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DID NOT FINISH: 56%
Started on: July 3rd, 2022
DNF'd on: July 7th, 2022
DNF'd at: 56%
Docile is a book that's had many poor reviews since its release. Yet despite its bevy of 1-stars, I was willing to give it a chance thinking it could surprise me. Unfortunately, I was one of the many who did not vibe with this story at all.
This dystopian claims to be a critique of capitalism and an examination of consent. Docile is set in a world where people can exchange their debt for life as indentured servants. These people are fed a drug, docilium, to keep them as the title says, docile, while the wealthy use them as they wish. Our protagonist becomes a docile but refuses the drug and the story explores his relationship with his owner Alex the heir to the docilium empire.
Docile’s fatal flaw is the lack of depth or nuance. While this book depicts non-consent it rarely dives deeper into this subject than depicting scene upon scene of rape and abuse. It's an uncomfortable read. Docile is about someone coerced into sexual slavery and half of the story is told from the perspective of a rapist. I would have been able to stomach that discomfort if the story was going anywhere. But it wasn't. From early on in the novel K.M. Szpara’s shaky characterization and hollow worldbuilding made me doubt that any nuanced exploration of consent under capitalism would be found in the text.
My first problem with Docile was our protagonist Elisha. A central question of this story is if you can consent in a system that coerces desperate people. Szpara's choice to not only make Elisha young but virginal and incredibly naive undercuts that immediately. Elisha supposedly asserts his autonomy by refusing docilium. This choice (and a handful of others) is supposed to complicate our understanding of his ability to consent and add nuance to his relationship with Alex. But Elisha's position as young, naive, and vulnerable undercuts his supposed autonomy. The question of if Elisha can consent with Alex is always unambiguously no.
Interesting questions about subjects like sex work and labour under capitalism couldn’t be had because every sexual interaction in his book is always coercive and violent in the most clearcut way. Given that making Elisha barely 20 and incredibly naive only served to make the already vile rape scenes throughout the book even more uncomfortable to read. While I can hold space for discomfort if it serves some purpose in this case didn’t serve anything or say anything.
Alex, our other POV character, doesn't work either. He exists to give us insight into the ruling class but felt so removed from his own world. His tepid rejection of the docile system and framing as a “kinder” owner than most felt out of left field given the position in society he occupied. Alex, despite being the grandson of the inventor of docilium, never provided meaningful insight into the world of Maryland’s elite. His constant flip-flopping between wanting to treat Elisha “well” and subjecting him to an immense amount of violence felt unmotivated and arbitrary. This dichotomy felt as if it was supposed to make Alex seem deep and complicated but more often than not Alex came off as incompetent and childish.
The most unbelievable aspect of this story is the development of Alex and Elisha's "relationship". By the midpoint of the story, the reader is meant to believe that these two have formed some sort of deep bond. That despite the constant sexual assault and dehumanization wrought on Elisha he is in love with Alex. I simply could not follow the chain of events that led to that moment. This arc relied on the completely incredulous idea that you can bend someone’s will and destroy their sense of self completely… in six months. I was already skeptical about this premise but Szpara does a terrible job of depicting this arc in the text. His timescale is so ridiculously short and Alex is so incredibly incompetent that I couldn’t believe Elisha could become so emotionally dependent on him at all.
On a thematic level what K.M. Szpara seemed to be saying with this relationship was absolutely abhorrent to my sensibilities. The idea that a person can be “broken” into permanent submission and therefore be happiest being controlled by someone was the final nail in the coffin for this book. I concede that I only have half of the story and can't know the totality of what Szpara was getting at but I had no confidence that this would lead anywhere good.
Docile was not helped by its halfhearted word-building. The story fails to convey the specifics of how and why this world works the way it does. It’s hampered by its near-future setting which strains the believability of an already out-there premise because the world feels too similar to our own to fully justify the existence of widely accepted sexual slavery. Szpara rarely goes into convincing detail about how the trillionaire class functions and the social mores that allow people to accept something so horrific. This failure makes the series' claim to be a critique or examination of capitalism even more unbelievable.
I’ve agonized over this review for weeks and I still don’t think I’ve satisfactorily conveyed my problem with this book. While I don’t think its premise was awful this story needed a much better writer than K.M Szpara to tactfully handle such sensitive themes. I’ve never had a book leave as bad a taste in my mouth as Docile did.
DNF'd on: July 7th, 2022
DNF'd at: 56%
Docile is a book that's had many poor reviews since its release. Yet despite its bevy of 1-stars, I was willing to give it a chance thinking it could surprise me. Unfortunately, I was one of the many who did not vibe with this story at all.
This dystopian claims to be a critique of capitalism and an examination of consent. Docile is set in a world where people can exchange their debt for life as indentured servants. These people are fed a drug, docilium, to keep them as the title says, docile, while the wealthy use them as they wish. Our protagonist becomes a docile but refuses the drug and the story explores his relationship with his owner Alex the heir to the docilium empire.
Docile’s fatal flaw is the lack of depth or nuance. While this book depicts non-consent it rarely dives deeper into this subject than depicting scene upon scene of rape and abuse. It's an uncomfortable read. Docile is about someone coerced into sexual slavery and half of the story is told from the perspective of a rapist. I would have been able to stomach that discomfort if the story was going anywhere. But it wasn't. From early on in the novel K.M. Szpara’s shaky characterization and hollow worldbuilding made me doubt that any nuanced exploration of consent under capitalism would be found in the text.
My first problem with Docile was our protagonist Elisha. A central question of this story is if you can consent in a system that coerces desperate people. Szpara's choice to not only make Elisha young but virginal and incredibly naive undercuts that immediately. Elisha supposedly asserts his autonomy by refusing docilium. This choice (and a handful of others) is supposed to complicate our understanding of his ability to consent and add nuance to his relationship with Alex. But Elisha's position as young, naive, and vulnerable undercuts his supposed autonomy. The question of if Elisha can consent with Alex is always unambiguously no.
Interesting questions about subjects like sex work and labour under capitalism couldn’t be had because every sexual interaction in his book is always coercive and violent in the most clearcut way. Given that making Elisha barely 20 and incredibly naive only served to make the already vile rape scenes throughout the book even more uncomfortable to read. While I can hold space for discomfort if it serves some purpose in this case didn’t serve anything or say anything.
Alex, our other POV character, doesn't work either. He exists to give us insight into the ruling class but felt so removed from his own world. His tepid rejection of the docile system and framing as a “kinder” owner than most felt out of left field given the position in society he occupied. Alex, despite being the grandson of the inventor of docilium, never provided meaningful insight into the world of Maryland’s elite. His constant flip-flopping between wanting to treat Elisha “well” and subjecting him to an immense amount of violence felt unmotivated and arbitrary. This dichotomy felt as if it was supposed to make Alex seem deep and complicated but more often than not Alex came off as incompetent and childish.
The most unbelievable aspect of this story is the development of Alex and Elisha's "relationship". By the midpoint of the story, the reader is meant to believe that these two have formed some sort of deep bond. That despite the constant sexual assault and dehumanization wrought on Elisha he is in love with Alex. I simply could not follow the chain of events that led to that moment. This arc relied on the completely incredulous idea that you can bend someone’s will and destroy their sense of self completely… in six months. I was already skeptical about this premise but Szpara does a terrible job of depicting this arc in the text. His timescale is so ridiculously short and Alex is so incredibly incompetent that I couldn’t believe Elisha could become so emotionally dependent on him at all.
On a thematic level what K.M. Szpara seemed to be saying with this relationship was absolutely abhorrent to my sensibilities. The idea that a person can be “broken” into permanent submission and therefore be happiest being controlled by someone was the final nail in the coffin for this book. I concede that I only have half of the story and can't know the totality of what Szpara was getting at but I had no confidence that this would lead anywhere good.
Docile was not helped by its halfhearted word-building. The story fails to convey the specifics of how and why this world works the way it does. It’s hampered by its near-future setting which strains the believability of an already out-there premise because the world feels too similar to our own to fully justify the existence of widely accepted sexual slavery. Szpara rarely goes into convincing detail about how the trillionaire class functions and the social mores that allow people to accept something so horrific. This failure makes the series' claim to be a critique or examination of capitalism even more unbelievable.
I’ve agonized over this review for weeks and I still don’t think I’ve satisfactorily conveyed my problem with this book. While I don’t think its premise was awful this story needed a much better writer than K.M Szpara to tactfully handle such sensitive themes. I’ve never had a book leave as bad a taste in my mouth as Docile did.