Review: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This exhilarating novel begins with a battle. The legendary (ranked Colossal in the novel’s terms) Melancholia Bishop faces off against newcomer Loretta Thurwar. We learn that they are part of a novel form of capital punishment/prime-time entertainment, a league of new age gladiatorial combat known as Chain-Gang All-Stars. This sport is watched across the nation by blood-lusting masses through a variety of screens, holograms and virtual reality, including, hilariously, fridges with screens built into the back so you can continue watching while rustling up a meal.

Both Thurwar and Melancholia are incarcerated, and have signed over their lives to this bloodsport for the slim promise of clemency if a fighter survives to the end. All but one so far have died on the battleground, including Melancholia who throws the fight to give Thurwar a chance, and the fighters know all-too well that this is by design. We next meet Thurwar several years later, a Colossal herself on the eve of freedom, and leader of a Chain of fighters including her girlfriend Hurricane Staxxx, next in rank. The Chain is in a time of uncertainty following the murder of their previous leader Sunset Harkless. Chain-Gang All-Stars follows the Chain as they March through the US landscape to their next rendezvous, as we get to know their relationships and origins.

The novel expands in perspective, introducing us to the spectators (a gleefully stupid white couple named Wil and Emily); the GameMasters in their boardrooms far removed from the blood of the battlefield; drivers, soldiers and guards; and the activists who are trying to bring this desperately cruel system to its knees. We also meet two men, Hendricks Young and Simon Craft, who are put through unimaginable suffering in prison, and whose path is on inevitable collision with the novel’s heroes.

Chain-Gang All-Stars is harrowing but not despairing, profoundly sad but also elating, occasionally terrifying but never abject. Its occasional unwieldiness serves its feeling of a story erupting from the heart, an uncontrollable geyser of love and generous spirit in a system that would crush both. It combines the ridiculous, bloody energy of the highly underrated Stars series Spartacus (its fight scenes share the same grace and heft) and the pathos of Never Let Me Go, showing how such systems of profound unfreedom are created and maintained, but also how they sow the seeds of their own undoing. It toys with your complicity as a reader — are you entertained? it demands.

It is most astute when drawing out the connection between carceral systems and slavery, demonstrating that they are one and the same, and showing how racism props them up. This Adjei-Brenywah elucidates using footnotes that explain real US laws, judgments and regulations that form the skeleton for him to spin an only-just fantastical tale. The evil in the US’s foundations, and many a Western nation’s, seeps through the story.

Gay rating: 4/5 for major queer characters and low-level sex scenes.