This is a book I respect, and it’s one I struggled to get through. The subject matter is difficult—not only is it set in a near-future dystopia where prisoners fight each other to the death for a chance at freedom, but it also includes footnotes about the real-life atrocities of the prison-industrial complex. I can understand why it is so acclaimed, but even about a week after finishing it, I still haven’t completely sorted out my thoughts about it.
There are many different point of view chapters—which also intimidated me at the start. Between that and the subject matter, I ended up reading about half of Chain-Gang All-Stars while listening to the audiobook to try to keep it straight. This style of storytelling makes sense for the subject matter: we get a kind of bird’s eye view of the situation instead of only seeing it from one character’s perspective. We see how the fans and owners of the “games” experience it, how the protestors talk about it, and what drives incarcerated people to participate. Still, although it makes sense, I did feel distanced from the story until more than halfway because we spend so little time with each individual character.
While there are many points of view, we do have a main character: Thurwar. She’s one of the top competitors on Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, inching closer to being the first person to actually be Freed through the program. Thurwar and her teammate Staxxx are lovers, and they help to lead their Chain. Staxxx sees herself as a force for love, even as she takes lives.
Through the many incarcerated characters we meet through the story, the author humanizes these people without shying away from complexity. The people competing in CAPE have been imprisoned for rape and murder. Thurwar killed her girlfriend out of jealousy. She’s tried to become a better person since then, and she has worked on her jealousy to the point that she accepts that Staxxx isn’t monogamous. We also meet characters who have been wrongly convicted or who killed in self defense. Regardless, though, Chain-Gang All-Stars shows them all as human beings who have rights, who are capable of change, and who shouldn’t suffer through torture, even if they have done terrible things in the past.
As she approaches the real possibility of freedom and escape—earned through countless killings on the battlefield—Thurwar struggles to accept herself as worthy of that, especially because of the murder that put her behind bars in the first place. A fellow prisoner teaches her that she has to learn how to love all of her previous selves, no matter how flawed, in order to move forward.
Even outside of the “games,” the subject matter in this novel is often difficult to read. A character as a teenager watches her father slowly and extremely painfully dies as she acts as his main caretaker. She cuts herself to cope with witnessing his suffering that she can’t alleviate. Similarly, incarcerated people outside of CAPE often experience the Influencer, a taser-like device that produces pure pain unlike any natural experience, which can cause its victims to have a mental break.
The chapters that stuck with me the most were acts of defiance and protest. (Spoilers, highlight to read) I loved Tracy working her way up to sports anchor just to use her brief time on the air to voice her protest of CAPE. And Patty burning down her lab may have put her in jail and didn’t prevent the invention of the Influencer, but it was still a noble and inspiring act. (End of spoilers)
This is a brutal read from the first page to the last. It feels like an open wound of a novel because although CAPE isn’t real, it’s all just an exaggeration of the horrific conditions of the “justice” system we have now.
