The Freedom Race

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.

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 by Lucinda Roy. It's coming out in July and I finished it in May. And this I started off reading really slowly because it is pretty dark and discouraging. There's just so much
pain and darkness and it feels overwhelming and like the characters are powerless against it and therefore it makes the reader feel powerless. Because this is set in a dystopian future after a second civil war in America and basically a big section of the country everywhere that isn't a big city and isn't on either coast I think has gone back to a plantation style way of living along with slavery. But now they have some futuristic technology and they have gotten a new religion that is slightly inspired by certain interpretations of Christianity but they added a new book in addition to the Bible and don't really read the Bible anymore, they read his new book. It's super patriarchal, very sexist, and also very racist. And they actually use a color wheel to like standardize colorism. Super dark but it's been very accepted by the people who live in it sort of a way, like they don't feel like they can change anything, and it's old, it's been at least a couple of generations since the civil war happened and all this got instituted, so people were very used to it and very worn down. And our main character Jiji was raised in it and she's 16 years old. And the book starts out a lot with how she lives in it and with the execution of one of her mentors from when she was growing up, and there are a lot of flashbacks in the first
third I would say about her childhood and growing up and how horrible it's been. Although her life has been a little bit less horrible than a lot of people's because she - her mother is
favored a lot by the white man who "owns" her and so yeah, and so she's a favorite daughter, one of his daughters, because there's a huge,
bit huger maybe than the old plantation style, rape system which is a breeding system where they are actually trying to get
whiter and whiter Black people by having most of the women be paired with a "father man" who is a white man who is like a sectional, who owns like a section of a plantation. And those always hit me really hard. I really - anything involving rape,
especially on such a massive scale and a repeating scale, really messes with me, so it took me a long time to read this. I think I started it in April. But eventually we got into the Freedom Race, which is something kind of odd. I don't know why it was instituted into the plantations. It's like a system where if you race and perform really well, for the women it's just racing for men it's also an acrobatic show, if you do really well you can win your freedom in DC. It's a very small number and apparently it's like a big money maker because there's a performance aspect and like people want to watch and see. I don't know, it feels too good to be true in this super dystopian world. Once we got to that portion where there was a lot more hope and that was a lot more pleasant to read, so I got through that a bit faster. And I really liked it. I thought the world building was super in depth. Except for you know a couple, like the too good to be true thing, it seemed really good. There are also like mutants who are experimented on and genetically modified creatures, like there are these massive hyena things and some snarlcats which are super big tiger lion things. I really liked all of that and I also liked the main character's
immediate family, mother, grandfather, cousins, were more recently brought over from Africa than a lot of people, and so they actually have links and can remember the people that they came from and their traditions, and so I really liked that spiritual traditional aspect that kept coming in, and like origin stories that had a lot to do with the somewhat sci-fi magical aspects of it. And I found our main character very likable and understandable. Overall once I reached that less hopeless point it was a really enjoyable book. Could be quite disheartening and even triggering for a lot of people, so I've talked about most of the trigger warnings but there are a few more so look into those.

Novelist, poet, and memoirist Roy ventures into speculative fiction with The Freedom Race, the first book in the Dreambird Chronicles. The United States was divided into three self-governing regions after the Civil War Sequel. Jellybean “Ji-ji” Lottermule lives on Planting 437, a deeply segregated compound within the Homestead Territories. By classifying laborers from Africa--and anyone else they want to strip individual rights from--as botanical and propagating with their “seeds,” the father-men of the Territories have created a color-based slave system. Ji-ji’s siblings are dead, disappeared, and sold; her mother is the prized possession of one of the planting’s patriarchs; it’s only a matter of time before Father-Man Lotter marries her off to one of the other powerful men in the compound. The only way to escape is to enter the Freedom Race, and Ji-ji is the best runner around. Between Planting 437 and the end of the race in Dream City are mutant animals and gangs of men looking to pick up unprotected runners, but also the Friends of Freedom, a network working to emancipate people in the Territories. The steaders also have a prophecy that someone of Ji-ji’s tribe, Toteppi, will be the one to bring down their government, putting her at even greater risk. Roy’s comprehensive worldbuilding and immersive language creates a tapestry that blends realistic fantasy with the Black experience in the United States. The deliberate pacing and visceral descriptions of planting life will not suit all readers, but the investment is worthwhile. Ji-ji’s journey is a story of resilience and hope rooted in a place where Octavia Butler and Rivers Solomon intersect with The Handmaid’s Tale.

(to appear in Booklist)

The Freedom Race
by Lucinda Roy
Macmillan-Tor/Forge

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this cautionary tale. It may not be too far fetched as it seems! First, a warning about this book. It includes suggestions of mass rape, attempted rape, lynching, violence, slavery, and murder, even of babies. I didn't know this going in.

This book is when the US has had another Civil War and now it is the divided into three parts. One section is called the Territories and that's where they have slavery. Guess where that's located? South? Bingo! Only the owner of the slaves can impregnate the women. No other men can. The young are called seeds, or seedlings. When young, the color of the babies skin is measured on a chart. The darker the color, the worse the job.

Around the Territories there are bounty hunters that kill or capture any runaway. The bounty hunters have the mental attitude that the Proud Boys do now. Not good for anyone even if they are free and black. Or white with a black person. Cruelty seems to be their forte.

There are also hybrid people from the radiation fallout. The mutations that manage to live hide in the forests but bounty hunters look for them.

The story is based around one girl, a teen, that wants to win the race and be free. She has a boyfriend too. They both want to run the Freedom Race to become free but things don't go exactly as planned.

It's extremely suspenseful, depressing, odd at times, and ends strange. Maybe getting ready for book two? I did enjoy it regardless of the horror. I think the author may be looking at a future if our government doesn't save our democracy from the far right. Isn't this what they have been trying to do? It's certainly a wake up call!