Kings of a Dead World by Jamie Mollart

 'Mollart's intriguing and timely premise is executed with verve - Kings of a Dead World is filmic in its scope.' Alison Moore

In a country of rising Covid carnage, and in a world of flooding and wild fires, it might feel like you’re living in a dystopian novel. Jamie Mollart’s new sci-fi book about a dying planet of dwindling resources may, strangely, prove to be the perfect form of escapism. It comes with a warning of what might happen, and of who and what is valued when it does.

Kings of a Dead World is set 50+ years in the future. People are living with restrictions, with little reward, and dissatisfaction is growing. After years of global warming, the solution to Earth’s limited resources is imposed sleep. This enforced hibernation has a sensible theory behind it, that by spending three months asleep for every one they are awake, humans can help manage resources.

Ben lives in a city, watching out for his elderly wife Rose who has a form of dementia. Their love story is at the heart of the novel. Theirs is a story told, in part, in flashback. To a time when mistakes were made. Ben being an example of how an individual’s decisions have a reaching impact. It’s these flashbacks that reveal how humankind ended up on the precipice of annihilation.

While Ben and the majority are sleeping, it’s up to janitors to look after them, trading resources for creds (the new world’s money). One such janitor is Peruzzi. As a janitor he’s part of an elite that aren’t required to endure the months of sleep. Each janitor has a location that they are responsible for, making sure the sleepers have enough to survive their next four weeks awake. It makes sense for the story to be told from both perspectives (Sleeper and Janitor) in two timelines, and through the younger rebellious Ben’s backstory.

As much as it’s a work of sci-fi, with AI and a Big Brother style monitoring system, plus a powerful version of Alexa (on speed) - it’s a novel about relationships. Our relationships with each other, with assumed ‘higher’ entities, and the planet. Ultimately, it’s about actions and responsibilities (personal and social). Sometimes the world seems overly recognisable, at others, too distant from the world we live in, but then that’s probably what 60 years hence would feel like, the highly familiar and the extremely foreign.

There’s ample action and twists, some humour and surprises. It is also dark, violent and unrelentingly tense. This is a dense book that’ll make you think and rethink. If you like sci-fi or dystopian novels you should definitely grab a copy.

Kings of a Dead World took Mollart five years to write. His editing process saw his 200,000 word manuscript cut in half. There’s evidence of the missing words in the depth of his characters – the author knows them well – and in the tight pot.

This is Mollart’s second published novel, following The Zoo. The author benefitted from Writing East Midlands’ mentoring scheme. He lives just over the Leicestershire but is a member of Nottingham Writers’ Studio.