Grade B
Agatha Christie meets Alien in Mur Lafferty’s new sci-fi thriller “Six Wakes”, a claustrophobic, sometimes gripping, often mind-bending novel that could be also just as easily be called “Attack of the Clones”. There are no “Star Wars” references to be found, but there are a group of clones (and perhaps a human imposter…), all ex-cons, who have been charged to man a civilization-transporting spaceship to a distant planetary system hundreds of years from now. What could go wrong? Everything, to be precise. After the skeleton crew of clones wake to a gory bloodbath of bodies on the ship, their previous bodies, they are left to solve the mystery of just who murdered their previous clone selves as they unravel the connection that had brought all six of them together aboard the ship. Lafferty executes the narrative with assurance and bits of imaginative speculation about the future, but I just didn’t connect with the story and I found it rather tricky to navigate both the murder mystery and the science fiction. Hardcore sci-fi fans will probably devour this, though.
Six Wakes
The Bibliofool 