of trends show. First, lots of people like horror. Unfortunately, I'm not really one of them. Second, there are emerging genres out there that don't havea lot of content in them. The ones that piqued my interest (or at least got my attention) are solarpunk, hopepunk and lunarpunk. I'm not exactly sure what these are, or how the first two differ from the other. I get that "solarpunk" is supposed to be the antithesis of the popular "grimdark" future stories. The idea is that the world can have a bright future, if we work together and work with the Earth instead of against it. There's a streak of environmentalism (and climate change) built in. Side-note: "lunarpunk" doesn't take place on the Moon -- it's similar to solarpunk, only the setting is usually nighttime, and the asthetic should match (neon colors, etc.).

Since it's something relatively new, there's not a lot of stories and writers out there for it. That presents a little window of oppourtunity for writers wanting to jump in. But you have to know (that is, I have to know) something about the genre before I can write in it. And there isn't a lot out there to read. Certianly nothing that I could get from the library. So I did the next best thing, what I usually do, I went looking for freebies.

Susan Kaye Quinn has at least two series, which each one having the first book for free on Amazon (at least they were at the time I was looking). This "Nothing is Promised" series is supposed to be four connected novellas, but the first one is a bit open-ended. Too much was left for the next installment.

The title When You Had Power seems to be an effective play on words, refering to people in power and actually no longer having power in a world affected by climate change. A lot of changes happen in the next few decades. You hardly recognize the place (Earth, that is).

It's been a while, and the details can be found elsewhere on the web, but the main character starts the book being accepted/adopted into a group/family/home. She's working at a power plant on an island nearby. She discovers a problem and is suspended for a day while the problem is cleared up. (Why just a day? They didn't give themselves a lot of time.) She comes back and tries to prove that things have been tampered with, and someone tries to kill her by tampering with her diving suit. She survives, and lives to fight another day, along with her group family.

I wish I'd written soemthing when I read it. I could call this a benchmark story that I could measure others by. I won't judge a genre based on one book. However, I don't feel compelled to bu th enext one, and even though I have the first book in her other series, I might want to read a different author's take. I won't get a feel for the genre and its conventions otherwise.

If you're interested in solarpunk -- or is this hopepunk? -- give it a try. I believe I gave it 3 stars on Good Reads. It was definitely better written than anything I give 2 stars to, but not up there with the 4 star books either.