Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

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

118 reviews

moscat's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Outstandingly good. Like the best speculative fiction it shows us a reality we already live in. It's heart-breaking and brutally compelling.

It feels so visual and cinematic but I also can't imagine a way you could film this that wasn't wholly antithetical to what the book is saying.

It lays bare so many toxic aspects of our society, but in particular how we dehumanise criminals, perceive them as the crime not the person, and use that to justify horrific things.

Remember, folks, just because the law permits something doesn't mean it is in any way ethical or moral. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Murder

Minor: Sexual assault

albernikolauras's review against another edition

challenging emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

A powerful story following criminals who have to survive 2 years of essentially being gladiators to be freed - something only one or two have completed. The book follows several perspectives, with the main one being Loretta Thurwar on the road to the last battles in her career. There are footnotes scattered throughout citing true statistics about the industrial prison complex and the way prisons use incarcerated people (who are largely people of color) for profit. This book just carries the profitizing further as the criminals in the CAPE program are used for entertainment and reality show material between matches.

There is nothing subtle about this book and no holds barred. The characters are constantly fighting for their life and their humanity. This ending rattled me for a bit, but was perfect for what the book intended.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Violence

Moderate: Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Xenophobia

Minor: Rape

thissagreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

A MUST READ!!!!! I could best describe this as prison Hunger Games meets the prison industrial complex, meets dystopian futurism.

The dialogue, the poetry, and hard conversations that these characters had to deal with and have, was eloquent, complicated, thoughtful and heartbreaking. This book forces the reader to think: 

1. Where and when do ethics and morality stand, when referring to prison systems at large? 
2. Does it matter the crime, for someone to extend sympathy or empathy?
3. Private prisons exist, but what happens to the boundaries and rights of the inmate?
4. THIS IS WHERE WE COULD BE HEADED IF MORE PRIVATE PRISONS OPEN!
5. Would companies actually sponsor and support the debauchery of the competition?
6. Does winning the “games” really free the inmate? Or are they tortured mentally forever?

This book is VERY graphically gory and gruesome, but I will still HIGHLY recommend this book. This story will stay with me for a very long time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Gun violence, and Blood

Moderate: Rape and Sexual assault

Minor: Suicide and Suicide attempt

leannanecdote's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

deetabz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racism, Self harm, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, Transphobia, Religious bigotry, and Lesbophobia

Minor: Confinement, Infidelity, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Torture, Grief, and Sexual harassment

jbenz1213's review against another edition

dark hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

If you know anything about Chain-Gang All-Stars, you’ve probably heard the recurring byline “The Hunger Games but about the prison industrial complex.” And, y’know, it is that. But it’s a much more complicated work than The Hunger Games, one that seems to understand its role as entertainment while also trying to sneak a righteous political ideology under its readers’ door. It does a lot right, but it still has some trouble resolving that uncomfortable tension between being a genre novel and persuasive social commentary. 

 

The plot follows Loretta Thurwar, an incarcerated woman who has been selected to participate in a Gladiator-like (or Hunger Games-like, or Battle Royale-like, etc.) competition where convicted felons fight each other to the death. It’s not hard to predict where this is going—the parallels between this program—called Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, or CAPE, in Chain-Gang’s near-future world—and the real life industries supported by prison labor are pretty clear. The prison industry itself is always eager to make a quick buck off the people they’ve imprisoned, many wrongly, and the incarcerated have already been so thoroughly othered in American society that the suits can get away with it. Why wouldn’t extreme “sports” or pitch-black reality TV be next? 

 

For people who are not as familiar with these topics (and I do think the uninformed are Adjei-Brenyah’s target audience), I can imagine these parallels being pretty shocking. In one of Chain-Gang’s most “fun” (if anything in this book can be described that way) twists, its footnotes shift between describing technological advances unique to this fictional world and real life legislation that has enabled the exploitation of the prison population. The uninitiated might be surprised that much of the machinery that enables the CAPE program is already in place in our world. The social commentary here is fury-filled and the prose delivering it is striking and memorable. 

 

Thurwar has been fighting in CAPE for the last three years, and is about to win her freedom when the events of the novel pick up. Many battle royale tropes are present here, modified with an anti-capitalist sheen. Each fighter has a stage name, a unique weapon, and fictional corporate sponsors that are legally distinct from their real world counterparts (Home Depot and Whole Foods catch a few targeted jabs here). We follow Thurwar and her Chain—the team-like group of fighters that she travels with—over the course of her final three fights. 

 

This is where the tension arises. Are the pulse pounding highlights of these books not bloody fights to the death? If the point of Chain-Gang is to decry the monetization of incarcerated peoples’ pain and suffering, why are we presenting it as a form of entertainment in this trope-filled sci-fi novel? 

 

To his credit, Adjei-Brenyah clearly understands this dynamic, and tries to address it in multiple ways to different degrees of success. In one particularly ineffective instance, he calls our attention to a footnote during a particularly horrifying torture scene only to scold us—“Don’t look down. Help me. Please. Help me.” My brother in Christ, you are the one who wrote this footnote!! 

 

In contrast stands a subplot about a couple made up of a guy who is a full-throated fan of CAPE, and his girlfriend, who begins as a skeptic. Over the course of a few chapters, the girlfriend becomes enamored by the drama surrounding the fighters, and is moved by their deaths. It’s horrible, but she can’t look away—it’s compelling, after all! She feels an attachment to some of the Links, and starts to hold grudges against those who kill her favorites in battle. But is the “villain” who killed your favorite warrior really the bad guy? Do you really want them to die in their next match? Sometimes, the commoditization of suffering can actually perpetuate it. 

 

Of course, Chain-Gang is making the argument that the men in board rooms organizing the games are the true source of evil in its world, just like the men in board rooms discussing new opportunities in prison labor are in ours. But it does draw an uncomfortable parallel—isn’t Chain-Gang All-Stars a form of entertainment? Are we not consuming the suffering of these fictional characters when we read this book? How many will read this, set it aside, and then do absolutely nothing to challenge the status quo? 

 

Adjei-Brenyah tries to thread this needle by avoiding gratuitous descriptions of violence when possible, and by emphasizing the brutality and horrific consequences of violence when it does come to pass. Largely, he’s produced what he set out to—a Trojan horse of a novel for suburbanites who may have never thought about the militarization of police, or the consequences of solitary confinement, or the death penalty. The thematic core of the novel is radical love—for yourself, and for others, even those who have committed horrible, violent crimes. But the fact remains that the climax of this story is a pair of brutal head-to-head fights written like action sequences, and I’m having a hard time resolving those threads.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Violence

Minor: Sexual assault

emfass's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'm reviewing this months after the fact and I still don't know how to talk about this book. I was gutted and stunned and so affected by this writing and these characters and the world that Adjei-Brenyah created, which feels like it could be just a few months away. Brilliantly presenting ideas of abolition and social justice through a narrative, fictional story. I was blown away.

It took me a while to drop in to the kaleidoscope format of storytelling, but I looooooved it. How does this world affect all these different people who have different relationships to the Chain Gang All-Stars machine. 

The narrators did a phenomenal job: Shayna Small (main narrator), Aaron Goodson (Hendrix Young), Michael Crouch (Simon J. Craft), Lee Osorio (Gunny Puddles)

This is on my list of best books I've ever read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Homophobia, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexual assault, Grief, and Lesbophobia

lokes's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Biphobia, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Classism

Minor: Dysphoria

kendallsnead's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Unlike anything I’ve ever read. Heartbreaking. Poetic. Beautifully written about a world that feels too close to reality.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Hate crime, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Police brutality, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

rcbarnes's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Heartbreakingly uncanny.  Sublimly humanizing.  Disturbingly plausible.  Beautiful throughout.

Should probably be required reading before voting in US elections.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Colonisation, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail