RaveThe Telegraph (UK)Deliciously chimeric: however fantastical or eccentric, it’s always ordered by the movement of seasons, and steadied by the homestead at its centre, intact to the final page.
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
PositiveThe Telegraph (UK)\"It’s difficult to escape a feeling of complicity as you read. Adjei-Brenyah raises a mirror to our own performative influencer culture, mass-media entertainment, and, above all, the American carceral system. Chain-Gang All-Stars is an abolitionist polemic, a tirade against the modern prison-industrial complex ... By footnoting his pages with a mixture of real and invented facts about US prisons, he creates a kind of palimpsest, overwriting an otherwise fantastical sci-fi narrative with bracketed realism ... Given the novel’s vast cast, encompassing prisoners, activists and a spiteful gameshow host, Adjei-Brenyah’s individual characterisation can be patchy; even Thurwar and Staxxx, while fleshier than most, have frustratingly loose back-stories. But Adjei-Brenyah’s sentences are nimble, his chapters brisk yet full of brio. He knows what he’s doing, and it’s this innate authority that makes Chain-Gang All-Stars so compelling – right up to the final, fatal blow.\
