The Detainee (The Detainee Trilogy, Book 1) by Peter Liney

Jo Fletcher Books, 2013

ISBN13: 9781623651084

Available: Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook

I am a sucker for a good dystopia. In fact, I often complain about “end of the world” stories that don’t have enough gloom. However, although there are plenty of good elements here, and the book ranks high on other review sites, I have to admit it didn’t connect with me.

The first person narrative style was the first strike against novel for me; I felt this slowed the pace. 70 pages in, I still had no idea who the main character was. He was just an amorphous “I”.  The book went on at length about the setting, and a few unfortunate events, but I didn’t know the protagonist’s name. I had to look it up in an online review. This really bothered me. I needed to have a strong sense of who the narrator was by now. That is a bad sign.

Clancy, the protagonist, is considered undesirable by the hyper-capitalist society he lives in, and has been exiled to a giant trash heap of an island for “unproductive” people. “Unproductive” includes the elderly, so the island contains many people of an advanced age, like a reverse Logan’s Run world. The setting provided the potential for this to be a fantastic dystopian novel, my favorite kind of science fiction/horror crossover. It’s a great concept; I like the point of view and the message, a warning of what could happen if the right wing’s stance against social programs and welfare were taken to an extreme.

However, this is a novel, not an essay. No matter how interested I am in the socio-political philosophy of inevitable dystopia, a novel has to be a story first. I admit I found myself skipping entire paragraphs, which is not typical for me. It just didn’t hold my interest. To be fair, this book has lots of great reviews. It’s been promoted as a Hunger Games for adults, and certainly many responded to the book’s take on ageism. Because the themes are so timely and well defined, libraries should make it available despite my personal dislike for it. Recommended for ages 12-adult.

Reviewed by David Agranoff