“I thought about how the world can be anything and how sad it is that it's this.”

Chain-Gang All-Stars is an instant classic: in a landscape of popular fiction with short lifespans, here is a novel that begs to outlast brevity. And although I didn't consider this a perfect novel, there is so much that Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah does right that I cannot in good conscience say this is anything less than a 5-star read. The ambition in this novel is seismic. Chain-Gang All-Stars confronts the for-profit prison structure, consumption of violence in media, how we view incarcerated persons, and the true definition of freedom – and that's just scratching the surface. Adjei-Brenyah has carefully considered all the angles of a horrifying, yet not unbelievable, dystopian future, and explores it through a kaleidoscopic ensemble of characters, some of which held gravitas than others. Ultimately, though, this is not an ensemble story; it's a story of two Links within the same Chain—Thurwar and Staxxx—and the progression of their relationship in the volatile and bloody environment of carceral deathmatches. SpoilerFrom very early on, it's clear that the two people who love each other will have to fight one another. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion, knowing the end that will have to come and not being able to do anything to avoid it, let alone fix it. As we understand the dystopia through Thurwar, Staxxx, the surrounding Links, and the protestors trying to abolish the inhumane act of televising cage fights, Adjei-Brenyah does something incredibly smart and not often utilised in fiction drawn from meticulous research: the incorporation of footnotes. I love a good footnote, and Adjei-Brenyah implements them to draw our attention to specific statistics and policies surrounding the prison industrial complex, reminding us that while this is a work of fiction, it is not without significant grounding in reality. And I think it's the grounded research that better informs these characters, creates a more dimensional image of who these people are, why they would agree to a program like this, and what they believe is on the other side of their freedom. By the end, I was left crushed in a way I'm typically not with novels. Maybe it's that the violence is unflinching. Or maybe it was the care taken to depict different facets and interconnections of this dystopia. It left me hollowed and feeling as though this book has to exist into the future – it's so vital to understanding how we (the global public) view incarceration and are consumers of cultures of violence. Adjei-Brenyah's writing, lyrical and brilliant as ever, is cinematic at times and I could see this being adapted into a film, or better yet as a stage play in which the audience becomes spectator, just like the audience in these deathmatches become spectators to a corrupted system, an act of saying 'this is what we're okay with.' And while I thought that sometimes this novel's ambition eclipsed clear storytelling—the multiple viewpoints were sometimes too kaleidoscopic—and the pace of the central story was at times uneven, Adjei-Brenyah has created something powerful here. Thurwar and Staxxx forever.

EVERY DAY A DEVASTATION