Jacob K Gallagher won the Black and Write Fellowship for his book The Doubles in 2023. That fellowship supports Aboriginal authors and has included recognition of some amazing novels including Claire G Coleman’s Terra Nullius and Nardi Simpson’s Song of the Crocodile. As with those books, The Doubles delivers a compelling story that is steeped in Aboriginal culture and history.
The Doubles is set in Australia but in a world that is in contact with Angels and in which magic exists. A frenetic opening introduces readers to Kring, an Envoy of the angelic host, who is tasked with bringing down ‘Trespassers’ – malevolent creatures that have managed to come into our dimension. Kring is soon dispatched to deal with a new case – two children have gone missing near Tamworth, only to be replaced by doubles which have quickly died, the childrens’ bodies are later found on a local mountain. Tamworth is a regional town in North-Eastern New South Wales, close to a smaller town called Gunnedah, which is where Kring was born (this is also where Gallagher himself comes from). Once Kring arrives she is paired with one of the local magic police, a man called Dries. There is plenty of distrust between Dries and Kring but the two have to work together to work out what is happening before more children are taken. In doing so they find there may be a connection between the deaths and local Kamilaroi history and culture.
Kring is a tough main character to like, but Gallagher makes her and her choices understandable. She is a servant of powers she does not fully understand and who make her do things that seem cruel to human understanding. Those who know she is an Envoy (many do not) fear her due to her status. As a result her relationship with Dries is fraught and often combative. But Kring is also open to learning, recognises her mistakes and pushes back a little against the strictures that her position put her in.
There is a lot of fantasy world building in the background of The Doubles and the book comes with lists of the ranks of Angels and the ranks of the local magic police. There are also different levels of ‘Trespasser’. These hierarchies and details have little impact on the story being told, but as Gallagher himself is clearly steeped in this background he does manage to give the sense that there is something much bigger at play. And both the resolution of the action and other mysteries hinted at through the story imply that Gallagher has more to explore in this world.
Gallagher has a great feel for the landscape of the Liverpool Plains, where the bulk of the action is set, and its flora and fauna (some of which become monstrous in one particularly intense action scene). Gallagher also takes readers into the local Aboriginal community and delivers a nuanced and lived-in feel to the character interactions. But he also writes great magical action scenes, drawing readers into what are often chaotic battles.
In a similar way to the way in which Coleman twisted common alien invasion tropes around in Terra Nullius, Gallagher takes some common fantasy tropes and explores them from a totally new perspective. The Doubles is an ambitious fantasy, sometimes biting off a little more than it can chew in terms of world building, but always fascinating and driven by a plot that will keep readers turning the pages.
The Doubles by Jacob K Gallagher
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