Y’all this book was so damned good! I feel pretty fortunate to have read two books back to back that blew me away. Like The Last Word, this was another 5-star read. It’s full of action and suspense and packs a pretty hefty emotional punch as well.

While the book obviously takes place in the distant future, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like this were to be announced in the coming weeks. Disgusted – yes, but surprised? No. Writers are currently on strike and the last time this happened we saw an onslaught of reality TV swoop in to poison our brains. The reality TV landscape covers pretty much everything – everything except prisoners battling to the death. The scenario presented in this book is the wet dream of greedy executives and white, racist Republicans. If you know anything about our broken prison system – private, for profit prison system in many cases -then you’ll understand why I just said what I did.

As the synopsis laid out, the basic premise of this book is that a company known as CAPE – Criminal Action Penal Entertainment now exists in the United States. CAPE offers prisoners the chance to get out of prison. To do so, they have to sign a contract, agreeing to fight other prisoners to the death in televised death matches. Think of the old TV game show “American Gladiators” except on this show they are fighting with weapons and someone dies a pretty gruesome death. The contestants work their way up the ranks and if they can survive several death matches in a row without being killed, they will earn their freedom.

Prisoners are put into different groups called “chain-gangs” where each member is a link in the chain and the rule stands that anyone in a chain-gang will not have to fight anyone in their gang. That doesn’t stop members of the same chain-gang from killing one another, but it means that they’ll never formally be pitted against one another in a televised match.

To keep things interesting, the contestants/prisoners are taken and dropped off in various locations (they’re controlled by implanted electronic devices that act as not only handcuffs but can also painfully harm you – or even kill you). They hang out at camps and then, at certain times throughout the day, they walk to a specific location where their next match will be held. Sometimes along the way, the producers will up the excitement by randomly throwing the group into a melee match with another chain-gang where the entire group will fight until one member of one of the groups is killed.

At the heart of the novel is Loretta Thurwar. She is the leader of her chain-gang and has been around for a while. She only needs to win three more matches before she is free. She can practically taste her freedom. The public loves her, and she treats her team with fairness and kindness – especially Hamara Stacker – aka Hurricane Staxx – another member of her team, and Loretta’s love interest. Staxx is another fan favorite and she, too, is moving up in the ranks. It appears as though she and Loretta may be free soon enough and might be able to leave the system and start a life together away from all this – unless the producers find a way to throw in a twist. It is entertainment, after all. They have to keep the viewers and their numbers up in order to keep the money flowing.

While Loretta, Staxx and crew fight their way to freedom, we also have a few other storylines playing out – one that involves a group protesting the fights and the prison system as a whole, another that shows the effects of the show on regular citizens and then another that shows the execs at CAPE pulling the strings to keep that cash flowing.

While the book was entertaining, it was also sad in that – as I mentioned before – I can see this happening. We live in a country that doesn’t put enough emphasis on rehabilitation of criminals nor does it care about mental health/addiction treatment and prevention. Instead, we lock people up and if they’re set free, it’s typically only a matter of time before they’re back in the system. We’re really good at ignoring the problem. We are also easily distracted by bright shiny things and being worried about things that don’t matter rather than fixing the problems that do and that is exactly what the author is trying to show us.

Another thing that I really liked about the book is that the author added footnotes throughout the book that provided factual data about incarceration, facts about the US Penal code or, in some cases reminders of actual people who fell victim to police brutality or wrongful conviction. Don’t skip over these footnotes when you read the book. They’re very important and very eye opening.

This book is unlike anything I’ve read before. It’s been described as The Hunger Games for adults, but it’s so much more than that and I highly recommend it. I will warn you – it’s bloody, but it’s also a bloody good time.