It’s near-future America, where the prison system got turned into a televised blood sport. Sign up for the program and you fight other prisoners to the death on live TV; if you survive three years, you walk free. Almost nobody makes it. Loretta Thurwar is the biggest star on the circuit and closing in on her release, and Hurricane Staxxx is her teammate and the woman she loves, which is a problem when the schedule eventually pairs them off. Adjei-Brenyah writes the fights like sportscasting and the crowd like people you know. Then he drops footnotes on the page — real numbers and real cases and actual US prisons — and much as you might enjoy the storytelling, you will fume at the injustice of justice in America. Which is, of course, his point.