Kings of a Dead World

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I think the only place the pacing came as a detriment was in some of the emotional exchanges between characters. I wanted to feel a little more for their interactions, some of which were imbued with such human feeling that I didn’t really have time to take it all in. That said, I can see why it would be that way – the chain of events wasn’t going to wait for emotion or relationships. It certainly didn’t detract from the thoroughly engaging reading experience. In its detached and bleakness of narration, the book reminds me of Samantha Schweblin her writing. The anti globalist academics gone rogue turn-out rather unreflective while traversing a rural abandoned landscape, with gas stations selling diesel for ten pounds per liter (that will just take a few years and some more of inflation, crossed my mind sardonically). Three narratives and two timelines - Jamie Mollart has done an exceptional job of fusing these together to create an awesome reading experience.

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. The book alternates between three threads, one featuring a sleeping man who takes care for an elderly woman, one janitor whose immersion in drugs induced parties and AI supported commodity trading is upended by excursions into the city he monitors, and a storyline involving climate activists turned full on terrorists amidst the climate change induced demise of society. All these threads come together in a rather Marvel movie kind of obvious manner, with family being the linking pin. As each chapter progresses, it ramps up the excitement. And the pace was relentless throughout. I hope that does not sound like a contradiction on my part. 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.Climate change is rendering the world uninhabitable and there are too many people for the space that’s left. The world needs to do something and world leaders are taking matters into their own hands. Their solution? Sleep. With a capital S. In the waking time between, Ben steals moments with Rose, who is slipping through his fingers as each Awake moment passes. Peruzzi watches over them all, tasked as the sentient watchman of the Sleepers, but his ivory tower is shrinking. The city is waking up and reality is crumbling. Ben is desperate to confess his past before it’s too late. What is left when the world we thought we knew falls apart around us? On the downside, the narrative was very focused on the experiences of a few men, with little input from women. Yes, there was Rose, Ben’s wife. I felt for how Ben struggled with his waking time and the disease stealing his wife from him. We also have Kitty, Andreas’ sometimes girlfriend. This wasn’t so much a problem, just worth noting. There were plot revelations that changed my opinion about Ben. This demonstrated how well the characters were developed. How the author handled this development, especially evoking feelings both positive and negative towards Ben. It made me ask, what would I have done? What are we fighting through if not the world think both our terrorists and the United World Congress they strive against.

I would like to see Kings of a Dead World made into a 'cli-fi' film, marketed as both cautionary tale and satire.' Juliet Blaxland, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize It is a frighteningly entertaining look at how good we are as a race at isolating and destroying ourselves.’ SFF World 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.” Suffice to say, I really enjoyed the book. It was insightful, intense and imaginative. Kings of a Dead World is a thought-provoking thriller of a novel that will entertain to the very end. Kings of a Dead World is also quite thought-provoking. There is a passage in the book where Ben says, "The meeting of the United World Congress was to be held the following month. The leaders were to be flown in over a period of three days, and decisions were to be made that would end the shortages and over-population and the rising waters and wars and starvation. The solutions presented ranged from extreme to unimaginable, and there was a feeling, certainly amongst the people that I associated with, that this was the final solution, no one, ever expects they will see Armageddon in their lifetime. no-one expected the world wars, the middle-east wars, the Korean holocaust, the oil wars, and yet, somehow there was always an end to them, and the human race marched on."

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.

There are some more discrepancies, like how is bank robbery a thing in the near future? Or how would water ever possibly submerse the Shard?

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. 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. 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! Although the Sleep is initially presented as a solution for the sake of the common good, it becomes clear that it is more of a life sentence than a sacrifice. “It’s the actual stealing of time,” Mollart says, “time is stolen from them, rather than time you can do something else in. If they were having beautiful dreams while they’re Asleep, it would just take away a little bit of the fear of it. … There should be nothing. Not to get into the comparison with death and all that, but it’s little incremental bits of death.”

Janitors, taking care of the population and trading with other countries, watch over society in the meanwhile. 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. The dialogues are very realistic, as you would expect, so prepare for imaginative language and content.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. 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 As I said I am not usually a dystopian reader so I cannot compare this book to many others but I thought that the world building was great but I would have liked a little more explanation of how the world got that way (but have a feeling there may be other books so maybe it gets explained then) but what we do get is a short leap from understandable.