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Sign up todayDocile
Length
16 hours 31 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Mark Sanderlin & Vikas Adam
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“People will often refer to a book as one that’s ‘unlike anything they’ve ever read before,’ but for maybe the first time in my reading life, I can honestly say that about K.M. Szpara’s Docile. This erotic speculative science fiction novel takes place in a frighteningly plausible future where people become ‘dociles’ — essentially indentured slaves working off debt — and explores themes of consent, capitalism, and the abuse cycle. A visceral reading experience that will challenge, confront, titillate, and disgust, Docile feels like a book we will be talking about for decades.”
— Caleb Masters • Bookmarks
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. 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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com
K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with a small dog and long cat. He is the author of speculative novels such as FIRST, BECOME ASHES (2021), DOCILE (2020), and a novel that will follow up on his Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time." They're about cults and trauma, consent and debt, and a horny trans vampire, respectively. His short fiction appears in Tor.com, Uncanny, Lightspeed, and more. You can find himme on the Internet at kmszpara.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @kmszpara.
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Reviews
"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." —Charle Jane Anders
"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." —Sam J. Miller
"An unputdownable scifi dystopian erotica human rights masterpiece reminiscent of The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty—but this time, the beauty fights back." —Delilah S. Dawson
"This is what 50 Shades of Gray could have been, if only it had been more brutally honest with itself." —Jenn Lyons
"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." —Cecilia Tan
"A powerful, complex story that explores the dark consequences of a future with inherited debt. Docile is unflinching in its examination of class and wealth disparity while remaining a compelling and emotionally nuanced story." —C.L. Polk
"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!" —JY Yang
"Docile is a neuropunk cocktail that fires on all cylinders…as political experiment, grim prophecy, and heady love story. A canny gutpunch of a book." —Damon Suede
"With unflinching empathy, Szpara explores the depths of love, complicity, and all the systems that bind us." —Ruthanna Emrys
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