Chain-Gang All-Stars

Welcome back and happy Pride! After a much needed break in May, I am back! Now with a slightly revamped website and more time on my hands for the summer. But even with taking a break for a busy month in my personal life, I was able to read quite a bit. I am flying through my TBR and Goodreads goal, and I’m at 26 books so far this year. One of those reads is our first book post-break, Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. And to accompany this review, I made a Star cocktail.

Star Recipe

1.5oz Apple Brandy

1.5oz Sweet Vermouth

1oz Lemonade*

3 dashes Bitters

2 dashes Gomme Syrup or Simple Syrup

1 twist Lemon

*This is an optional ingredient.

In a mixing glass with ice, add all ingredients and stir well. Strain into a chilled rocks glass, garnish, and enjoy!

This one was pretty good! I know I’ve had a lot of brandy and whiskey drinks this year so far, but I’ve been enjoying them. This month, I chose to add lemonade as the special ingredient because it was part of the farmer’s market scene in the novel. I was really happy with this inclusion! It worked well with the other ingredients and added some more dimension and sweetness to the drink. Tom find it a little too sweet, but it worked nicely for me. So overall, I’d recommend this cocktail!

Chain-Gang All-Stars Synopsis

(from book 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.

Review

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

Well as has been the trend this year, this was a tough one for me. Overall, I liked Chain-Gang All-Stars, but I had quite a few issues with it too. I found it very poignant and the message was clear, timely, and important. But I found problems with aspects of the story, specifically the characters and the ending. And with that mediocre intro, let’s get into more details.

As per usual, let’s start with the positives. The writing style was so unique and interesting. Adjei-Brenyah has a distinct voice that I was really drawn to. And I liked the inclusion of footnotes to help add context to the story. The fight scenes specifically were so detailed and gory that they expertly painted a picture of what was happening. But at the same time, I found the story moved quite slowly and nothing was driving me back to reading. While the writing was lyrical and entrancing, I wasn’t intrigued by the story and the pacing didn’t leave me wanting more.

In regard to the characters, I loved the diversity in this novel. Most characters were people of colour and the LGBTQIA+ community was also represented in meaningful ways. The connection between this futuristic dystopian America and the current American prison system is obvious and impactful. I liked that the footnotes brought in statistics about the US prison system, mentions of real people who died from police brutality, and called out the racial inequalities we know exist deeply in this system. However, I didn’t like that the footnotes were the main way we learned back story about a lot of the characters. It felt like it undercut any connection to these characters.

And unfortunately, that is one of my big issues with this novel. I just couldn’t find myself caring enough about what happened to the characters because they were all very 2-dimensional. Even our two main characters, Thurwar and Staxxx, didn’t have much depth. They definitely were the most fleshed out characters, but I still felt less attached to their stories than I wanted to. However, I did like that we were shown the juxtaposition between their gruesome fights and their humanity with little things like their daily routines.

Beyond the main characters, I found the inclusion of the protesters as side characters really interesting. I loved seeing the multiple perspectives of the die-hard fans and the people working against it. I especially found it interesting to watch as one indifferent person slowly gets interested in watching the fights. We would like to think as readers, that we would be the people working against this horrific program. But through this character’s mindset change, Adjei-Brenyah shows us how easy it is to become swept up in the brutality. Another example of this in the novel, is a scene depicting the torture of a serial rapist. It was a dark scene and while I obviously believe no one should be tortured in any way, I also found it hard as a woman to fully sympathize with a serial rapist.

Chain-Gang All-Stars aims to show us how increased incarceration and desensitization to systemic violence can lead to further inhumanity. And Adjei-Brenyah succeeds in depicting this not too far off reality by showing us these difficult and heart-wrenching scenes. But despite the depth behind much of the story, the ending didn’t feel the same and fell flat. While the rest was so slow, the ending felt rushed and underwhelming. I also wished the characters had more life and depth so that I could be more affected by the ending, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case for me. I did, however, like the ambiguity and potential the ending left us with.

Overall, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a darkly-satirical, heavy, gory piece of fiction. It imagines our world (mainly America) a few decades ahead in a way that doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities and makes us look deeper at the current systemic issues. This is a unique novel (with maybe some resemblance to The Hunger Games and Gladiator) with a distinct and meaningful voice. However, I wanted more from the characters and I think it could have benefitted from faster pacing, but I would still recommend this one to most people as something worth reading. And I would definitely recommend the cocktail for anyone interested.

My Rating:

Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading Come and Get It, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, and The Prophets if you liked this one!

Teghann

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