Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this speculative piece of fiction. It is so immersive from start to finish. The author does not hold back at all. Loved.

The Freedom Race is a speculative fiction set in a future U.S. that has regressed back to a new slavery system after facing a second Civil War and climate related disasters. The story follows Ji-ji Lottermule, an enslaved teenager born and raised on one of the plantations on the Homestead Territories.

This book is immersive from the start & the author holds nothing back. Readers immediately get dropped into the aftermath of the Prequel (second Civil War) & it can be a bit dizzying to find your footing. There’s a mix of terminology, history, and events that blend from the past into the present to come up with this new reality. I generally like immersive fiction, but reader be warned that this book will take extra time to keep all of the elements of Roy’s world-building straight.

At the beginning, we follow muleseed Ji-ji (Jellybean Lottermule) who is training to earn her & upcoming Freedom Race. Readers are submerged in the violence of this new world when Father-Man Lotter (First Father-Man on Planting 437) breaks the promise he made to Ji-ji’s mother Silapu, & announces that her muleseed (newborn son) will be sent to a server camp due to his skin being too dark on the hierarchical Color Wheel & therefore not a testament to the strength of Lotter’s seed. All of the terminology was a little difficult to keep straight & I found myself having to read the story in pieces in order to absorb it. This society gets increasingly hierarchical as the reading continues & the different caste systems can be overwhelming at first but are interesting nonetheless.

This book does well for speculative fiction fans that enjoy unpacking and reflecting on elements of a story and being completely immersed in a world unlike anything previously published. Roy creates something in The Freedom Race unlike anything I’ve read before & I’ll be very interested to see what happens in book 2.

Content Warning:
slavery, executions,physical abuse, shootings, lynching, graphic violence of death, graphic attempted rape, domestic violence

This book is depressing and hopeful. It is hard to read, but I couldn't put it down. Roy paints an incredibly disturbing, yet maddingly believable, future dystopia. Racism and the societies that support or tolerate it are told unblinkingly. It would be really easy to focus on the reasons why this book is important and difficult and rage-inducing. And it is, all of those things. But it is also beautiful. It's so well written. The characters are full people, with all of the feelings that they *should* have in a situation this horrible. Yet they also hope, but not blindly. They continue to fight for a better world, but don't pretend it will be easy. I just love this so much.

The premise of The Freedom Race is definitely an interesting one, even though I'm not sure if the world needs a book about a dystopian futuristic America that has decided to bring back chattel slavery. This book has heavy themes of colorism and patriarchy, and it does not shy away from the cruelty that was white slave masters raping Black women in hopes to make more workers yet wanting them to be of a lighter hue. As for the plot, I found this book to be incredibly slow-paced and hard to get through, with the last 100 pages telling the bulk of the story and having the majority of the action.

I requested this one because it might be a 2021 title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have realized that I would prefer to wait for the audiobook version because it will work better for me with the dialect.