The Freedom Race by Lucinda Roy. It's coming out in July and I finished it in May. And this I started off reading really slowly because it is pretty dark and discouraging. There's just so much
pain and darkness and it feels overwhelming and like the characters are powerless against it and therefore it makes the reader feel powerless. Because this is set in a dystopian future after a second civil war in America and basically a big section of the country everywhere that isn't a big city and isn't on either coast I think has gone back to a plantation style way of living along with slavery. But now they have some futuristic technology and they have gotten a new religion that is slightly inspired by certain interpretations of Christianity but they added a new book in addition to the Bible and don't really read the Bible anymore, they read his new book. It's super patriarchal, very sexist, and also very racist. And they actually use a color wheel to like standardize colorism. Super dark but it's been very accepted by the people who live in it sort of a way, like they don't feel like they can change anything, and it's old, it's been at least a couple of generations since the civil war happened and all this got instituted, so people were very used to it and very worn down. And our main character Jiji was raised in it and she's 16 years old. And the book starts out a lot with how she lives in it and with the execution of one of her mentors from when she was growing up, and there are a lot of flashbacks in the first
third I would say about her childhood and growing up and how horrible it's been. Although her life has been a little bit less horrible than a lot of people's because she - her mother is
favored a lot by the white man who "owns" her and so yeah, and so she's a favorite daughter, one of his daughters, because there's a huge,
bit huger maybe than the old plantation style, rape system which is a breeding system where they are actually trying to get
whiter and whiter Black people by having most of the women be paired with a "father man" who is a white man who is like a sectional, who owns like a section of a plantation. And those always hit me really hard. I really - anything involving rape,
especially on such a massive scale and a repeating scale, really messes with me, so it took me a long time to read this. I think I started it in April. But eventually we got into the Freedom Race, which is something kind of odd. I don't know why it was instituted into the plantations. It's like a system where if you race and perform really well, for the women it's just racing for men it's also an acrobatic show, if you do really well you can win your freedom in DC. It's a very small number and apparently it's like a big money maker because there's a performance aspect and like people want to watch and see. I don't know, it feels too good to be true in this super dystopian world. Once we got to that portion where there was a lot more hope and that was a lot more pleasant to read, so I got through that a bit faster. And I really liked it. I thought the world building was super in depth. Except for you know a couple, like the too good to be true thing, it seemed really good. There are also like mutants who are experimented on and genetically modified creatures, like there are these massive hyena things and some snarlcats which are super big tiger lion things. I really liked all of that and I also liked the main character's
immediate family, mother, grandfather, cousins, were more recently brought over from Africa than a lot of people, and so they actually have links and can remember the people that they came from and their traditions, and so I really liked that spiritual traditional aspect that kept coming in, and like origin stories that had a lot to do with the somewhat sci-fi magical aspects of it. And I found our main character very likable and understandable. Overall once I reached that less hopeless point it was a really enjoyable book. Could be quite disheartening and even triggering for a lot of people, so I've talked about most of the trigger warnings but there are a few more so look into those.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this speculative piece of fiction. It is so immersive from start to finish. The author does not hold back at all. Loved.

The Freedom Race is a speculative fiction set in a future U.S. that has regressed back to a new slavery system after facing a second Civil War and climate related disasters. The story follows Ji-ji Lottermule, an enslaved teenager born and raised on one of the plantations on the Homestead Territories.

This book is immersive from the start & the author holds nothing back. Readers immediately get dropped into the aftermath of the Prequel (second Civil War) & it can be a bit dizzying to find your footing. There’s a mix of terminology, history, and events that blend from the past into the present to come up with this new reality. I generally like immersive fiction, but reader be warned that this book will take extra time to keep all of the elements of Roy’s world-building straight.

At the beginning, we follow muleseed Ji-ji (Jellybean Lottermule) who is training to earn her & upcoming Freedom Race. Readers are submerged in the violence of this new world when Father-Man Lotter (First Father-Man on Planting 437) breaks the promise he made to Ji-ji’s mother Silapu, & announces that her muleseed (newborn son) will be sent to a server camp due to his skin being too dark on the hierarchical Color Wheel & therefore not a testament to the strength of Lotter’s seed. All of the terminology was a little difficult to keep straight & I found myself having to read the story in pieces in order to absorb it. This society gets increasingly hierarchical as the reading continues & the different caste systems can be overwhelming at first but are interesting nonetheless.

This book does well for speculative fiction fans that enjoy unpacking and reflecting on elements of a story and being completely immersed in a world unlike anything previously published. Roy creates something in The Freedom Race unlike anything I’ve read before & I’ll be very interested to see what happens in book 2.

Content Warning:
slavery, executions,physical abuse, shootings, lynching, graphic violence of death, graphic attempted rape, domestic violence

This book is depressing and hopeful. It is hard to read, but I couldn't put it down. Roy paints an incredibly disturbing, yet maddingly believable, future dystopia. Racism and the societies that support or tolerate it are told unblinkingly. It would be really easy to focus on the reasons why this book is important and difficult and rage-inducing. And it is, all of those things. But it is also beautiful. It's so well written. The characters are full people, with all of the feelings that they *should* have in a situation this horrible. Yet they also hope, but not blindly. They continue to fight for a better world, but don't pretend it will be easy. I just love this so much.

The premise of The Freedom Race is definitely an interesting one, even though I'm not sure if the world needs a book about a dystopian futuristic America that has decided to bring back chattel slavery. This book has heavy themes of colorism and patriarchy, and it does not shy away from the cruelty that was white slave masters raping Black women in hopes to make more workers yet wanting them to be of a lighter hue. As for the plot, I found this book to be incredibly slow-paced and hard to get through, with the last 100 pages telling the bulk of the story and having the majority of the action.

I requested this one because it might be a 2021 title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have realized that I would prefer to wait for the audiobook version because it will work better for me with the dialect.