This book was fantastic. Incredibly written, well-paced, and all too poignant in relation to current events. Adjei-Brenyah crafts a dystopia that feels utterly real, based on where America is going at least, and describes it in luscious, overpowering detail.

I don't want to compare this book to the Hunger Games, but a comparison has to be made. Both are dystopian, both explore a world where death matches are streamed for entertainment, but one focuses on an improbable future with a righteous protagonist at its core, while the other, this gem of a novel, takes a facet of the population that's already systemically dehumanized in modern America - prisoners - and pits them against one another in gladiatorial combat. Does one's empathy extend to those who have committed a crime? How far must one go psychologically, in order to stop seeing criminals as human beings? What would the role of a prison abolitionist protester involve in a world where prisoners fight each other to the death on live TV? Adjei-Brenyah explores all these questions and more in this speculative work, equal parts disturbing and impossible to look away from.