Title: The War Between
Author: Jennifer Withers
Date: 2016
Quote: "He wrenched me away from the old man, aiming a kick that sent him staggering away."
The war is between humans, as we know our species, with only natural abilities, and "superhumans," with psychic powers. They coexist in a fascist dystopia where the predominant sense is pain. Food is perhaps deliberately scarce; everyone seems grim and angry and mean; most scenes involve somebody intentionally inflicting pain on somebody else. The story is told from the viewpoints of several different characters who all sound exactly alike. Superhumans have been made psychic by some process that involves inflicting pain on, usually, children. In theory their powers could be taken away by inflicting even more pain on the young adults they've become, though in practice we see this not working. The superhumans think they're a separate race since they live apart from and are detested by humans (they get slightly better rations and living conditions) but at least two of them turn out to be daughters of the human "president," who doesn't seem to be president of a very large nation, who wanted to produce a superhuman army and attack another nation. Nobody knows much about what's going on, other than who seems to be inflicting pain on whom. Eventually the humans and superhumans will come to physical combat, which will end only when a superhuman--all of the superhumans are young, but it'll be one who's still growing and who's narrated parts of the story--intentionally commits suicide, just to get everyone else's attention.
I can't imagine any reason why anyone would like reading this book but, if you are a teenager who wants to prove your toughness by reading a dystopian novel with no glimmer of love or sunshine in all its many pages, you might choose this one.
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