June 2023 TMB Book Club Poll

The Blackfish · May 30, 2023

Poll

The Blackfish · May 30, 2023

Truman said: ↑

Gonna get the nominations for June started. This book is getting tons of hype/buzz.

Chain-Gang All Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Synopsis

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice”

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The Blackfish said: ↑

I'll throw out The Will of the Many by James Islington (author of the Licanus Trilogy which was fantastic)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58416952-the-will-of-the-many

View attachment 190885

It just came out and is the first book in a trilogy so not sure how much traction its going to get but I will say we do have precedent for a book in a trilogy being very popular in the book club.

Synopsis

At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic – the Hierarchy – may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus – what they call Will – to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.

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Truman said: ↑

Just a couple on my To-Read list

Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton

Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting oﬀ the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.

But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both inﬂuences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unﬂinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

Ascension, Nicholas Binge

The only way out is up. . .

An enormous snow-covered mountain has appeared in the Pacific Ocean. No one knows when exactly it showed up, precisely how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. When Harold Tunmore is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate, he has no idea what he is getting into as he and his team set out for the mountain.

The higher Harold’s team ascends, the less things make sense. Time moves differently, turning minutes into hours, and hours into days. Amid the whipping cold of higher elevation, the climbers’ limbs numb and memories of their lives before the mountain begin to fade. Paranoia quickly turns to violence among the crew, and slithering, ancient creatures pursue them in the snow. Still, as the dangers increase, the mystery of the mountain compels them to its peak, where they are certain they will find their answers. Have they stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery known to man or the seeds of their own demise?

Framed by the discovery of Harold Tunmore’s unsent letters to his family and the chilling and provocative story they tell, Ascension considers the limitations of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of human nature.
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jkun · May 30, 2023

Full transparency: voted for The Will of Many because I already started it.

Upton^2 · May 30, 2023

Adjei-Brenah’s first release of short stories is one of my favorite reads from a few years past. And his new novel sounds fantastic

Truman · May 30, 2023

If we’re being transparent - I really didn’t want to wait to read Chain Gang All Stars and especially if there was a chance it wasn’t selected.

I read it already. Solid 8. Even took notes in case it was chosen to discuss lol.

laxjoe · May 31, 2023

Truman said: ↑

If we’re being transparent - I really didn’t want to wait to read Chain Gang All Stars and especially if there was a chance it wasn’t selected.

I read it already. Solid 8. Even took notes in case it was chosen to discuss lol.
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NERD!!

laxjoe · May 31, 2023

I voted for The Will of The Many. Sounds like a really good read. Had purchased it from Audible when it was suggested last week.

but I’m up for whatever

Truman · Jun 6, 2023

Looks like it's Will of the Many

The Blackfish · Jun 6, 2023

https://www.the-mainboard.com/index...e-many-hierarchy-1-by-james-islington.184455/

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