Games of the strong

This novel envisions a distopian society beset by frequent revolutions and characterised by cruel bureaucracies. Heroine Neila becomes an enemy of the state (the Complex) because she believes her parents were killed as resisters. Placed in a household of ultra-orthodox Complexers, she hides her true thoughts, even after falling in love with foster brother Lak. But things are not as they seem: her foster family is arrested and disappears; Neila's dissident companions (evil, voluptuous Serena; powerful Wils, who briefly becomes Neila's lover) may or may not be double agents. Neila herself ends up as Acting Minister of Information for the Complex; in which capacity she risks her own freedom, hoping to undermine the system, release political prisoners, and find Lak. Her adventures take her to the different territories of the Complex, including the Mountain (inhabited by a distinctive ethnic group from which Neila is in part descended) and the Island (the penal colony where resisters are dumped). https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/glenda-adams-4/games-of-the-strong-2/