I was in countdown to the March 3, 2020 release of K.M. Szpara’s (M/M Dystopia? Romance? Slavefic? Cautionary screed?) DOCILE, from Tor Books.
I’ve been hearing about this book for over a year. I’d planned on actually ordering it. Then I read the first eight chapters on a free Kindle Sample offer.
Oh, dear.
I may or may not read the rest of this book when it launches, or a year or two later. My misgivings have largely matched those from ARC readers who’ve already read the whole book.
I give Tor/Forge my enduring thanks for taking a chance (once more) on LGBTQIA books and authors. There was a two-decade span when gay content didn’t exist, or it went to fade-to-black in Big5 SFF books.
I wanted to love this book, since it has a kindred plot to my space opera MORO’S PRICE, first published in 2012. The taglines and marketing for DOCILE have been superb.
But reading even the first eight chapters of DOCILE are kind of like being sold a lush, brilliantly-cooked gourmet dinner at a high price with LOTS of fanfare, biting in, and realizing:
This is fried chicken.
It might be perfectly good fried chicken, acceptable and tasty for what it is. But it’s not what you were planning on eating, based on what was advertised.
DOCILE is not quite fried chicken, but it is a fairly workmanlike version of a standard slavefic.
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Slavefics, in fan fiction terminology, work from the premise that a character has been sold into (often sexual) slavery, and all the misadventures that ensue as they either try to escape or fall into the role.
Commercial mainstream science fiction and fantasy has done this for decades in original works, especially in M/F pairings. There’s a Man-Kzin Wars story that still creeps me out to this day.
I’ve also read amazing, gutwrenching, overwhelming and ultimately triumphant slavefics in Avengers, Harry Potter, and other fandoms.
Original-or-serial-numbers-filed-off slavefics have been a mainstay of the small-press M/M erotic romance industry for around twenty years.
Not coincidentally, during the same time that the RWA’s mainstream romance Nice White Nazis tried to declare ‘romance must be between one man and one woman’. Around the same time, some socially conservative editors and backers apparently reined in original mainstream fantasy & science fiction from showing too-explicit gay content.
Great explicit SFF and Romance writers went to small press, where they were both welcomed and exploited. Now that Diversity Sells, now that many small press erotic romance publishers are evolving or dying off, *now* mainstream SFF is jumping onto the train.
Literary agents are, at least in public, falling all over themselves to sign the next ‘Fifty Shades’ or the next ‘Captive Prince’.
DOCILE, at least what I read of it, is a decent and predictable book. I can see where the forced-love romance is going, I get enough hints of how the various characters will fight to change or uphold the horrifying regimes that control their world.
But there’s not a lot of strong characterization, even from the two main characters who tell their story in first-person.
There’s not a lot of deep and careful worldbuilding, a lack I tend to actually associate with much M/M romance from certain (now defunct) small press publishers. Not a publishing giant like Tor.
Wait, there’s sex in this book, graphic gay sex! I should be saying ‘Yay!’ but my reactions were mostly ‘Meh’. Because this book easily could have been culled from any of several dozen similar small press M/M romances over the last fifteen years.The sex is equally ‘Meh’. Workmanlike. ‘Shippers in fanfic know that great sex scenes are driven not just by the physical, but by the feels. Even the opening ‘chemistry’ between these two characters seems manufactured.
Added 2/22/2020: I contemplated buying the book to run it through plagiarism filters, and compare it to other M/M slavefics (original and fanfiction).
But honestly, I don’t have the time or spoons for it. That should have been Tor’s job. Or the agent-of-record’s, Jennifer Udden.
On Goodreads, I may eventually give this one three stars. But only if I treat it fairly and try to read the whole book. Right now, I’m not willing to put in the $$$ or the effort.
There are hints of a great story buried in these eight disappointing chapters. It needed a lot more work and bravery to become the ‘tour de force’ advertised.
K. M. Szpara is a better writer than this.
Tor is a better publisher.
If Tor wanted to grab similar books and authors who are already Hugo-Award quality, they should look to Archive of Our Own and some of the fanfic writers there. If VenusM was ever going to do an original version of their already-vividly drawn Avengers fanfic ‘Born From The Earth’, it would be worth the hype Tor has given DOCILE.
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