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. … 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.
Content warning: Docile contains forthright depictions and discussions of rape and sexual abuse.
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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Docile is an intricate exploration of power, privilege, and class dynamics. Szpara has successfully delivered a novel that is unflinching in its sensuality as well as its scrutiny.
This book isn’t for the faint of heart. Aside from the graphic nature of the story, the mental state of two main characters is intense. (Rape, Sexually explicit, PTSD triggers, etc) But with that being said, it is so well written.
Getting both points of view is perfection, makes the story so immersive, and I couldn’t put it down. The events were life like, at points relatable, and told a complete emotional journey. When I was in the middle of the book I was so sure by the end I was going to be broken over it, but the story doesn’t leave me with the level of pain that it had me experience. Personally I loved the ending, it was choice, growth, and really wrapped the overall message up in a pretty red bow.
My biggest take aways from the book are, anyone can be conditioned without realizing it, or with it being blatant. Conditioning knows no bounds, it doesn’t care of sex, gender, financial situation. Everyone is conditioned just by the environment they are raised in. Conditioning can happen with or without drugs, with or without direct violence, disguised as love or safety. This book speaks to society on so many levels.
But that everyone can change, anyone can learn new truths, as long as we are all given a voice, respect and autonomy. People are a work in progress.
Also, it is crimes against humanity to past down debt. Debt should always dissolved with death. Everything boils down to economics, and human rights. Where does one end, and one begin, which should rule the life we lead? Can their be a balance? Such a great book.
Meh. About 80-100 pages too long. In the beginning I was all about it but the ending felt very rushed and lazy to me. Could’ve been amazing but fell short.
Okay, this goes out to all my book loving friends. Why the hell did you let me wait so long to read this? I’m seriously kicking myself in the ass for letting it sit on TBR pile for so long.
Docile is, in a word, AMAZING.
Alongside Stealing Thunder and Of Honey and Wildfires, it’s one of my top 3 favorite reads of the year (so-far).
This is a book that has a lot to say about politics, economics, society, family, and kink. It’s a story about slavery, consent, and the blurry, ever-moving line between the two. It’s erotic, intense, emotional, and thought-provoking in ways I didn’t expect. There’s a blurb from Jenn Lyons that says “This is what Fifty Shades of Grey could have been, if only it had been more brutally honest with itself,” and I can’t think of any better way to sum up a book that says so much, so perfectly.
What makes this so fascinating is that there’s no black-and-white to it, no simple villain-and-victim. K.M. Szpara suggests a chilling yet plausible future of inescapable debt, institutionalized slavery, and a drug called Dociline. On the one hand, Dociline allows the indebted to escape awareness of their suffering and humiliation, turning them into happy, mindless drones for the duration of their slavery. On the other hand, it also empowers the rich to treat their slaves as disposable toys, absolving them of their guilt by removing all semblance humanity.
Having seen what Dociline did to his mother, Elisha declines the drug in entering his own service to Alex – and it is his experience as a fully aware slave, sexually and emotionally subservient to his owner, undergoing something akin to Stockholm syndrome, that makes this so compelling. It’s tempting to read the first half of the book as a simple power exchange fantasy, an erotic rags-to-riches romance, especially with the scenes of Docile orgies and pony-races, but everything pivots on the question of consent. Exploring that consent and what its understanding means for both Alex and Elisha is what drives the second half, and shifting into the realm of political and philosophical courtroom drama changes the entire reading experience.
There is even a small element of gender fluidity in the second half that speaks volumes about expectations, assumptions, and choices.
As someone who enjoys the power exchange, who is intimately familiar with the mindset of a submissive, Docile hit home for me in ways it may not for other readers. I understood Elisha’s plight, sympathized with his struggles, and identified with his confusion. Initially, I chafed against the idea that he wasn’t in his right mind, that he couldn’t consent to being in love, but it’s a testament to Szpara’s writing that I was able to come around and understand what an emotional quagmire his slavery created. I went from hoping everything would be resolved in a last-minute romantic twist to dreading that Szpara would take that easy way out, but the ending was . . . well, as perfect as everything else about this. I’m still thinking about it, still feeling it, and I imagine I will be for a long while to come.
I bought this because an author I love (N. K. Jemisin) said she was reading it. The world building is completely believable. The characters are well drawn and do not act in predictable ways. The graphic nature of the sex had a purpose and I finished the book wanting more. This felt a bit like the start of a series. I hope it is.
The hook may be titillating ― to save his family, a farm boy sells himself, nudge nudge wink wink ― but Docile follows through on that premise to its deepest roots and its most satisfying conclusion. Docile is an absolute feast.
Startlingly plausible and delicately insightful, this is a book that will haunt you.
An unputdownable scifi dystopian erotica human rights masterpiece reminiscent of The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty ― but this time, the beauty fights back.
This is what Fifty Shades of Grey could have been, if only it had been more brutally honest with itself.
K.M. Szpara’s dazzling debut is gripping, intricate, and sexy as hell. In these times of capitalistic dysfunction, his terrifying, debt-soaked future America is all too believable, and the characters ― with all their flaws and complex desires ― will linger with you long after the last page. I didn’t want to stop reading!
With unflinching empathy, Szpara explores the depths of love, complicity, and all the systems that bind us.
If you’re not careful, this disturbing, sexy, disturbingly sexy book will infect your brain, and you’ll start wondering whether its miserable world is very different from our own, and how much choice any of us really have in this capitalist hellscape where so many of our options are set at birth. And then you might want to do something about it.
Don’t call K.M. Szpara’s Docile a dystopia. This book is something much stranger and yet closer to our own reality. Szpara has an amazing gift for immersing us in a world of exploitation and unbearable tenderness, and making it feel familiar and inescapable. Reading Docile changed me and left me with a new awareness of the structures of oppression that surround me. This book is an unforgettable story of human connection and the struggle to remain yourself in a world of debtors and creditors.