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I loved this book because it was an uplifting shift from the usual YA "trauma porn." The language is also beautiful!

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Amazon.com: In the Wild Light: 9781524720247: Zentner, Jeff: Books

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This book is a history lesson, a coming-of-age story, and a mystery! Takes place in upper Michigan on a Native American reservation. AWESOME!!!!

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A contemplative exploration of existing between two cultural identities meets fake relationship romance meets backwoods thriller in this absolute powerhouse of a debut from Ojibwe author Angeline Boulley.

Daunis has spent her life balancing between two identities. Her father was a hockey star from the Sugar Island Ojibwe reservation, and her mother is the daughter of one of Sault Ste. Marie's most prominent families. Her connection to her Anishinaabe family is strong, but as an unenrolled tribal member, she feels like everyone questions her belonging. And on the other side, she's subject to all the micro-aggressions and racism that the Sault has to offer.

Her plans to go away to the University of Michigan to study medicine are derailed when there's a death in her family, and she resigns herself to spending a year at the local university. It isn't all bad - at least she'll be with her best friend Lily. Also intriguing is the appearance of Jamie, a new hockey player who has joined the high school team and befriended Daunis' brother. But as she starts to fall for him, it begins to seem like Jamie isn't quite who he says he is.

When a new tragedy strikes, Daunis becomes enveloped in an FBI investigation of a dangerous drug that may be coming from Sugar Island. This hallucinogenic form of meth has already begun to tear her community apart. But joining the investigation could prove every bit as damaging. It's hard for her to trust the authorities when they have a history of terrorizing her people, and once she agrees to go undercover, she realizes that the corruption runs deeper, and much closer to home, than she ever could have imagined.

Some books take you where they're going with such confidence and grace that you find yourself at the end, breathless and hard-pressed to believe that it's over.

Some books take you where they're going with such confidence and grace that you find yourself at the end, breathless and hard-pressed to believe that it's over. It's an impressive feat for a debut novel - especially one in a genre that requires such precision. Firekeeper's Daughter has a riveting plot that has all the hallmarks of a crime thriller while simultaneously questioning all the assumptions that the genre usually makes about policing and justice. I hit the middle and then couldn't put it down.

But Firekeeper's Daughter is so, so much more than a thriller or a mystery. The author's love for and connection to her culture is so deeply engraved into the very heart of this book and it beats in rhythm with each new plot development. As a non-Indigenous reader, every depiction and explanation of Ojibwe philosophy and traditions felt like a gift, and every depiction of injustice felt like a call to action. There has long been a need for more books that depict Indigenous people as living people in our modern world rather than as a romanticized and often inaccurate fairytale of the past, and Firekeeper's Daughter carries that torch brightly. I can only imagine the impact it will make for teens who identify with Daunis and her cultural experience to see themselves reflected so beautifully in literature.

There are many things in this book that are hard to bear. It contains drug use, racism, murder, and sexual assault. None of these moments are gratuitous - they are all depicted with compassion and great care, and I think they are necessary when considering the deeper issues that run through the book - particularly the ongoing tragedy of Indigenous women being murdered and assaulted at a disproportionate rate. But some readers may need to prepare themselves for potentially triggering scenes.

A big part of why I felt safe as a reader, despite so many harrowing elements, is Daunis herself. Impulsive, opinionated, and clever, she feels like a friend by the end of the book. She shouldn't have to make the decisions that fall upon her or suffer the hardship she endures. She finds the strength she needs inside herself and through her connection to her family and heritage, and her empowerment is beautiful to watch.

It's rare these days that a book leaves me feeling bereft at the end because I'm not ready to say goodbye. Firekeeper's Daughter forges a new path, creating a deeply engaging mystery that illuminates far more than the expected whodunnit. Whatever Boulley writes next, I will be the first in line to read it.

Caitlyn Paxson is a writer and performer. She is a regular reviewer for NPR Books and Quill & Quire.

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'Firekeeper's Daughter' Forges A New Path Between Cultures And Genres

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A contemplative exploration of existing between two cultural identities meets fake relationship romance meets backwoods thriller in this powerhouse YA debut from Ojibwe author Angeline Boulley.

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I'm currently reading this book and finding it so interesting! A great commentary on the prison industrial complex.

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*Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction*' Top Ten Books of the Year**Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize**Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction**Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize*Editors' Choice* that despite its futuristic elements, it has the patina of some timeworn epic...Shockingly intimate and moving.""Epic...Intoxicating...It is a testament to Adjei-Brenyah's idiosyncratic talents as a satirist that this premise...feels disquietingly plausible by the novel's end."is an extension of everything Adjei-Brenyah does so well: juggle love with death, satire with pain, the impossible with the possible...In ballad-like chapters, which move with the speed and emotional care of anime fight scenes, Adjei-Brenyah weaves a world of sci-fi torture and bloody profit, but a world not totally scrubbed of hope. In doing so, he doesn't reinvent the genre novel so much as make it his own. The new maestro of dystopian lit has arrived."meets WWE meets the modern private prison system." surpasses all expectations...Adjei-Brenyah's acerbic vision lands like a lightning bolt of truth."at the penal colony in the brutal, world-building latest from Adjei-Brenyah."by George Jackson...Adjei-Brenyah's distinguished novel updates this tradition to encompass our dizzying, barbaric, performative and capitalistic digital age."[An] acclaimed master of our futuristic nightmares...a keen observer of racial and socioeconomic disparities that result in a high number of Black people incarcerated. While this is set in the future, it feels uncomfortably close to the present." might have the most exhilarating opening chapter of a book I've ever read. Right from the jump, Adjei-Brenyah pulls you into a gritty, gory world where prisoners fight one another to the death to earn their freedom-and people love it...He writes with such vigor, you're transported right into the arena; but you also see the parallels to our own issues with mass incarceration, classism, and capitalism." so compelling-right up to the final, fatal blow.""One of the most original and thought-provoking novels to be published in recent memory...The prose is very beautiful, and the plot and character arcs are heartbreaking. The pacing is excellent, and I was invested from start to finish. All in all, Chain-Gang All-Stars is the whole package...It held me in thrall and will surely be one of my favorite books of the year." makes explicit how the spirit erodes as the body becomes currency. Adjei-Brenyah writes sharply about the economy of spectacle and the fickle alchemy between futility and hope." -Goodreads' Most Anticipated Books of 2023"A satirical and searing novel that never loses touch of its characters' beating hearts."...Adjei-Brenyah writes characters that are both larger than life and intimately human...It is funny, it is brutal, and it is an extremely necessary text."Adjei-Brenyah has taken his fiction to a whole new level."-Liberty Hardy, WBEZ's "Nerdette""With his sharp eye for satire and reverence for humanity, Adjei-Brenyah's latest explores the exploitation, violence, and false promises of the prison industrial complex, capitalism, and the country itself."The Millions"A brutal, futuristic view of a gladiatorial privatization of our current prison system. [Adjei-Brenyah] does an incredible job of creating stories that take you beyond the edge of your tolerance, urging you to see the parallel social commentary beneath. I always have to take a moment to catch my breath when I set his work down and this full-length work is leaving me gulping for air and truth." are more your vibe." is likely to excite and provoke in equal measure." will force you to reevaluate what freedom in America really means."refashioned into a rowdy, profane, and indignant blues shout at full blast."
*One of the New York Times
*Winner of the ALA Alex Award*
*Finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards*
*Longlisted for the New American Voices Awards*
*Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize*
Named A Best Book of the Year by:

New York Times Book Review , NPR, Washington Post , Chicago Tribune, Elle , Esquire , the New York Public Library, Goodreads, Book Riot, Polygon, Financial Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Shelf Awareness, Readers Digest, Electric Literature, WBEZ's Nerdette, The Globe and Mail, The Messenger, Library Journal, and The Northforker *May Selection for The Today Show's Read With Jenna Book Club* *Roxane Gay's May Selection for the Audacious Book Club* *A New York Times Book Review *New York Times Notable Book of the Year* -Jenna Bush Hager, The Today Show's #ReadWithJenna - New York Times Book Review - Chicago Tribune 1984 and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale , Adjei-Brenyah's book presents a dystopian vision so upsetting and illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we're capable of doing...So raw and tragic and primal is Chain-Gang All-Stars -The Atlantic Chain-Gang All-Stars - Wired
he Hunger Games meets Gladiator - Elle "Chain-Gang All-Stars Esquire Gladiator meets Mad Max - Entertainment Weekly - Ron Charles, CBS' Sunday Morning Chain-Gang All-Stars he lets us think we're reading a satire, but soon reveals a mirror of our dystopian days that lie not too far away." Boston Globe The Guardian George Saunders, author of Liberation Day

Invisible Man to Native Son by Richard Wright, Soul on Ice
by Eldridge Cleaver and Soledad Brother - Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Vividly imaginative and startling in its clarity of intent...A sort of T Chain-Gang All-Stars not only showcases the horrific spectacle of the prison industrial complex but highlights how everyone is somehow complicit." Vulture, "Best Books of the Year So Far"
- Salon Esquire , "The End of the World, According to Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah" "Adjei-Brenyah's writing transports us to a crossroads of love and pain, life and death, oppressor and oppressed, real and speculative...The complicated interplay between the fictional story on the page and the very real critique Adjei-Brenyah invokes produces a novel that resists a long history of American culture burdening Black literature with the mark of sentimentalism...He conjures a captivating world in Chain-Gang All-Stars that treads the line between the possible and impossible; as readers, we are arrested by the truths that feel uncomfortably easy to identify in our own world today...Chain-Gang All-Stars, in its refusal to provide an easy blueprint for eradicating egregious regimes like the prison industrial complex, makes the simple (but not easy) request that we linger with the ugly contradictions undercutting American society and the human condition. While we cannot wipe our hands clean, perhaps, in this reckoning, we might be able to glean something that looks like transformation. Perhaps, there, life can be precious once more." Los Angeles Review of Books
- Tommy Orange, author of There, There -Jennifer Croft, New York Times Book Review 's "By the Book" Shondaland -
Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown Gladiator and The Hunger Games... - Oprah Daily Chain-Gang All-Stars

"[A] ferocious debut novel...[An] indicting commentary on a nation unmoored from its morality...Adjei-Brenyah does not flinch. Neither does he miss his targets, because he has the stiff winds of history at his back...With Elle, " Elle Editors Share the Books They Loved Best in 2023" Daily Kos - Cosmopolitan Chain-Gang All-Stars leads with love. Adjei-Brenyah writes with stunning compassion and moral clarity as he interrogates every facet of our carceral world and the American spectacle of violence, never losing sight of the human cost of systemic injustice. Readers will be forever changed by this book."

"A complex, brutal, beautiful, panoramic takedown of the prison-industrial complex... At once original, its own fresh creation, and clearly part of a lineage of American literature that links the opening 'Battle Royal' chapter in Ralph Ellison's Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers Joumana Khatib, "The Book Review" podcast from New York Times Chain-Gang All-Stars The Telegraph - Daily Mail - Book Riot - Kathy Burnette
, MPR's "Ask a Bookseller" -Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star -
"Dazzling and mightily ambitious... A stunningly original and unflinchingly honest piece of satiric genius, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Chain-Gang All-Stars -Raven Leilani, author of Luster Chain-Gang All-Stars is an uncanny, singular feat of literature. I've never read satire so bruising, so brolic, so tender and really, so pitch-perfect. It's nuts brilliant. Just read it!" -
"A clear-eyed critique of our country's prison system, along with the profit and racism inherent in them."
Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir
"[Adjei-Brenyah's] gripping, maximalist fiction has created a new paradigm for dystopian satire-and announced [him] as one of the most exciting literary talents of his generation...With a burgeoning body of work that is both painfully topical and thrillingly cinematic, he sits at the vanguard of a new kind of novelist: the writer as not just an artist and an entertainer but a true humanist capable of attracting vast, untapped readerships. The result is equal parts exhilarating and profound...[Chain-Gang All-Stars] throbs with a soulful, anarchic intimacy, girded by vivid backstories that burrow beneath the hard-drawn fault lines of race and class and whatever constitutes a 'criminal' mind. It's also full of great characters, with names so chewy they have an almost visceral mouthfeel." "Epic... Like a more politically committed Infinite Jest, it teems with the voices of broken people, virtuoso prose and footnotes which provide facts about America's real carceral state and characters' backstories...Involving and affecting...The writing is poignant and poetic...A novel to immerse yourself in this summer and think about long after." iNews "Masterful... Chain-Gang All-Stars' depiction of a racist, hyper-capitalist carceral state is an undeniable echo of our world, but it's not the only one. At the heart of this book is the capacity of incarcerated people to resist and rewrite the rules of their imprisonment. - Electric Literature -
"Given how incredible his debut collection was and is, it is no surprise to me that Adjei-Brenyah's debut novel is this extraordinary! Told with bold, muscular prose, this book is filled with surprising tenderness. Some of the best and most beautiful descriptions of action and violence I have ever read, which is not to say the book celebrates violence so much as it uses violence to explore American incarceration by imagining it as spectacle. As big as it is dazzling. Just wild how good and original this book is. A revelation!"
- Lincoln Michel, BOMB - Chicago Review of Books "[A] blazing debut novel...A damning indictment of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and the grotesqueries of unfettered American capitalism, Chain-Gang All-Stars is also a breathless dystopian thriller." Lit Hub

"A visceral, heart-wrenching read that treats systemic issues with delightfully speculative skepticism and broken people with compassion and dignity." Squid Game
"As vital as it is brutal. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah illuminates darkness with the electricity of his prose. The massive weight of the subject is matched by the sheer scope of Adjei-Brenyah's imagination. A startling, important novel that will inspire and inform many conversations." and Riot Baby , but also brought to mind Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man -Tor.com Chain-Gang All-Stars, -WPR's "Beta -
- "Having burst on the literary scene with his 2019 collection Friday Black, [Adjei-Brenyah's] debut novel matches, even surpasses, the roiling, vibrant energy of his shorter fiction, delivering both an impassioned critique of America's broken justice system and a heartrending queer love story...A novel that eschews didacticism and instead provokes discussion...The true power of Chain-Gang All-Stars is that the dystopia it depicts no longer reads like a fanciful thought experiment but a horrible foreshadowing of the future." Locus -Carrie Koepke from Skylark Books,
- Columbia Daily Tribune Chain-Gang All-Stars should pique your interest if titles like Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale -The Week -
"In this audacious, explicit novel of convicts trying to survive and possibly gain freedom by taking part in gladiator battles, there is compassion and love. Added in are incredible commentaries in the form of footnotes, razor-sharp descriptions of a population addicted to reality TV competition and the resiliency of the human spirit."
- Paste Chain-Gang All-Stars - Our Culture

"A defiant, awe-inspiring novel that will be read, studied, and celebrated for generations, "A searing debut with an unforgettable voice, Chain-Gang All-Stars - Lit-Reactor - CrimeReads Times Literary Supplement

"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 The Independent
- - Publishers Weekly, starred review Friday Black , Adjei-Brenyah displayed a prodigious flair for deadpan satiric narratives set in alternate realities that often seem uncomfortably close to our own, especially regarding race and class divisions. With his first novel, he proves he can sustain his outrage, imagination, wit, and compassion for a deeper dive into the darker reaches of the American soul...Adjei-Brenyah displays his impressive range of tone and voice...It is an up-to-the-minute j'accuse that speaks to the eternal question of what it truly means to be free. And human. Imagine The Hunger Games
"This is my favorite book so far of 2023, a novel that takes a hard look at us, at reality TV, at complicity, at the way too many of us see violence as justice. It asks us tough questions about how we treat bodies that we judge unfit for the system. It's also full of cinematic action-packed fight scenes, heart-breaking twists, and a queer sapphic romance. What's not to love?"
Kirkus, starred review - Publishers Weekly , "An Interview with the Year 2023"

"In a narrative world where the real is growingly more unbelievable than the make believe,
"Adjei-Brenyah may have the buzziest book of the year...A ferocious attack on America's for-profit prison systems."

"Adjei-Brenyah's debut novel is equal parts

"A transformative, clear-eyed critique. Chain-Gang All-Stars is a feat of world-building and Juvenalian satire that is also an indictment...Kinetic, ambitious...Deeply moral and informed but not preachy. Its correspondences with the US [carceral] system always serve the story and relentlessly heighten its stakes. [Adjei-Brenyah] distills and dramatizes the genius of the abolition community and its decades of work into a new kind of allegorical fiction-one with a whole movement behind it."

"It is brilliant, it is brutal. This book is going to win so many awards!"

"At once a kaleidoscopic, imaginative examination of America's unjust prison system, and a fantasy-tinged spectacle,

"A brilliant and cutting send-off of reality television, football, and mass incarceration."

"Enthralling...An unmissable read."
-

"Breathtaking and pulse-pounding...Adjei-Brenyah delivers insightful critiques of the prison-industrial complex, capitalism, and the ways in which Hollywood and celebrity culture exploit Black talent. Both the political allegory and the edge-of-your-seat action work beautifully. Readers will be wowed."
"An acerbic, poignant, and, at times, alarmingly pertinent dystopian novel...In his debut short story collection,
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Chain Gang All Stars: A Novel [Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Chain Gang All Stars: A Novel

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Future society where everyone has a chip in their brain with a constant Tik-Tok like feed going 24/7.

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This book is very insightful into Russian history and Russian society in the early 1800's (if you're into that sort of thing) and also just a very deep dive into families and marriage and how to navigate it all when your heart wants something else.

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Very short book on the Pygmalion story from the perspective of the statue he brought to life. A lot packed into this little book.

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Currently reading: "Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised—the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now Agnès is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves—until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss."

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This book is a dystopian mystery and I'm really enjoying it!! Great premise with interesting twists.

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NOW A SERIES ON APPLE TV+ THAT STEPHEN KING CALLS "MYSTERIOUS AND TERRIFICALLY SUSPENSEFUL.... EXCELLENT SCIENCE FICTION WITH THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTERS."

* INCLUDES ORIGINAL ESSAY "A HISTORY OF THE DARKEST YARNS" FROM HUGH HOWEY *

"One of dystopian fiction's masterpieces alongside the likes of 1984 and Brave New World ." - Daily Express

The first book in the acclaimed, New York Times best-selling trilogy, Wool is the story of mankind clawing for survival. The world outside has grown toxic, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. The remnants of humanity live underground in a single silo.

But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they want: They are allowed to go outside.

After the previous sheriff leaves the silo in a terrifying ritual, Juliette, a mechanic from the down deep, is suddenly and inexplicably promoted to the head of law enforcement. With newfound power and with little regard for the customs she is supposed to abide, Juliette uncovers hints of a sinister conspiracy. Tugging this thread may uncover the truth . . . or it could kill every last human alive.

"Claustrophobic and, at times, genuinely terrifying." - Washington Post

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Wool: Book One of the Silo Series (Silo, 1)

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Amazon.com: Wool: Book One of the Silo Series (Silo, 1): 9780358447849: Howey, Hugh: Books