Kings of a Dead World

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If you enjoy reading about dark futures and enjoy films like Bladerunner and Dark City, where one person may make a difference, but that difference will only be for them, then this is a well written and compelling tale of the horrors that humanity (such a word is misplaced for most of the people in this book) puts upon itself, just by being nothing more than what it has to be.’ British Science Fiction Association There is a lot of passion and empathy within the characters involved. Ben especially, despite his ageing frailties, shows the reader how as human beings, we can still find strength when needed. We have glimpses of how and why Ben and Rose got together and who the cult leader Andreas was, and how they got involved with him. It also goes on to explain the anarchy that the cult caused that preceded events. But no spoilers. Maybe that is the best compliment I personally can pay the Kings of the Dead, if it had been written by J G Ballard, I would not have been the least bit surprised. I have read a lot of ‘cli-fi’ style books, and what strikes me having read this novel is how often books in this genre focus on the powerlessness of the human race against the inevitable climate onslaught we all face. Narratives focus on the post-apocalyptic ‘after’ and how humans that are left begin to rebuild. But this comes only after humans are ‘done to’. In this novel, world leaders have to choose to ‘do to’ the human race. They realise they need to take decisive actions. What Mollart shows us is something that feels close and uncomfortable – the reality is that world powers will have the power to decide what action to take and this novel explores what that action might look like. It places humans in the driving seat and it’s not pretty.

In the sleeping city, elderly Ben struggles with his limited waking time and the disease that is stealing his wife from him. Outside, lonely Janitor Peruzzi craves the family he never knew. Around them both, dissatisfaction is growing. The city is about to wake.Being the sleeper is easy, or so we think: Sleep Donation posits that donating sleep is as painless and noble as giving blood. That’s the party line for the Sleep Corps’ champ recruiter Trish Edgewater, who convinces the parents of newborn donor Baby A that she has a surfeit of the stuff, and to not give would be to doom the nation’s insomniacs to an agonizing, brutal, unnecessary death. For Baby A, or Washington Irving’s archetypal snoozer Rip Van Winkle, or the Narrator, they get to wake up into a changed world. It’s the people watching them sleep, moving through the insomniac hours, who have to do the actual hard work of breaking and reshaping the world. This book is one I’ve thought about for some time since putting it down. It is powerful and uncomfortable and real. And you should go read it, because it is out now! Author Jamie Mollart laughs while admitting this, but the idea for Kings of a Dead World, his new dystopian novel about a world put to sleep to conserve resources, came to him in a dream. And why shouldn’t it have? “Sleep on it” is the common advice for a human being pondering a big choice or change, with the promise that a good night’s sleep will allow them better perspective to write a novel, make a life-shifting decision… maybe even save the world? My only real issue with the book is that it is a bit of a sausage fest, there aren't any strong female characters or indeed any characters that aren't in the book except to be a plaything for the male characters. Even Rose - Ben's wife is mainly there as a hinderance. Perhaps that will change in upcoming books but for now I am only looking at this one. By contrast, I would liked to have seen a little more in the Before section, of the events that led up to the introduction of the Sleepers. This section is well-realised and the sequence of events of the ‘end of the world as we know it’ feels all too credible and realistic. But there feels as if there was scope here for more character work in the relationships between the younger versions of Ben and Rose and both their relationships with charismatic cult leader Andreas. There’s also an interesting relationship with the disturbingly violent police officer Quinn, who pursues them and who later plays a pivotal role in the story. Putting the conflict between these two more directly into the story could, I think, have been interesting.

Mollart’s intriguing and timely premise is executed with verve – Kings of a Dead World is filmic in its scope’ - Alison Moore, Shortlisted for the Booker Prize year old Ben is one of those sleepers. His wife Rose has dementia and his struggle to make the most of their short time together is deeply affecting. But when they were younger, Ben and Rose were activists in an organisation called the NSF - fighting the authorities for people's right to control their own lives. And so the story unfurls from three points of view: Peruzzi, Ben and Ben's account of his life before the Sleep in the NSF. Some smal hints of a world before this change are dropped, including a Korean holocaust and mentions of the reef that used to be Liverpool. I think this may be a controversial book for some, then so were most of Ballards, he didn't do too bad as an author, did he?Despite that I did really enjoy the book and would probably read the sequel if there is one to find out what happens next in this world and where it all goes from there. It is hard to talk about the book without giving spoilers so I will just say, definitely give this book a go and see what you think and then come talk to me about it! There is a lot to like about the character of Ben. He loves his wife Rose but, he knows the futility of the future. He feels such pain, not for himself but for her and the many like her. The dead world is a futuristic version of earth, where climate change has left much of Britain flooded and what remains is parched and arid. No amount of solar panels or wind turbines has been enough to satiate the world's greed for power. Therefore the United World Congress has come up with an extreme solution - if the demand for resources cannot be curbed, then the time that people can use those resources will be. The result is The Sleep - three months of induced sleep followed by a month of real life.

Kings of a Dead World is definitely an incredible read. Jamie Mollart presents us with a future that is not beyond the realms of possibility. Mollart’s pacing was perfect – while I felt like I was hurtling towards the climactic ending for most of the novel, at no point did I want to slow down. There was something in that which spoke to the wider themes in the novel – there’s a fragility to the set up with ‘Sleep’ which, once tested, rapidly unravels.And this is also certainly true of Jamie Mollart’s Kings of a Dead World. It’s core concept — that dwindling resources and overpopulation leave the human race seeking drastic, and bleak, measures to ensure survival is an impactful premise because you know that it’s a real one and that whatever real answers we come up with aren’t going to be pretty, if we even come up with any at all. But what about a Sleep with no dreams? “I wanted there to be a difference between forced Sleep and actual sleep,” Mollart says. “It shouldn’t be a thing where you get to restore your body and your mind. It’s like they’re turned off, literally turned off.” But that’s the thing, Mollart says, when Den of Geek speaks to him about his new book: “Time’s like a false constraint, isn’t it? You’ve got the sun coming up, the sun coming down—there is an obvious set of divisions of how people spend their time. But the whole hour and minute thing—we’ve made these false constraints that we as society have put onto things. It’s humans grappling with what’s in front of them in nature, isn’t it? It’s this whole thing we can’t control, so we try to control it by putting our own constraints on it.” The Tyler/Narrator dynamic plays out in the relationship between fellow Janitors Peruzzi and Slattery: colleagues, quasi-friends, and partners in crime. While their decadent lifestyles spoil them with at-home gyms and Brave New World-inspired raves every three months, Slattery tempts Peruzzi into seeking out greater highs than pills and sex. Their explorations into the Sleeping world at first tap into a Fight Club-esque awakening of the blood, only to tip into Project Mayhem levels of voyeurism and violation in pursuit of confirmation that what they do actually matters.