Meet Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Staxx,” two prisoners/gladiators of the Chain Gang All-Stars who must kill in order to survive. As part of the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE) program, they are forced to murder other prisoners for the country’s reality show entertainment. Cameras record their every move and their “fans” pack sports arenas to watch the violent death matches to see if these prisoner celebrities can rise through the ranks and earn their freedom.

Part romance, part Hunger Games, and part social commentary on race, Chain Gang All-Stars is a thought-provoking look at a dystopian penal system that may be closer to our reality than we would like to believe.

The concept of this novel was so compelling, but we didn't spend enough time with each of the characters for me to feel connected to any of them. I feel like this would have been better as a short story.

Wow. I'm a huge fan of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's debut collection, Friday Black, and have been eagerly awaiting this novel—and it was worth it! He is so, so good at exaggerating outside of reality in order to have us reflect back on actual happenings. His prose is incredibly strong and phrases stick in my head for hours after reading. Modernizing gladiators to make a point about the prison system, but make them women...I would love to have a brain like his! Highly recommend.

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley. I haven't read anything from the author previously, but the story's outline and theme appealed to me enough that I requested it.

Chain-Gang All-Stars is two things in one and that is simultaneously what makes it interesting and what leaves it broken. The story is set on a futuristic USA where the current mass incarceration system met late-stage capitalism and years of reality show and social media voyeurism and originated a "hungergamesian" spectacle. Not only do companies make money off of having people in jail - as they do today in the US -, but they also have teams of prisoners competing in battles to the death for the eventual chance of regaining freedom after years of murdering others.
This fictional set-up is good enough to capture the reader's attention in the beginning, but sometimes feels a bit superficially or incompletely explored.
The other part of the book is the factual references that not only clearly define the kind of fictional creation the author came up with, but are also textually described as footnotes in the novel itself. I don't mind the straightforwardness of the author, but it did leave me jarred once in a while going from fiction to dry numerical reality and then back to fiction.
Some of the characters and stories are interesting, I particularly liked the exploration of care and duty despite the violence in the Singer-SJC storyline. The couple viewing the reality show at home did little for me as a reader, though I do understand the importance of trying to introduce examples of "regular people" as a way to explain the persistence of the system.

All in all, I liked a good part the experience and and I do agree that current carceral systems and their biased structures need to be analysed and changed, particularly those with unethical incentives such as the example that served as a basis for this novel.

5 stars

This book is excellent, provocative, and gut wrenching (in more ways than one), and it's one I know I'll be thinking and talking about for a long, *long* time. Prospective readers who are looking for that book-as-perspective-changing or book-as-perspective-enhancing experience - versus a reading for pleasure joint - will find that here, maybe more than they've encountered it in most previous attempts.

Folks who are already dialed into the prison industrial complex and who have been paying attention to particular groups and experiences may also read this and think that sci-fi is a hopeful rather than realistic tag as it's incredibly easy to imagine the horrors of this book coming to life in modern society. Various incarcerated individuals are compelled to commit their lives to fighting to the death because it seems somehow better than regular old prison. See what I mean? Not that surprising to some of us.

It's not just the social issues, the gripping descriptions, and the fight scenes that readers remember because one of this author's most profound gifts is humanizing characters who are often dehumanized based on their identities and circumstances. The two leads are utterly gripping. I badly want prequels for nearly every character in the novel. The characters love, make mistakes, grow, and suffer. Readers with any semblance of empathy will get their hearts ripped out, too, but more importantly, they'll be asking themselves some vital, lasting questions, including but not limited to what would I do in this case, whose side am I on and why, what does freedom really mean, and how far away are we from making this a reality?

This isn't a fun read but it's an indelible one, and I can't wait to read more from this author and recommend this HEARTILY to very specific audiences.

America's carceral system brought to a devastatingly violent crescendo is a formidable read. I challenge people who are scared to read it anyway. Amidst the violence and all the content warnings are much-needed lessons about survival, love, hope, humanity, and what fear does to us. This last one is an especially poignant facet that white people must reflect upon and figure out how to do better.

A searing indictment of the criminal punishment system in the U.S., Chain-Gang All-Stars follows America's carceral worship to one of its possible conclusions. Though explored through fictional characters, Adjei-Brenyah uses factual footnotes and bases his characters and their narrative on many of today's carceral realities. The only tangible gap between today's America and the world reflected in this book is some of the technology used to limit the movements and speech of inmates, to inflict extreme pain, and to siphon this world straight into the homes of Americans.

The structure of the book, the viewpoints it elucidates, and the voices in which it speaks weave a deeply effective and devastating story of how suffering and pain merely beget more suffering, pain, and death. I was an abolitionist before reading this book, but I can't imagine how someone with any faith in the criminal punishment system could read this and believe that the carceral state in which we live is the path forward.

This book highlights the humanity of everyone--even those who have hurt others--without being saccharine. It shows how prisoners show greater restraint with one another than the state does with them. It shows how the only thing death creates is more death. And yet still, there is love--there is beautiful queer love, there is friendship, mercy, and true care--all shown amongst prisoners within the system, despite having been stripped of their freedom and being sentenced to death.

Adjei-Brenyah cites Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, and Mariame Kaba throughout the book and the narrative clearly relies upon their teachings as it forms its world and message. This is essential reading for anyone with an openness to adopting abolition--or anyone who is already working to enact it. It incites to action with the same urgency that Kaba, Davis, and Gilmore do.

Thanks for the ARC netgalley!

This was really well written! Lyrical and smart, the way it flowed was a little hard to grab on to at first but it smoothed out as the characters were fleshed out. I want to read it again now that I have a grasp on the writing style. I had a hard time following the characters as well... Maybe a second reading will help with this too

This is a deeply trenchant, piercing dystopian novel (that really isn't all that different from our own world, in most crucial ways). It's really hard to get through, at times, but the writing is tremendous and the characters are amazing.

This review is from an ARC. Working on the Chain Gang has been redefined. The penal system has gone through a revamp. Crime and criminals are being handled a little differently. Welcome to the Chain Gang All-Stars, where your freedom can be guaranteed based on your will to survive. This novel gave a look from within at the prison system and how it's more geared to financial compensation as opposed to the rehabilitation of the inmates. The cast of characters pull you in from the first page. Chain Gang All Stars is a gripping story that leaves you wondering who really is the villain.

Wow this book is intense and unbelievably gutting. I can't decide if I loved it but I must have like it as it sure has stuck with me.
The novel is basically a not too far in the future story of how the prison system has monetized inmates making them participate in very gory and violent blood sports that have television audiences captivated.
It is thought provoking to say the least and very good food for thought.

The writing is crisp and the subject matter intense.
Readers are immersed in a society where capitalism is out of control. The prison industrial complex is crazy and has taken over this society where mass incarcerations are also out of control and thriving on the crazy blood sport game circuit where all you have to do is survive three years to be free. The problem is that death is the expectation and survival is almost impossible.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of a book I won't soon forget which was provided in exchange for my review.

This book was heartbreaking and so important. It gutted me, as it should. I don’t really have anything else to say. Just beautiful and tragic and important.

In an eerily familiar US of the future Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the main attraction of Criminal Action Penal Entertainment – a controversial, gladiator style, reality TV program in which incarcerated Links fight for their freedom in murderous death matches. The games are a merchandizing dream and viewers are addicted to the program’s unpredictability and volatility. The magic of the games is in how it makes the audience both love and fear the participants. And there’s no one the crowds love more than Thurwar and Staxxx. The two women are tantalizingly close to attaining their freedom before a series of changes is put into effect that jeopardize their chances of survival.

Readers who are unfamiliar with the current US prison industrial complex might be caught off guard by this scathing, roiling portrait of a not so speculative American future. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah includes footnotes with actual facts and statistics that ground the fictitious characters in the current reality. The story mixes reality and fiction into an intoxicating and dizzying blend.
The story switches perspective constantly from the incarcerated, to the Coalition to End Neo-slavery protestors, to the game makers and executives in board rooms, and to viewers at home. The game makers understand that their goal is to dehumanize the Links, to separate the criminal from the human so that viewers only see the criminal die and rejoice and cheer them on towards their destruction.

The true inhumanity of the system is revealed in how everyone is implicated in the violence and horror. Everyone is a commodity, to be used up and discarded and redemption is found in resisting violence or using it for a better end.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

10/10

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for sending me an ARC of Chain-Gang All-Stars in exchange for an honest review.

The TV show “Chain-Gang All-Stars” is the crown jewel in a barely future America’s Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program. Inmates facing long sentences can volunteer to join their prison’s team where they will fight other teams to the death. Most of these “Links” die quickly (“low freed”) but if a Link can survive for three years with approximately one fight a month (plus unscheduled melees, backstabbing teammates, etc.), they will earn their freedom and be “high freed.” Loretta Thurwar upset a Colossal in her first fight and became an instant legend. Now, almost three years later, she’s the Grand Colossal and she leads the Angola-Hammond Chain-Gang along with her lover and almost-Colossal Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker. Loretta is just a few fights away from winning her freedom, but will she be able to survive the final obstacles in her path?

Chain-Gang All-Stars is an impressive exercise in world building. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah has presented this fictional prison program in great detail. There’s an entire system in place for the Links to acquire points they can use to buy better food and weapons, scouting reports for upcoming fights, etc. There’s the companion reality show, “LinkLyfe,” that draws in viewers by showing the Links in their daily life when not fighting. There’s also a wide collection of characters used to tell different parts of the story. We get to know the A-Hamm Links very well, and some other Links as well. But we also get to know the leaders of multiple protest groups, some of the passionate fans, and the “GameMasters” who run the program.

The story in Chain-Gang All-Stars is quite good. I was absorbed by Thurwar’s and Staxxx’s dilemma, which was not resolved until the final page. I also really liked the character arcs of One-Arm Scorpion Singer Hendrix Young and the Unkillable Simon Jungle Craft. I thought Emily’s progression from horrified opponent to sympathetic fan through getting to know the Links on LinkLyfe was a very clever depiction of how Americans generally don’t think much about convicts, but become very emotionally invested through presentations like Adnan Syed on the Serial podcast (I’ll admit I am as guilty of this as the next person).

Of course, Chain-Gang All-Stars is using this imagined future prison system, with its Roman gladiator/Hunger Games system of punishing prisoners by making them fight each other to the death for public entertainment, to examine America’s current prison system. The book has a series of footnotes with real-world facts, data, and stories demonstrating that the depravity and abuses of this imagined system are tragically quite true to life. The novel doesn’t provide an answer for what a world that abolished prisons would look like, and admits no one has all the answers, but it does lay out the case for how the current system is failing and requires wholesale changes. An entertaining yet also thought-provoking read. Recommended.

Chain-Gang All-Stars is the frankly staggering debut novel from Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of the phenomenal short story collection, Friday Black. 

Welcome to an America where prisoners are used for savage entertainment. CAPE (Criminal Action Penal Entertainment) is a fighting league, where the incarcerated are pitted against each other in a literal battle to the death. Tickets are sold, the rich become richer, the world becomes progressively worse. Our two heroines are Hurricane Staxx and Loretta Thurwar, women at the height of their power and top of their game. As they fight to stay alive, we follow their relationship, and anticipate a potentially devastating conclusion. We also meet the other characters of CAPE; other fighters, hosts, executives, and fans.

Chain-Gang All-Stars is one of the most exciting and devastating books I’ve ever read. Adjei-Brenyah has created a world that feels so real, and characters and situations that are so harrowing. The author’s occasional footnotes, which enhance the narrative with real statistics and facts, land like a gutpunch, and are a reminder that this fictional narrative is not too far from where we are as a society right now. But the writing is never didactic; it is already clear that these issues on race are real, and need to be urgently addressed. 

Here is the cycle I went around numerous times while reading:

“I hope this character wins”

“But they’re going to kill someone”

“But CAPE put them in this situation”

“So this person was a criminal to begin with”

“But are they really just a victim of a corrupt justice system?”

“Oh man, this is all so messed up.”

Nothing I say in this review can fully capture how important, thrilling, and heartbreaking this novel is; Adjei-Brenyah has created something truly incredible. In Chain-Gang All-Stars you will see yourself, you will see your friends, you will see an all-too-believable world of horror, and you will question yourself and your impact. 

Chain-Gang All-Stars will be available on May 2nd, 2023, but you should pre-order it right now.

Ridiculously huge thanks to Pantheon for the ARC of this book.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's novel is ambitious and very inventive—one of those speculative novels that makes you think that (terribly) the future it imagines is possible. In a near future, laws are passed that allow prisoners to compete in "hard action sports" (a clever euphemism for people murdering one another live and on-screen) for their freedom as part of the CAPE program. Prisoners—referred to as Links—who join the Chain Gangs choose to participate are stripped of any and all privacy and forced to murder others or suffer death at their opponents hands; the upside is fame and glory. Naturally, since incarceration so disproportionately affects people of color, most of the people in these government-sanctioned entertainment deathmatches are also people of color. "Chain Gang All Stars" mainly follows Loretta Thurwar, the highest-ranked Link who is also pretty much the most famous, and her romantic partner (and teammate), stage name Hurricane Staxxx. This is a novel I felt pretty conflicted about for a lot of reasons and feel I would have to re-read in order to do real justice in a review, but bear with me as I try my best after one reading.

The mechanics of the imagined future are well-wrought and often very interesting; I won't go into them here, but suffice it to say world-building is not an issue, and I think speculative fiction folks will find a lot to like.

The novel is (extremely!) polyphonic and bounces around quite often, something that works both as a strength and a weakness. Some of the voices introduced in the novel are real stunners—I'm thinking particularly of Hendrix Singer, whose sections were without fail a joy to read. Other times it can feel confusing—sometimes we're in a murky close third-person that changes its focus between multiple characters within a chapter. Sometimes too the breaks between chapters feel confusing and arbitrary—there's a section towards the end where the Links congregate in a small town where the chapter breaks come very frequently and I couldn't understand the logic behind it. Because of the polyphony present in the novel there's also a lot to hold on to. Some of the "side stories" we return to frequently, like the lives of some young people who protest the legality of "hard-action sports." Other ones are one-offs or perspectives returned to infrequently. One character in particular feels consistently forgotten—and even though Thurwar makes a comment to this degree, explaining her own forgetfulness of his presence, I wondered why he was there if he had so little effect.

An issue that feels intricately linked to the discussion of perspective, for me, is the plot, which I also found confusing and unevenly paced.

My favorite thing that this novel does is it walks a careful line, making the argument that even though many of the CAPE participants are murderers and rapists—naturally, this being one of the reasons why the public accepted the program—the program is still wrong, and prisoners deserve, like all people, to be treated with a baseline of human dignity. Adjei-Brenyah is doing great work focusing his attention, with nuance, on an issue that people are/will be very reactive to. This is the kind of combustible subject matter that deserves this kind of attention—many of the main characters, as likeable as they are or become, have done terrible things that many would find unforgivable. There's an interesting way in which our perspective as readers, becoming invested in the private lives of these people, both mirrors and contrasts the perspective of the masses who devour the Chain Gang program in the novel. Ultimately, there’s something to be said for the fact that literature is an endlessly powerful technology for creating sympathy in our minds for people who, ordinarily, we might feel deserve it the least.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah ha escrito una novela ultraviolenta desde las entrañas y solo caben dos opciones: entrar en su juego o huir. No hay lugar para medias tintas en este futuro distópico que critica tan dura como fehaciente al sistema carcelario estadounidense.


Una película que sin duda viene a la memoria al empezar a leer Chain-Gang All-Stars es Perseguido, protagonizada por Arnold Schwarzenegger, que a su vez se inspira en una obra de Stephen King. La premisa de este libro es la creación de un nuevo deporte, peleas a muerte en las que los convictos se enfrentan para disfrute de la población. Se ha montado todo un negocio-espectáculo alrededor de estos sangrientos enfrentamientos y el autor no nos ahorra ni un escabroso detalle. Pero lo peor no es esto, lo peor son las numerosas notas a pie de página, que sí son verídicas y que dan fe de un sistema roto desde su concepción, con un sesgo tan claro hacia el provecho como negocio en vez de la rehabilitación que se convierte en un círculo vicioso. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah lo exagera hasta llevarlo a límites insospechados, pero la base está ahí para cualquiera que quiera verlo.

La lectura no es para nada agradable. Es incómoda, nos expone a realidades que quizá preferiríamos ignorar y roza el gore en ocasiones. Además, los flashbacks del pasado de los participantes son descorazonadores. Y no hay una luz de esperanza. Las pocas acciones que llevan a cabo grupos aislados para eliminar la competición son recibidos con burlas por los fanáticos de los deportes extremos.

Resulta especialmente llamativo que se pervierta un estudio para el tratamiento del dolor, que busca anularlo, como método de control de los presos, maximizándolo totalmente. Esa lógica capitalista perversa que retuerce todo lo que se ofrece solo en busca de más y más beneficios se ve perfectamente expuesta en esta parte del libro y en general, en todas las demás.

Un libro que nos plantea un interesantísimo dilema moral, pero que para hacerlo utiliza unas herramientas que quizá no sean del gusto de todos los lectores, por la crudeza de las imágenes que se muestran pero sobre todo, por la mezquindad que promueve todas las acciones, algo tan humano que está dentro de todos nosotros.

I’m giving this kind of a surprising five stars. I loved the premise—two gladiators, Loretta Thurwar and Hamara Stacker, fight to either freedom or death through a near future dystopian prison system—but I also don’t generally love senseless and gratuitous violence and have a hard time reading it. But something about the way it was done here was visceral in a meaningful way that added to rather than took away from the story.

And I liked that, on top of a great work of fiction, this is a denunciation of the US prison system and how it’s driven by both systemic racism and capitalism.

I can’t believe this is a debut.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon!

This was a very interesting and challenging read. Interesting as it tells of CAPE. A program for prisoners to ” win” their freedom. The catch, each match is to the death. Thus, you must win to move up in the “Chain”, to reach Grand Colossal. You win that, and you’re freed. Crimes forgiven, you go back into society. But when is it ever that easy??
Hence, the challenging part. Adeji-Brenyah gives us bold and brazen characters. Broken characters, “influenced” characters (Simon J. Craft). Determined and strong willed (Mari and Thurwar).
Humbled and confident (Sunset and Staxx). These characters give life to every feeling and situation in this book. All of them and more, trying to overcome something, be a family, all while killing or getting killed!
I appreciate the challenge of having to look at our own justice system and the disproportionate racial realities this book gives us. Further solidified with facts of these realities throughout the story line.
All in all, a gripping and enlightening read. Felt to the core.
A read for today, the future, all of humanity. I just wish it ended differently…. for all of them.
Thank you NetGalley and Pantheon Publishing for an advanced copy of “Chain-Gang All-Stars” for my honest review.

Squid Games meets Hunger Games meets I don’t even know what… this book absolutely blew my mind.

I was really surprised, because I don’t usually read books like this, but I’m so glad I did this time.
I love how there were multiple POVs and extra touches. Everything worked so well together.

There is a lot of violence in the book, so readers be warned, but this honestly might be one of my top books for 2023 (even though the year just started).

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC!!