Publisher’s Synopsis:
K. M. Szpara’s Docile is a science fiction parable about love and sex, wealth and debt, abuse and power, a challenging tour de force that at turns seduces and startles.
There is no consent under capitalism.
To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents’ debts and buy your children’s future.
Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug that took his mother from him.
Too bad his contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects—and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.
Edition:
E-ARC (Net Galley)
Content warning: Docile contains forthright depictions and discussions of rape and sexual abuse. There is also attempted suicide. You’ve been warned.
My Thoughts:
I hope that content warning was big enough. There are a LOT of depictions/discussions of both rape and sexual abuse. It’s kind of a huge plot point. But worry not, if you’re not immediately off this book because those topics are covered, please know they are NOT glorified.
In the world we live in now, we are (finally but still only occasionally) discussing with some frankness what does and does not qualify as consent, and why having consent for all things you do with/to another person, even if you have already received affirmative consent for something else or at another time from that person is vitally important. We are also beginning to slowly understand that power differentials can cause those lines to become blurry – is consent being given freely, or does the person feel that they must consent or face consequences because the person asking is in a position of power over them?
This story reminds me a lot of The Handmaid’s Tale without any of the pretense at Puritanism. It is similar, but instead of Handmaids, we have Dociles, and they aren’t in the position of servitude they’re in because of their fertility, but rather because of their debt. So Dociles = debtors who are selling their debt in exchange for servitude – got it? Good.
Honestly, I don’t want to give too much of this story away because it is really, really good. I was concerned at first that I wasn’t going to be able to do this one – it is written in a very frank manner. No punches are pulled. I found it to occasionally be deeply upsetting. But really, it is such an interesting tale of abuse, suffering, the road to recovery, and even possibly redemption that I couldn’t stop reading. It covers a lot of uncomfortable ground – including the idea that abusive behavior is not always intentional, but that intentional or not the end result is the same, and the abuser must still be held accountable for the damage they have caused.
“How could I consent when I had no choice but to say yes?”
Docile, K.M. Szpara
This book explores so many interesting realities that we like to pretend are merely matters of opinion: that being born into metric shit-tons of money deadens people to reality as it’s known by 99.999% of the world, that consent can’t be given in situations where power is held by one person over another without a forkload of negotiating beforehand, that having boundaries is good, and enforcing them is better. Consent can be revoked at any time for any reason (and I don’t just mean for sex).
The world Szarpa has built is both beautiful and terrifying, dystopian, but absolutely realistic. This is probably the single most interesting novel I’ve read in a long time. It is occasionally terrible, but also filled with beautiful moments and perfectly articulated truths.
About the Author:
K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with a tiny dog. Kellan’s debut alt-/near-future novel, DOCILE (Spring 2020, Tor.com Publishing), explores the snowballing debt crisis, consent, and privilege, and can be described as “really gay”.
He is the author of “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” a Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette about a gay trans man who’s bitten by a vampire. More of his fiction can be found in venues such as Uncanny, Lightspeed, and Shimmer. You can find him on the Internet at kmszpara.com or on Twitter at @KMSzpara.
Rating:
If you like your topics challenging but realistic, and your dystopian tales upsettingly near to current reality give this one a try.
It covers ground like the spiraling debt crisis, consent, and all the privilege money can buy. It is really good, and it is 100% worth reading.
Docile By K.M. Szpara Macmillan-Tor/Forge Sci-Fi/Fantasy, LGBT ISBN: 9781250216151 Expected Publication: March 3, 2020 Hardcover, E-book 480 Pages Author's Website: https://www.kmszpara.com/
