Frequently Asked Questions

The novels are set across the territories of British North Borneo, Sarawak, and the wider Malay Archipelago in the early years of the twentieth century. The second book is set primarily along the rivers and rainforests of Borneo, in the trading ports of the South China Sea coast, and in the drawing rooms and verandas of the colonial world. Future novels will move through Singapore, Penang, and the Straits Settlements — a world connected by steamship, telegraph, and the vast commercial ambitions of the late British Empire.

Firstly, Jasper spent 17 years living on Borneo and grew to love and admire the location and its history.

Secondaly (and more importantly) because it is extraordinary and almost entirely absent from historical fiction. The Malay Archipelago in 1912 was one of the most remarkable places on earth. It was a crossroads of Chinese, Malay, Iban, Dayak, Indian, and European cultures, sitting at the intersection of ancient trade routes and modern colonial ambition.

Jasper lived in Sarawak. He knows this world firsthand and wants to share this with his readers.

It was the last golden age before everything changed. By 1914 the world that had produced the Edwardian era; its certainties, its elegance, its particular quality of life was gone. But in 1912 it was still very much present, and in Borneo it existed alongside something far older and far more profound. That collision of worlds is at the heart of everything I write.

At the centre of the series are three people who become, against all the expectations of their time, a family. Samuel Whitmore is a former soldier and intelligence agent, a man carrying the weight of a military past and learning what it means to be at peace. Julian Pembroke is a disinherited English gentleman who has chosen a new life far from the society that rejected him. And Ravi is a young Anglo-Indian boy they find alone in Aden, whose journey from abandonment to belonging is one of the emotional cores of the series.

In one sense yes and no.

No: In my eyes, this is one long story over many books.

Yes. The Kenyalang and The Heart of Borneo are the first two novels in the series, which follows Samuel, Julian, and Ravi across Southeast Asia as the colonial world around them begins its slow unravelling. A third novel, The Chartered Men, is in development, moving the story into Singapore and Penang.

Each book works as a standalone novel but rewards reading in sequence.

longside the main series, Jasper Brooke is writing a series of shorter companion pieces; novellas that explore individual characters in greater depth than the novels alone allow.

The first, Meena's Son, tells Ravi's story: where he came from, what he survived, and why the family that found him changed everything.

The second tells the story of Dr Evelyn Blackwood and the third shows how Julian and Samuel met.

Jasper will add more novella’s in the future.

Rigorously so, within the conventions of fiction. The political landscape, the colonial administrative structures, the cultural practices of the Iban and Dayak peoples, the economics of the rubber boom, the role of the Brooke dynasty in Sarawak; all of these are grounded in genuine historical research.

The characters are fictional but the world they inhabit is real, rendered with the care it deserves.

Not at all.

Part of the pleasure of the books is discovering this world alongside the characters. Everything the reader needs is in the story. Prior knowledge enriches the experience but is never required.

Through the contact page at jasperbrooke.com or directly at jasper@jasperbrooke.com.

All correspondance is welcome and answered personally.

To be completed once publication details are confirmed.