Announcing the Launch of Jungle Gyre
Posted on 23. Sep, 2026 by Paul Sochaczewski in Books, Jungle Gyre
Celebrating World Nature Conservation Day — July 28
Geneva, Switzerland. July 2026
Announcing the Launch of Jungle Gyre
An Angry Borneo Princess, Eco-Revenge, and Jungle Justice
Publishing details
Publication: July 28, 2026
ISBN: Softcover: 978-2-940573-45-5
ISBN: eBook: 978-2-940573-46-2
Prices:
Paperback: $16.95
eBook: $4.99
Note: The book is also available on order from independent booksellers
Description
How Far Would You Go To Save Your Homeland, Your Family, Your Pride?
Princess Tara, from the Hindu-Buddhist-Dayak kingdom of Mahamaya in Borneo, has been dubbed “the most boring royal on Earth.” Her gang of well-intentioned Gaia Gals shuns the red carpet and engages in a Sisyphean “good girl” fight to stop the forces of Big Politics, big Business, and Big Greed that destroy the world’s rainforests. But when Tara’s family’s blood is spilt, she realizes the formal legal system will never give her, or the forests, justice. She chooses the murky world of international espionage, cyberwarfare, eco-terrorism, and raw street justice to protect her crown, her people, her homeland, and her dignity. A toxic cocktail of misplaced ethics and revenge? Or a justified counterattack against the forces of evil? How far would you go when the monsters with the chainsaws approach?
Contents
Author’s Note
Combatants In The Rainforest War
Prologue: The Hornbill’s Warning
Part 1: Mosquito On An Elephant
PART II: “They Want Video?”
Part III: A Baby For The Kingdom
Part IV: Be Careful Where You Squat
Part V: A Wife’s Warning, A Mother’s Pain, Another Choice
Part VI: This Time It’s Personal
Part VII: “I’ve Got To Do It Myself”
Part VIII: More Enlightened, More Confused
Part Ix: Blathering, Bestial Bastards
Epilogue: Plus Ça Change
About The Author
Author’s Note
Stories set in exotic locations are, by tradition, expected to start like Star Wars — “In a Galaxy Far, Far Away.”
The Borneo-based characters in Jungle Gyre — heroes and villains from the Kingdom of Mahamaya and the Sultanate of Sarimantan — are fictional.
Nevertheless, the dynamics of this tale, the third in my Borneo Trilogy, are real. (No, I won’t overwhelm you with statistics; ask Google if you want to know deforestation rates, value of palm oil exports, or biodiversity loss.) Please consider just one point: The antics, egos, and struggles of the novel’s characters reflect ongoing realities. The rainforests are being destroyed. People’s livelihoods, land ownership, and traditional cultural patterns are threatened, and the critters of the rainforest are running from the chainsaws — all due to the rampant abuse and arrogance of the swamp-dwelling denizens of Big Politics, Big Business, and Big Power. The story takes place in Borneo, but it could have been set almost anywhere on our vulnerable green-and-blue planet.
— Paul Spencer Sochaczewski, Geneva, Switzerland, July 2026
Prologue: The Hornbill’s Warning
OTAK PUSING NATIONAL PARK, Sultanate of Sarimantan
The warning came first from the hornbills. Only one woman sensed the trouble approaching.
It was dawn in the rainforest in Sarimantan. Méri Peng had found a natural clearing made when a storm several weeks earlier had toppled two large tropical hardwood trees. She looked up when she heard the whoosh-whoosh freight train sound of a flock of wreathed hornbills. But instead of flying in convoy from one distant fig tree to another, they just hovered above the treetops, gracefully swirling in a gyre.
Méri no longer lived in the rainforest. To her family, she was a mother, a wife, a member of the community. To the government officials in Sarimantan’s capital, Pungli Jaya, she was a “resettled, newly civilized Penan.” She lived in a ramshackle village of wooden huts with tin roofs that leaked in the rain and created oven-like temperatures during the dry season. She was in the forest collecting herbs to treat her nephew’s diarrhea and fever. She realized it would probably be better to send the boy to the regional hospital, but it was far away, they would have to rent a motorcycle, and they would be treated with disdain on arrival. Better to try first with the leaves and roots and flowers of the forest.
She stopped to rest and eat some dried deer jerky. She sat quietly, thinking about the hornbills she had just seen.
From the distance, she heard a faint, almost inaudible, unnatural sound.
Other creatures had heard it too.
Méri sat still and heard the tok-tok-tok warning cry of the maroon woodpecker. Turn back, she thought.
A painted bronzeback serpent dropped to the ground from a nearby tree, slithered past, aimlessly, coming from nowhere, going nowhere, slowly, sniffing danger or food with its tongue.
There was no breeze, but the leaves of a macaranga bush fluttered and dropped.
A troupe of long-tailed macaques shrieked, frightened by something. A clouded leopard, perhaps? The monkeys quickly disappeared from the area.
Méri gathered her rattan backpack filled with healing leaves, returned home and told her husband what she had heard.
“I heard it too. It’s a chainsaw,” Emang Moyong said with a scowl. “When Brother Bruno stayed with us, he warned this would happen.”
“A prophet,” their daughter said.
“No. Just a wise man who shared our sago.”
The next morning the couple heard the not-too-distant mechanical rumble of a bulldozer. Unlike the macaques, Méri Peng and her family couldn’t easily run away.
Praise for Jungle Gyre
I received many wonderful pre-publication reviews:
“A dark comic novel about the global environmental movement that is worthy of Evelyn Waugh, Jonathan Swift, or Philip Roth.”
— Matthew Stevenson, author, contributing editor, Harper’s Magazine
“Quietly defiant Princess Tara confronts a reality where ancient ecosystems are traded for fast profit. Jungle Gyre is more than a good story; it is a warning: Who will stand for the living Earth before it is too late?”
— Peter Kallang, chairman of SAVE Rivers, Sarawak, Malaysia
“A razor-sharp satire where ethos, justice, and the environment wrestle with destructive Big Power. Sochaczewski’s wit and compassion illuminate a world on the brink of environmental catastrophe; his language and his characters linger long after the last page. Masterful.”
— Edward Louis Gold, National Endowment of the Arts Playwriting Fellow, former Hollywood story editor
“Jungle Gyre’s ethical questions resonate with the events we see on the news every day. When is violence justified? The result feels as if George Orwell collaborated with Doctor Strangelove, Tom Wolfe, Graham Greene, and the Monkey Wrench Gang to save the world.”
— Daniel Warner, author of An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations
“Sochaczewski knows conservation, he knows the rainforest. He can see into the conflicted murky souls of well-intentioned conservationists, corrupt denizens of Big Power, and manipulative politicians. And, I suspect, he can spiritually channel the pain of an orangutan when it is murdered.”
— Lawrence Blair, psycho-anthropologist, author of Shadows of The Ring of Fire
“Funny, heart-warming, honest, cynical, grotesque, and totally engaging novel that speaks for abused and endangered people and nature worldwide.”
— David Spencer Hallmark, author of Plea for an International Civil Court of Human Rights, board member of International Commission of Jurists in Southeast Asia
“Books on ecological themes are usually pious and doom-laden. Jungle Gyre is different! Witty writing, a vivid cast of characters and more twists than a boa constrictor could dream of.”
— Nigel Barley, former curator for Southeast Asia, British Museum, author of Island of Demons
“Jungle Gyre is fiction, but the issues are true. Carry this book in your backpack as essential reading on your trek into the magical and troubled world of the rainforest.”
— Joe Yas, chairman of South Kalimantan (Indonesia) Guide Association, film producer specializing on Borneo, university lecturer in tourism
“Jungle Gyre captures the harsh realities of real-world conservation enhanced by a memorable sense of irony spiced with whiffs of durian.”
— F.E. “Jack” Putz, distinguished professor at University of Florida, author of Borneo Dammed: A Very Family Affair
“Paul Sochaczewski exposes uncomfortable truths about the pervasive influence of Big Power on the people and nature of Borneo. Jungle Gyre draws on his more than 50 years of deep personal experiences. I strongly recommend it to those concerned about the future of Borneo.”
— Agni Intu Boedhihartono, professor of Tropical Landscapes & Livelihoods, The University of British Columbia
* * *
And you might be interested in…
The first two books of the Borneo Trilogy:
Redheads
A Comic Eco-Thriller Set in Borneo
ISBN:
978-2-940573-18-9
EarthLove
Chronicles of the Rainforest War
ISBN:
978-2-940573-35-6