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Jubilee Cycle #2
The Naked World
In a world stripped bare of digital images and promotainment, unveiled with the audiovisual overlay of the ImmaNet, in an exposed world, a naked world, Amon Kenzaki awakens, lost and alone. He must now travel deep into the District of Dreams in search of Anisha Birla, the one person that might help him unravel the mystery of jubilee. But deprived of the apps and informational tools he’s depended on his entire life, traversing the largest bankdeath camp on Earth is no easy task.
Inside an ephemeral labyrinth of slowly-dissolving disposable skyscrapers clogged to the limit with the bankdead masses, Amon soon finds himself face to face with two dangerous groups: a luddite cult called the Borginans, who preach bizarre superstitions about electronic banking, and a supposedly humanitarian army called the Charity Brigade, whose mandate of protecting the bankdead conceals opportunistic motives.
Taking refuge in a hospital that strives to improve conditions in the camps, Amon begins to work towards its cause and reconciles himself to his newfound poverty. But when political forces threaten the community’s existence and the lives of its members, he is forced to team up with a vending-machine designer, an Olympic runner, a fertility researcher, a corporate tycoon, and many others to expose the heinous secret festering at the heart of the action-transaction market he once served.
In book two of the Jubilee Cycle, Eli K. P. William delves beneath the surface of his cyber-dystopian Tokyo to unearth the fate of outcasts trapped in its depths and shine a light on the financial obstacles blocking one individual’s efforts to help them.
Inside an ephemeral labyrinth of slowly-dissolving disposable skyscrapers clogged to the limit with the bankdead masses, Amon soon finds himself face to face with two dangerous groups: a luddite cult called the Borginans, who preach bizarre superstitions about electronic banking, and a supposedly humanitarian army called the Charity Brigade, whose mandate of protecting the bankdead conceals opportunistic motives.
Taking refuge in a hospital that strives to improve conditions in the camps, Amon begins to work towards its cause and reconciles himself to his newfound poverty. But when political forces threaten the community’s existence and the lives of its members, he is forced to team up with a vending-machine designer, an Olympic runner, a fertility researcher, a corporate tycoon, and many others to expose the heinous secret festering at the heart of the action-transaction market he once served.
In book two of the Jubilee Cycle, Eli K. P. William delves beneath the surface of his cyber-dystopian Tokyo to unearth the fate of outcasts trapped in its depths and shine a light on the financial obstacles blocking one individual’s efforts to help them.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published November 21, 2017
About the author
Eli K.P. William
6 books85 followersEli K.P. William has spent his entire adult life in Japan making a career out of story and language. The only member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan who writes novels in English, he is the author of The Jubilee Cycle trilogy (Skyhorse Publishing), set in a future Tokyo. The series includes Cash Crash Jubilee (2015) and The Naked World (2017), and concluded in 2023 with the final book A Diamond Dream. He also translates Japanese literature, including the bestselling novel A Man (Crossing 2020) by Keiichiro Hirano and works as a bilingual story and writing consultant for a major Tokyo-based video game company. His translations, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as Aeon, Granta, The Southern Review, Monkey, The Malahat Review, The Japan Times, Tor.com, Kyoto Journal, Writer’s Digest, Nippon.com, SF Prologue Wave, and Subaru. To learn more visit https://elikpwilliam.com or check out his newsletter Almost Real https://elikpwilliam.substack.com https://twitter.com/Dice_Carver
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 21, 2017
- I like to drink before I go to sleep… drink a lot of coffee before I go to sleep, so I can dream faster. I can dream like when they put a camera on a Indy 500, when they put a camera in the car, and it’s just whipping by like that, dream after dream after dream after dream. People ask me the next day 'what did you dre~am about?' and I say 'I can’t... I don't have time, I don't have time to tell you this.’
- Do you smoke?
- Only when I drink. Coffee.
- You know my mother?
- Do I know your mother?
- Yeah...?
- No, I don’t think so.
- Can you… can… can you hear me? It’s very loud here. I’d like to switch seats.
- …
- I liked it better over there, we should switch back. Was it Steve? Your name.
- Steve yes.
- I must go to the dentist, Steve, sorry. Nice to meet you.
- Don’t be late, nice to meet you too.
- So how did you like it?
- The coffee and cigarettes were great.
- No, the book?
- Ah, the book. This book? It’s a good book, you could see the writing improving compared with the first one and even throughout the second book you could see the focus shifting from individual to society as an individual.
- Yes, but you still get the punk-style dystopia that’s juggling with your senses and imagination, tricking you to enter a simulator of experimental sensations you never agreed to.
- That’s just at the beginning, I believe it’s more of a transition from the first book, so you don’t feel that much dissonance. May I have another cup of coffee?
- …
- I wish they had some scones too. I loved how the characters were street performers, it felt as the time I was 5 and they took me to the circus: the elephant man, the jester, the man-pretending-to-have-empathy, just instead it was a whole bunch of them.
- It wasn’t all that archaic in approach; the theme of fecundity-birth-ovary-cyst-rebirth is a great and solid addition, the looping stories and temporal acts…
- Just as we are now, I don’t remember if I had this coffee 10 minutes ago or I am about to have it later.
- I don’t get this fashion of ending a book with a cliffhanger. I need some closure, of course I’ll read the next one if I like the current one, but don’t end your book with a cliffhanger and make me wait another year for the rest… Could you pass the cream? It’s… it’s just unsatisfying.
- I really must go, I don’t know if the dentist will wait for me. What did you say about dreams?
- I should read a quote from the book, some will say this review it’s a nonsense otherwise.
- Not my dentist.
- Fine, just go already, don’t be late. I’ll read it to this wall.
- Nice to meet you.
- Don’t be late, nice to meet… Oh well. “The tourists hadn’t come here to meet people, to hear their stories, to engage in dialog. Rather they saw the bankdead as instantiations of “poverty” and “overcrowding”, as mere elements in a spectacle they had come to absorb for the satisfaction of feeling later that it had changed them, unable to grasp what palpable challenges they faced in their guide visit, no matter how well intentioned. “
Check, please.
- Do you smoke?
- Only when I drink. Coffee.
- You know my mother?
- Do I know your mother?
- Yeah...?
- No, I don’t think so.
- Can you… can… can you hear me? It’s very loud here. I’d like to switch seats.
- …
- I liked it better over there, we should switch back. Was it Steve? Your name.
- Steve yes.
- I must go to the dentist, Steve, sorry. Nice to meet you.
- Don’t be late, nice to meet you too.
- So how did you like it?
- The coffee and cigarettes were great.
- No, the book?
- Ah, the book. This book? It’s a good book, you could see the writing improving compared with the first one and even throughout the second book you could see the focus shifting from individual to society as an individual.
- Yes, but you still get the punk-style dystopia that’s juggling with your senses and imagination, tricking you to enter a simulator of experimental sensations you never agreed to.
- That’s just at the beginning, I believe it’s more of a transition from the first book, so you don’t feel that much dissonance. May I have another cup of coffee?
- …
- I wish they had some scones too. I loved how the characters were street performers, it felt as the time I was 5 and they took me to the circus: the elephant man, the jester, the man-pretending-to-have-empathy, just instead it was a whole bunch of them.
- It wasn’t all that archaic in approach; the theme of fecundity-birth-ovary-cyst-rebirth is a great and solid addition, the looping stories and temporal acts…
- Just as we are now, I don’t remember if I had this coffee 10 minutes ago or I am about to have it later.
- I don’t get this fashion of ending a book with a cliffhanger. I need some closure, of course I’ll read the next one if I like the current one, but don’t end your book with a cliffhanger and make me wait another year for the rest… Could you pass the cream? It’s… it’s just unsatisfying.
- I really must go, I don’t know if the dentist will wait for me. What did you say about dreams?
- I should read a quote from the book, some will say this review it’s a nonsense otherwise.
- Not my dentist.
- Fine, just go already, don’t be late. I’ll read it to this wall.
- Nice to meet you.
- Don’t be late, nice to meet… Oh well. “The tourists hadn’t come here to meet people, to hear their stories, to engage in dialog. Rather they saw the bankdead as instantiations of “poverty” and “overcrowding”, as mere elements in a spectacle they had come to absorb for the satisfaction of feeling later that it had changed them, unable to grasp what palpable challenges they faced in their guide visit, no matter how well intentioned. “
Check, please.
November 21, 2018
This book is a great sci-fi action-thriller book for anyone who likes things like The Matrix, 1984, or Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The best part about this book is that even though the technology and lifestyle, that is the bases for the society of this book, seems very futuristic, it also seems feels like a point we will inevitably reach with our advancing technology. My only complaint is that at times there can be too much detail describing such things, that it becomes confusing. Also, as a personal preference, I don't like how chapters frequently jumps between 2 events, rather then chronological order, as the time skips don't appear to add anything, and just as you are getting into one event it cuts back to some other event. Overall it's a great read that keeps you wanting to read to find out what will happen. I think it would make a great movie series, and even be in the rare position that, if done proper, it could be better then the books.
September 14, 2018
Good book with lota of details
Good book with lots of details. It really makes you feel and see what the character is going through. The extra time in developing this for each character makes the book that much better.
Good book with lots of details. It really makes you feel and see what the character is going through. The extra time in developing this for each character makes the book that much better.
November 30, 2018
Enjoyable. Very tight world building. Very interesting concepts. Too much exposition. Bet it was a tough one to write.
March 30, 2024
This is not a complete story. Similar to the first book, it ends on a cliffhanger. The writing is competent and the story is usually well-crafted and structured. However, the use of technobabble continues from the first book and if anything is worse. In addition, the "twist" at the end is too predictable, and the story suffers from an over-reliance of jumping over sections of story, which are then told in flashbacks.
Similar to the first book, the descriptions are just a bit off and many times are too wordy.
Lastly, I still don't buy the main premise of the book: that a handful of corporations have installed the entire population with computers that monitor their actions and charge them microtransactions for using their licensed properties. There is no system that could do this: if I stick my foot out and someone trips over it and cuts their head off on a sword that happens to be angled out, does that count as murder? It seems like it should depend on whether I stuck my foot out with the intention of tripping them, and whether I had placed the sword there with this plan in mind. The system as described doesn't seem capable of determining this. If someone puts a knife in my hand, and forces me to stab them with it, is this murder or some kind of euthanasia?? The author, as far as I can remember from the first book, never seems to clear this up, and the fact that many actions are horribly ambiguous at best or just uninterpretable at worse (How does a computer define "awareness rising"? What is the algorithm for determining if someone had their consciousness raised?) really damages my enjoyment of the story.
A somewhat enjoyable book, and there are better cyberpunk stories out there, but this might be worth your time.
Similar to the first book, the descriptions are just a bit off and many times are too wordy.
Lastly, I still don't buy the main premise of the book: that a handful of corporations have installed the entire population with computers that monitor their actions and charge them microtransactions for using their licensed properties. There is no system that could do this: if I stick my foot out and someone trips over it and cuts their head off on a sword that happens to be angled out, does that count as murder? It seems like it should depend on whether I stuck my foot out with the intention of tripping them, and whether I had placed the sword there with this plan in mind. The system as described doesn't seem capable of determining this. If someone puts a knife in my hand, and forces me to stab them with it, is this murder or some kind of euthanasia?? The author, as far as I can remember from the first book, never seems to clear this up, and the fact that many actions are horribly ambiguous at best or just uninterpretable at worse (How does a computer define "awareness rising"? What is the algorithm for determining if someone had their consciousness raised?) really damages my enjoyment of the story.
A somewhat enjoyable book, and there are better cyberpunk stories out there, but this might be worth your time.
May 31, 2026
The creativity and ideas shown in the first book are still here, but they don't seem quite as clever or devastatingly amusing this time around. Amon's journey outside of Free Tokyo as one of the "bank dead" shifts the focus from the action-transaction market to the effects of end-stage capitalism on procreation, religion, and charity, with much more predictable ends, though the characters tend to fail to see the obvious. There's less opportunity for the tongue-in-cheek exposure of the workings of capitalism in the author's imagined future Tokyo, too, and this is instead replaced with something darker, but less cleverly insidious.
Writing quality drops a little, too, compared to the first book. I heard the continued dangling participles and modifiers from the previous book, but there were also multiple situations where pronouns were overloaded and ambiguous, and the dense prose didn't always carry the same attention to detail. It's still very good, just not _as_ good.
Audiobook narration continues to be excellent. I noticed fewer slight pronunciation slips than in the first book, but that could be because the terminology was typically less technical and precise.
Overall a good book, but it doesn't reach the heights of the first.
Writing quality drops a little, too, compared to the first book. I heard the continued dangling participles and modifiers from the previous book, but there were also multiple situations where pronouns were overloaded and ambiguous, and the dense prose didn't always carry the same attention to detail. It's still very good, just not _as_ good.
Audiobook narration continues to be excellent. I noticed fewer slight pronunciation slips than in the first book, but that could be because the terminology was typically less technical and precise.
Overall a good book, but it doesn't reach the heights of the first.
March 1, 2019
Overall I enjoyed it, though not as much as the first book. There's a big tendency towards talking heads and speechifying among all the characters that sometimes feels very artificial. The action slumps a bit toward the middle, but picks back up by the end. It feels very much like the middle of a trilogy, going back to fill in the gaps of the first installment and setting up the action for the third. Still, I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next volume.
December 7, 2017
Really liked the idea of this book better than the execution. Both it and the previous book in the series touch on relevant issues (AR, late stage capitalism, internet addiction) but the plot and writing felt really laborious. After a bit I totally stopped caring about the characters and struggled to finish. Main reason I stuck with it was because doing so pushed me over my year end goal.
May 24, 2022
Excellent worldbuilding, but sadly bogged down by page after page of descriptions and flashback after flashback that leaves you somewhat confused of where you are in the story. Still enjoying the world though, Amon as a protagonist is becoming more likeable and I am interested to see where the final book will take it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews