Book Review: Jubilee, by Stephan K. Stanford

It was meant to be an in and out mission…

Jubilee is a lawless, artificial world existing within its own parallel universe; a seething cesspool of vice ruled by an eccentric AI.

So they say.

Detectives Col and Danee are sent to Jubilee on a hastily organised mission
to recover the body of a leading conservative politician (someone it seems,
has been a naughty boy). But the corpse has been switched and the
imperilled partners are drawn together. They might be falling in love, or they might be saving the galaxy– either way the authorities will not be pleased.

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My Review

Thanks to Anne of Random Things Tours for organising this tour and to Flame Tree Press for sending me a copy of this book.

An enjoyable romp in a far future galaxy. Col and Danee from the planet Brouggh head into a parallel galaxy to the pleasure palace of Jubilee, run by an AI called Douglas. They’re Security agents, police officers basically, with some intelligence agent thrown in. They’re there to collect the body of a politician. Nees is the head of the Movement4Morality on Brouggh, and he’s been found dead in a hotel room in this den of iniquity.

Col and Danee find nothing is as it seems. The body isn’t Nees. Jubilee is only partially a den of iniquity. And things are kicking off on Brouggh while they’re away. They get back with the body after several days to find everything has changed, a mad torturer is in control of their Bureaux and Col’s wife Sana, a prominent politician opposed to M4M, has disappeared.

After a chase through the city of Harrison, Col is rescued by Danee and Douglas, who are old friends it seems, and whisked back to Jubilee, to plan the rescue of Sana.

It’s got a pulp detective/sci fi vibe. We are treated to Col’s narration throughout, as he describes his feelings and physical pains during adventures that find him blown up in space, travelling the slow road from Jubilee to Grendeva, a planet with a matriarchal system that reflects some of the more extreme 1950s patriarchal standards, and then on Rethne, the planet that spawn M4M, where he ends up in the sewage, dresses in heavy make-up and almost gets shot while upsetting a religious maniac. It’s a lot of fun!

The narrative pokes fun at patriarchal toxic masculinity with Grendevan culture and Col’s presentation/narration. Col is actually deeper than you realise at first; he’s seriously traumatised both by childhood events and being tortured by a religious fanatic/sadist, and dealing with his own hang-ups about how men are supposed to be, hang-ups challenged my his time as a Grendaven prince, and then his complicated relationship with Sana (his wife) and Danee (his colleague/girlfriend).

Sana and Danee are the best. They start out as caricatures, just as Col does, but then they become whole, rounded people as Col learns more about them. It’s a good literary device; this novel starts with that sexist 50s pulp vibe, and we’re supposed to think that’s what it is, but that’s because Col is stuck in old-fashioned thinking, and as he develops as a person, the narrative develops. At the end it’s a thoroughly modern novel, using the device of retro storytelling styles and attitudes to show how Col has changed as a person. It’s entirely possible I’m over-thinking and the author started out writing in one style because that’s what he’d been influenced by and ended with another because his influences changed, and a good editor made it work, but I really don’t think it is.

Douglas has a weird accent – more pirate than Scottish. It made me laugh the first time but got a bit tedious after a while. He clearly knows though, and can switch the accent off when necessary. It’s a device to disarm visitors to Jubilee, and in turn the reader. When the reader first meets Douglas, through Col, he seems slightly comical, unserious and a strange use for all that AI power. We discover over the course of the novel that he has contacts everywhere, is building an alternative civilisation and takes his responsibilities very seriously.

Another literary device used by the authors that interests me – the book is supposed to be a translation from many millennia after the events recorded in the novel, so there’s that layer of complication. Think about how professional translators and linguists translate ancient texts and how we write historical novels – writers give the languages and characters voices and accents to distinguish people, throw in the occasional original, untranslated word if they can’t find an equivalent, but also change the meaning by word choice and interpretation of a text. That’s why the Bible can be interpreted in so many different ways and causes so many arguments (see any Terry Pratchett book that deals with Omnians). How much of the ‘original’ text and tone have come across with the ‘translation’?

Batum the security droid is a laugh. No, really, he’s caustic, clever and a really useful ally to have about the place. Even when his body has been destroyed.

The various plants and cultures are variations on current human cultures, although with more technology and linguistic changes. The people of Brouggh are clearly modelled on a sort of Anglo-Australian-USian culture, but the religious conservatives are a bizarre aberration that is forcing its way into a progressive culture, with Gilham and Nees recognisable as evangelical Christian preachers of the irrational, revival tent variety that are currently cursing our countries and cultures (have I mentioned I don’t like religious bigots?). The author also takes a shot at the fact children are more likely to be abused at home and in church than anywhere else. Nees’ son, we learn, completed suicide on Jubilee as a result of horrific, on-going sexual abuse by his ‘oh so pious’ and ‘moral’ father.

The original inhabitants of Rethne are clearly descended from Arabs and Bedouins. Mehrqu shows Col and Danee around with the sort of hospitality I’ve experienced from Arabs/Mediterranean people, (food, there is always shared food!) and takes them to his home village to share his ancestral culture, uncorrupted by the M4M religion of Gilham. I think this is a comment on something about Americans imposing themselves on the MENA region, but I can’t say for sure. I find the ‘we found him in a cave praying’ plot point interesting. Gilham is clearly an off-world agent, or an avatar of the massive AI Douglas has discovered, and he’s using elements of Abrahamic religious mythology, calling back to the inhabitants’ of Rethne’s origins in and beliefs from the MENA region to convert them. The fact he’s visibly different from the inhabitants of Rethne and lords over them as The Master in white clothes, is very ‘American Jesus’ of him. I know way too much about American Conservative Religious stuff, don’t I? Blame Fundie Fridays – Jen and James make learning about these things far too entertaining.

The planet of Grendeva is a ‘Renaissance-Fayre’ LARP! Instead of fragile ladies and strong princes, the princes are flaking, ignorant toys and the ladies are political powerhouses. Of course, if you were to take an ignorant look at the medieval period, embodied in the ‘Renaissance Fayre’ and pop-historical understandings of the period, see the highly patriarchal culture and then invert it, you’d have Grendeva – on the surface. But actual interactions between the characters show that it’s really not as simple as that. It looks like a simple inversion – the sort of things misogynist patriarchal men assume would happen if society became matriarchal, or even just less patriarchal – women would do the same to men that men have done to women, which is what they’re afraid of (there are some really dark places on the internet where misogynists congregate and propagate some vile beliefs about anyone with a uterus, that’s how I know this stuff – I used to read a very good blog, now shuttered, that tracked it all). But it’s all LARPing.

There’s actually a lot of depth to this book, if you’re a chronic overthinker like me. The author seems to be taking pot-shots at a lot of socially regressive attitudes, but it’s a bit subtle if you’re only reading the surface and don’t pick up the clues. I saw one GoodReads review that insisted the novel was misogynistic – I don’t think they realised what was going on. Or I’m overthinking again. Am I overthinking? You can definitely read this as a silly space romp, but there’s more to it than that.

And DNAltering is such a cool idea. I know so many people who would grab that with both hands. Seriously, go into a bath, come out with your body changing into what you want or need it to be. Who wouldn’t give it a try? Imagine the possibilities to explore yourself and your identity before settling on something that matches you? And that you can change as you change as a person?

The author includes characters who are trans or gay and they’re just another person, although they’re threatened by the religious maniacs (how novel – that’s never happened in the real world! much sarcasm). Also, you may have noticed the abbreviation for the religious maniac movement is M4M. In some spaces this is shorthand for homosexual men looking for other men, it’s not the only shorthand, for example T4T refers to trans people looking to date other trans people. Honestly don’t know if that was deliberate, but I truly hope it was.

So, I enjoyed this novel; get past the surface pulp romp and into the action, and you find a thoughtful, entertaining adventure that ends with a modern family and new adventures on the horizon.

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Stephen K. Stanford has been a serial entrepreneur since the age of
twenty-one, launching numerous projects in the arts, fashion and music
industries. He fell in love with books as a child, devouring his fathers’ vast
‘golden age’ sci-fi collection, and lives in Melbourne with his wife and two
highly truculent Siamese cats.