3.5* Chain Gang All-Stars is a clever take on the US penal system, drawing on Roman gladiatorial contests and with a strong Hunger Games vibe.

In the most too distant future those who are facing death or life sentences can, as an alternative, sign themselves into the CAPE Programme. Death bouts in front of blood thirsty crowds and beamed out live on TV. Survive for 3 years (fighting once a month plus other contests) and you could win your freedom. The competitors are drawn into “chains”, based on their originating prison, and each contestant forms a link. They work together but are each on their own because the links cannot be drawn to battle another from their own chain.

Thurwar defeated a colossal (someone who has almost won freedom) in her first bout, making her a superstar. Staxx the other crowd favourite and a member of Thurwar’s chain, is also closing in on freedom. As the bloody battles ensue, society is split between the obsessive fans and those who strenuously oppose the programme. We follow the controllers of the programme, life inside the Chain, the fans and the opponents.

With a heavy dose of violence, there are a lot of characters to get to know in Chain Gang, which takes away from the narrative. The clever take on penal politics is evident throughout but it is a little too broad in trying to bring in so many themes, viewpoints and approaches. Overall enjoyable and I suspect will be hugely popular, particularly for those who enjoyed the Hunger Games or dystopian fiction.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Vintage for an ARC. I raced through this to find out what would happen.

Chain-Gang All-Stars opens with a brutal fight between Melancholia Bishop, fighting for freedom, and Loretta Thurwar, fighting for survival. The novel throws you immediately into the action to establish the premise: convicted criminals are given the opportunity to fight other prisoners to the death, in a bid to win their freedom - and it’ll be broadcast to the nation as a high-stakes sporting event. Author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah reframes the injustice of the American prison system as a massive-scale television event, where viewers actively root for the deaths of everyone who faces their favourite “link”.

The world-building of the novel is expansive and immersive, and Adjei-Brenyah explains it all with ease. The world of Chain-Gang All-Stars has a lot to it - links, chains, HMCs, ranks, the concept of high and low-freed, Influencers and Marches - but it all just… works. It’s explained and you get it, you understand the stakes and the lore and how everything fits together. It’s all so meticulously thought-out, and is incredibly impressive for a debut novel.

Thankfully, this is matched by the quality of the writing. Fight scenes are visceral, poetic explanations of punches, kicks and scythe slashes. Characters are three-dimensional and fully realised; our protagonists are criminals who are reflective and open about their pasts and their regrets, and the injustice of their situation - they may be imprisoned for murdering one person, but once inside each violent murder they commit rewards them with Blood Points.

All of which is to perhaps misrepresent the book as a soulless action novel, which couldn’t be further from the truth. At its heart is a queer love story between Thurwar and Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker. The relationship is complicated and layered, and adds even greater stakes to the fight scenes. The other core idea that Adjei-Brenyah explores is the injustice of the prison system. Chapters are interspersed with real-world facts about disproportionate incarceration rates for marginalised communities, and these interjections never feel remotely forced, or anything less than essential. The novel radiates with an anger at this injustice, and Adjei-Brenyah’s message is clear.

Overall, a layered, engaging and impressive debut novel. Deeply political and thought-provoking, but also a very enjoyable reading experience

Thank you to Netgalley and Vintage Books for the e-ARC!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

A Black Mirror-esque take on the future of America’s private prison capitalist society, I struggled to vibe with the narrative voice of this book. Having loved the Bitch Planet comic a few years ago, this felt somewhat derivative and toothless by comparison

For a while I thought this was going to be a solid five stars because the opening was so strong-- gritty, nasty and compelling. In fact, parts of this book were awesome. The social commentary and criticism of the prison system was excellent and hard-hitting (though arguably the real world criticism got a little lost in this dystopian narrative). The fight scenes were horrific but impossible to look away from. I think the book's main weakness was the choice to flit around between so many characters. Thurwar and Staxx were interesting to me; not all the others were. It is not surprising to hear that Adjei-Brenyah is primarily a short story writer, as some of the chapters seemed like short stories themselves and often took me out of the flow of the main storyline.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a powerful and thought-provoking collection of short stories that explore issues of race, violence, and inequality in modern America. The stories are often shocking and disturbing, but they are also deeply empathetic and nuanced, and they offer a powerful critique of the many injustices that continue to plague American society.

One of the most striking aspects of the collection is the way in which Adjei-Brenyah uses elements of speculative fiction and magical realism to underscore the often surreal and absurd nature of the injustices he is describing. In stories such as "The Era," which takes place in a dystopian future where "excessive emotion" is punishable by death, Adjei-Brenyah is able to capture the ways in which racism and inequality can become ingrained in society and perpetuated through seemingly benign or even well-intentioned systems.

At the same time, the stories in Chain-Gang All-Stars are deeply grounded in the lived experiences of the characters, many of whom are working-class or marginalized individuals struggling to survive in a world that is often hostile and unforgiving. The stories are often bleak and brutal, but they are also filled with moments of tenderness and compassion, and Adjei-Brenyah is able to capture the complexity and depth of human emotions with remarkable skill.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words some text written has been typed in red and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Chain-Gang All-Stars is a brutal novel about incarceration, in an America where prisoners can elect to be part of a blood sport where they fight for the death with the hope of freedom. Loretta Thurwar is an icon, having almost survived three years of deathly gladiator matches as a Link, an individual fighter as part of a Chain of others, alongside her love Hamara Stacker, aka Hurricane Staxx. Both hide secrets as they move towards Thurwar's final fights, and meanwhile, a movement to stop the blood sport is trying to find traction.

There's a lot packed into this novel, which uses a range of characters' points of view to unfold the world of the narrative, a world both taken to extremes with the legal programme of prisoner gladiator death matches and not all that far away from the realities of the real life prison system and wider society, as footnotes throughout the book highlight with real facts and statistics. There's plenty of the horror of the system, from the new methods of inflicting pain on prisoners to the ways in which every element of the Links' lives is sold and televised as part of their agreement to be in the program. By combining many points of view, a lot of this detail can be organically shown throughout the book, rather than all the worldbuilding dumped at the start, and I appreciated this as it makes it much easier to get into the book.

The range of characters allow for a rich look into some of the nuances (I've seen other reviews calling everything too obvious or in your face, but for me there were plenty of small nuances), for example the experiences of two new Links being recruited into the program after torture at the prisons they were at, and the range of reasons why characters were imprisoned for so long in the first place. The book uses this to offer the reader ways in to thinking about abolition and restorative justice, and the fact that individuals do not have all the answers to this. At the same time, you get to see viewers of the show, both of the matches and the reality TV-esque parts which just follow the Links around in their Chain in between fights, and consider why people see it as okay to watch such content.

The doomed love story between Thurwar and Staxx is another crucial element, providing a heart-wrenching ending and a story that will draw in people who may otherwise find the book too brutal. You don't always see a huge amount of them together, but what you do see is the ways in which their relationship is bound by their circumstances and how those who run the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment programme use and profit from their queerness as well as their strength as fighters. There's also, unsurprisingly given that the book is about incarceration, a lot around race and who is imprisoned, and tensions that exist when people lack freedom.

There's a lot to take in with Chain-Gang All-Stars, with a lot of perspectives and a long build up to its final confrontations, but it manages to be a powerful book that hurts on a character and a structural level. Being a high concept and brutal book, it won't be for everyone, but I appreciated how it wove together so much and still had an atmospheric final moment as an ending.

Hunger Games meets Gladiator meets The New Jim Crow in this hard-hitting and provocative, near-future dystopian exploration of the racism, prejudice and violence at the heart of the USA Prison-Industrial Complex.

This is Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah debut novel – his previous publication “Black Friday” was a short story collection exploring themes around Black identity, social issues and capitalist excess in today’s America via a series of often bizarre and violent near-future dystopias with the opening “Finkelstein Five” looking at the justice system via the violent protests that break out after the acquittal of a white chainsaw killer.

The basic set up of the novel (which has a very impressive amount of coherent world building behind it) is the passing of the “Rightful Choice Act, commonly referred to as Bobby’s Bloodsport Bridge, or BBB, B3, or B Three (passed under President Robert Bircher)” which states “that under their own will and power, convicted wards of the state may elect to forgo a state- administered execution or a sentence totaling at least twenty- five (25) years’ imprisonment, to instead participate in the [Criminal Action Penal Entertainment] program. After three years of successful participation in said CAPE program, said ward may be granted clemency, commutation of sentence, or a full pardon.”

The CAPE programme effectively consists of a series of Gladiator type fights to the death. The participants are organised into Chains (with the individual prisoners known as Links) – the Gangs themselves typically managed by a private prison corporate networks.

Initially the Rookie Links are equipped with almost no offensive or defensive equipment but in the unlikely chance they survive their first fights (and are not bloodily killed – euphemistically described as being “low freed”) they: start to progress Sumo-style though a range of ranks (Survivor, Cusp, Reaper, Harsh Reaper, Colossal, and a single Grand Colossal); accumulate Blood Points that they can use to buy weapons and armour (as well as clothes, food and medical care); start to gain sponsorships from firms; and progress towards the possibility of being “high freed” if they survive three years (although the reader cannot help but be suspicious that the only person so far to get release in this way is widely seen as something of a plant given deliberately easy fights).

Links cannot fight other links in their Chain but between fights – and particularly on a series of forced Marches (a 1-2 week period of wilderness survival broken up by a series of melees with other Chains which stop when the first person is killed) – fatal violence between Links in a Chain is very common. The Marches are followed by a stay in a Hub City doing Community Service which enables the population to come into contact with the Links – the best of whom are nationwide celebrities as the Chain Gang fights are broadcast on subscription media (increasingly on mainstream sports channels as a form of extreme sport) and the Marches are broadcast as a form of reality-TV.

The book is very centred around two of the most famous Links: Loretta Thurwar (famous ever since a shock victory over a Colossal in her first fight) and now after the sudden and unexplained death of her about-to-be-freed friend and Chain-leader (Sunset Harkless) the Grand Colossal; her part-time Lesbian lover, Chain member and soon to be colossal Hamara Stacker (Hurricane Staxxx).

I must admit that from the opening few chapters I was sorely tempted to abandon the book – it largely consisted of detailed fights which I felt were covered in excessive and gratuitous detail and seemed to be far more of a YA novel of the sub-genre inspired by “Hunger Games”.

However, for me this was a novel initially saved by the footnotes before being completely rescued by the overall concept and execution.

The footnotes start early on and initially are largely about explaining the intricacies of the fights in even more excessive detail – but then on page 29, immediately after the explanation above of the BBB I was caught up short by an explanation of the Law Enforcement Support Office under which excess military equipment is transferred to civilian police departments and realised is a real world thing: and then shortly after by a description of one of the private prison corporations (Corrections Corporation of North America) which I realised was lightly fictionalised. And then footnotes start to refer to real life prison abuses either via individual cases or statistics, as well as to the crimes and brief backgrounds of the fictional CAPE participants (particularly those who are themselves killed). I felt this combination worked really powerfully.

And I also liked the way that the cast of the book switched around to multiple points of view including: a number of new CAPE participants – one in particular effectively tortured via an extreme pain causing control device into participation; the lead in-stadium fight commentator/compere; a group of individuals (with links both to Hurricane and Sunset) who lead the opposition to the BBB programme; a male fan of the fights whose initially reluctant girlfriend starts to get hooked on the reality-show of the marches (his attempts to mansplain to her offside-rule style the intricacies of the rules of the competition was a particular highlight of the book); a scientist who looking to develop a cure for pain has her research taken over by her industrial employer and turned into the aforementioned torture device and who ends as a prisoner herself; the man who drives the Chain to and from their fights and marches; the owners of the CAPE programme and their firm belief that it is crucial to the administration of justice and maintenance of safety in American society. And we also realise that there are various links between the different characters.

Cleverly I think in the same way that some viewers are attracted to the fights, some to the story and “journey” of the CAPE participants – it is clear from early reviews that some readers are attracted to the Gladiator type combat and some to the doomed trajectory of the love story at the novel’s heart. For me the first rather put me off and the second was also of little interest (as I felt the characters a little too cartoonish) but I did very much appreciate the way that like all the best dystopian fiction it feels like only a small step from aspects of our current world and forces us to examine some of the choices a society has to make to trade off different concepts and interpretations of liberty via its justice system.

Overall recommended.

Unlike anything I've read before. An absolutely savage critique of the prison and criminal justice system. This is Hunger Games meets Orange Is The New Black. It is fabulous!

Not for me as a reader. The story and the writing just didn’t work out for me. I really wanted to like this but I think this fell flat as the premise was not really my type of story.