Internment

Rating: 4.5 stars.

The dialogue is ham-fisted at times, there's a little jingoism toward the end, and the internment camp director is almost cartoonishly villainous (I feel really bad saying that because he's supposed to be cruel), but this is ultimately a very powerful novel of resistance.

I've read a lot of dystopian YA, and I find it very compelling to read cruel characters in power who use trickery and false kindness in order to hurt others much more deeply by making victims and witnesses question whether it's really that bad. The camp director wasn't like that. He made no such pretense, and he couldn't control his temper. I would have found him more believable if he'd nonchalantly ordered his subordinates to strike or taze Layla rather than punching and hitting her himself. People do exist who are cruel in the way he was, but I'm under the impression that giving such people positions of power leads to them becoming more sophisticated in their cruelty—they don't typically want to get their hands dirty.

Overall, this is a powerful story of rebellion and I am glad to have read it. The clear echoes of today's political climate combined with that the fictional president is unnamed leave it ambiguous whether the referenced president is Trump or someone like him, and it adds to the novel's urgency.