Chain-Gang All-Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of the 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 before 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, Thurwar 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..."

I don't even know what to say about this book. It popped up on my radar and I ordered it, and then I kept seeing people talking about it, so I was like okay, need to read this right away. We decided to read it for our book club in July, I took it with me on vacation, and vacation basically became "how much time can I spend reading without garnering complaints" time until I finished it. At which point I traded reading time for thinking about what I just read time, because I can't get it out of my head. 

I read this shortly after Rust in the Root, and while they are totally different stories, both books blend fiction and reality in incredible and compelling ways. CAPE is fictional, but the underlying truths that led to its creation and acceptance in the book are very much a reality, and Adjei-Brenyah also includes footnotes throughout the book sharing facts about the prison industrial complex in the United States, which were very enlightening about the reality of our penal system. I also thought he did a brilliant job of humanizing the characters who were forced into the CAPE program and highlighting the way our "justice" system actively works to dehumanize people.

And speaking of humanizing the characters...THE CHARACTERS. They were so good. Love them or hate them, they were all so well-developed and realistic. I mean...Staxxx is officially on my list of favorite characters of all time. I read a lot of books, usually like nine or ten of them at a time, and there's always a new one waiting in the wings to rotate in after I finish something, so while it's not like I finish a book and then am like "deleted from my brain, I will never think of you again," it is pretty unusual for me to actively and regularly continue thinking about something for days after I read it. I'm a week out from finishing this one, and at least a couple of times a day I catch myself thinking about Staxxx's story and her ending or remembering key moments from the book and reflecting on them. There are still five months left in 2023, so I suppose something could come along and unseat it, but as of right now, this is the best book I've read this year. Incredible. Thought-provoking. Important. Go read it.