Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
UK Publication: July 2023
Reviewed by: Book Worm  
Rating: [★★★★]

This ARC was provided by Random House UK (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

One word review – Brutal

Synopsis from Goodreads: Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.

My Thoughts: Well that was one savage yet beautiful ride. This is Running Man for the thinking reader. The book is interspersed with real life statistics about prison populations, the likelihood of ending up in jail based on ethnicity and the crimes likely to land you in jail. Land mark miscarriages of justice are also mentioned in the food notes so the reader can fully appreciate this book is not just about entertaining it is about the society that exists currently and how only a few small steps will take us to CAPE.

This is a book about the characters despite knowing the chain gang is made up of murderers and rapists it is these individuals the reader is rooting for and not the justice system that is meant to punish them.

Who would like this? I would recommend this to those who want to know more about Justice in America and what that actually looks like.

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