“Power Play” by Danielle Steel – The Irresistible Allure of Power

We may not like to admit it, but the truth is that most people take some kind of drug on a day-to-day basis, to fulfill themselves, feel pleasure and escape reality. There are those for whom these drugs are quite literal, coming in the form of illicit substances, food, alcohol, tobacco, etc…etc…

However, there are also more abstract drugs, ones that refer to experiences which have a similar effect on us. One of the, if not the most coveted abstract drug is power; the ability to influence the course of one’s fate certainly has an appeal to it.

In Power Play by Danielle Steel, we follow two corporate CEOs as they live in their lives in search of not only power, but also some kind of meaning.

They are both successful at what they do, but still Fiona Carson and Marshall Weston need to not only contend with very unique day-to-day difficulties which their jobs entail, but also with the demons which are born inside of us when following a way of living where one’s superiority is the number one goal.

The countless warning messages about the loss of one’s humanity when mixing in corporatism for too long have been heard by all of us at this point I am sure, and to be frank, that is what I expected out of this book; a story boiling down to a predictable moral.

Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Steel didn’t treat these people as robots or as anything less than what they should be; they are described as regular people who have chosen to walk down a seldom-followed path, one that contains many potential rewards, but also asks for many risks and sacrifices.

It seems that Steel really did her research on this one as she gives plenty of interesting details I personally did not know about or probably would have imagined otherwise. The life of a corporate CEO truly is something akin to swimming in a shark tank, with every decision having palpable consequences, with every mistake potentially costing them their career.

It is interesting to see how they manage their personal lives in relation to their professional ones, how they choose to make certain sacrifices in the name of power, of staying at the top of the food chain.

The emotional and personal burdens that the characters bear are very palpable, and they will make you think about what roles greed, deception, love and trust play in your own life.

All in all, Power Play was a surprisingly satisfying read, and though it did get dull on a couple of small occasions, it is an interesting and entertaining look into a world most of us can only fantasize about.

If you enjoy books where the main intrigue lies in a power game and where the characters are multi-dimensional human beings rather than caricatures, then I suggest you check this one out.

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Danielle Steel Personal site Danielle Steel is a very well-known American novelist who, at the moment, is the bestselling author alive, and the fourth bestselling author in history, with more than 800 million copies of her books sold, and more counting. In the habit of producing several books a year, many of her projects became popular bestsellers, such as Kaleidoscope, Wanderlust and Five Days in Paris.