Six Wakes

The first several chapters were engrossing: a clever plot device, beautifully delineated characters and a crisp writing style. However, this book is nominally SF, and the author's absolute lack of understanding of any of the "science" in this work of fiction became more and more irritating. An interstellar vessel powered by sails? Which gather electricity? The slurs on the good names of physiology/medicine, computer science/A.I., and cognitive science were equally egregious. How hard would it have been to find a couple of scientifically literate readers to vet the "science"? My disappointment is the keener because this book could have been great...

Simply put, this is a solid, well-written novel that takes its' source tropes and spins them so hard they vomit beautiful prose onto the page. Lafferty has taken a considerable stretch from her urban fantasy roots to create an amazing setting with solid characterization and pitch perfect dialogue. This is a Kindle favorite of mine. However, with repeated readings, it's gunning for a spot on my bookshelf. I don't do plot summaries, so go get this book NOW and prepare to be amazed, entertained, and then frustrated waiting for Lafferty's next novel.

I usually read right before bed to make me sleepy and shut down my brain. This book didn't do it. I wanted to know what would happen next and kept reading... way too late. I loved the characters and the fact that I couldn't figure it out before I got to the end. A great concept with some interesting philosophical questions thrown in. Great!

I enjoyed Mur Lafferty's Shambling Guide books well enough. Six Wakes, by contrast, felt from beginning to end like a book I'd been waiting a long time to read. It scratched an itch I wasn't aware I had. The characters are all fascinating, Lafferty's vision of the future is appropriately pessimistic without slipping into dystopia, and the way the sci-fi blends with and enhances the murder mystery is mind-bending in all the right ways.

I heard of Mur Lafferty through her great work on Bookburners, which you should totally check out. When I heard that she was writing a sci-fi novel about clones, I preordered it right away. I was not disappointed. Lafferty weaves together the stories of each protagonist masterfully, doling out the twists and action at a perfect pace. I know the year is early, but this is an early contender for favorite thing I've read this year.

This book actually started off pretty cool, with an intriguing murder mystery on a space ship. However, by the end it just ends up becoming a big mess that wasn't as interesting as the premise. The writing is serviceable. It gets the job done, but is on the amateurish spectrum of good science fiction.

This book starts out with a bang, but slowly collapses until it implodes at the end with a ridiculous finale. It starts out with a terrific premise, and keeps it up fairly well, although the seams start to show about half way through. But to prove how a good premise can support a wobbly edifice, the story still moved along and I was willing to ignore the increasingly implausible events. Until the end. Boy, you know it's bad when you roll your eyes and snicker. Don't get me wrong - I appreciate how hard it is to pull a story like this off, and Lafferty is to be commended for the effort. But this really needs a better ending. And some work along the way. This could make a good movie, if Lafferty will fix these problems. I hope this happens.

Wonderful Science Fiction Mystery on a "generation starship" of sorts--continuing clones instead of generations. All six of members the crew have been murdered and wake with no memory of the last 25 years. Superb characters, intriguing mystery, great pace, fascinating concepts and unique moral questions.

Six clones wake up automatically on the death of their earlier incarnations -- and one (or more) of them is responsible for all those deaths. Who to trust? Is someone guilty if a previous incarnation committed murder? How do you move forward when *everyone* has a secret agenda and *no one* can trust anyone else? Six Wakes is not quite like anything else I've ever read, and I enjoyed the ride.

A locked-room murder mystery in space, with clunky characters, inconsistent technology, and an eventual meaningless resolution. The codicils that begin the book establish a fantastic premise, but the book never comes close to fulfilling this expectation.

This is a fantastic, suspenseful science fiction mystery novel that balances intrigue, excitement and the ethical challenges that emerge with technological advancements.

The premise behind this novel is fantastic. Essentially, the author designs a futuristic version of the traditional closed-room mystery by placing the story on an isolated ship in deep-space with a very small crew. This is such a refreshing take on the traditional mystery setup.

The novel starts out strong, with a gripping first chapter that is guaranteed to pull the reader into the mystery. The characters wake up without recent memories, placing the reader in the same ambiguous situation.

The story is told from multiple perspectives, shifting between the six crew members. These characters are all unique, diverse and fully developed people. It quickly becomes apparent that everyone has a murky past and plenty of secrets to hide. The chapters shift between the current timeline and flashbacks, slowly providing the reader with insight into the backstories of each character. All of the crew members are suffering from large gaps in their memories, which sets up a situation with six unreliable narrators. Essentially, the reader cannot trust any of the characters, because even the characters are uncertain of their own innocence. Along the course of the novel, the author slowly provides the pieces necessary to solve this intricately-plotted murder mystery.

The writing is strong, with clean, simple prose. I found the world building was understandable and easy to follow. Likewise, the technology was relatively straight-forward, including well-established future technology like food replicators and artificial intelligence. Other research discussed in the novel involved advancements in technology that already exists today.

I originally expected this to be only an entertaining science fiction thriller, so I was pleasantly surprised by the level of depth in this story. The author delves heavily into the ethical dilemmas surrounding technology such as cloning and DNA manipulation. Many of these moral issues are already applicable in our present day. It was fascinating to see how these technologies might be utilized and controlled in the future.

This is my first time reading Lafferty, but it certainly won't be my last. In this novel, she demonstrated the ability to write an immersive and engaging story with strong characters and narrative drive. I look forward to reading more from this talented author.

This is a cross-genre novel, which masterfully weaves together the best elements of science fiction, mystery and suspense. This would be an excellent novel to pick up for readers who normally read one of these genres and is interested in expanding their reading. I would recommend this novel to science fiction readers looking for an intelligent and suspenseful story. I would further recommend this book to fellow fans of mysteries and thrillers who are willing to venture out of their comfort zones and experience a futuristic version of a psychological suspense.

I requested an ARC from Orbit Books in exchange for an honest review.

The six-man clone crew of the space colonisation ship Dormier wake up to find their old bodies viciously murdered, their memories from the 24 years since they boarded the ship erased and the ship dangerously veering off course. And so kicks off a breathless race around the clock to discover what has happened and why. The crew have only one chance to unravel the mystery and one shot at uncovering the killer in their midst. With their clone vats and personality backups sabotaged, if they fail and die again, this time they will stay dead.

I read Six Wakes in the space of a couple of days, in as much time as I managed to snatch from other things, including sleep. The book is an engaging and relentless page-turner, with tight and intelligent dialogues, unexpected plot twists and a mystery that will make you hold your breath until the very end. All of the characters are provided with ample background stories that ultimately hold the key to solving the puzzle.

There is nothing that ground-breaking or original in Six Wakes—no astounding world-building, striking characterisation or innovative ideas. Well, the potential ethical aspects of cloning are discussed in great—and very realistic detail, but that is about it. This is simply a great story that is told in a very clever way. It is excellently paced, has engaging, even if not particularly sympathetic characters and succeeds in building up the tension to an utterly believable and satisfactory climax. Shortlisted for both Hugo and Nebula and undoubtedly one of the best sci fi books of 2017.

I wanted to like this book, but partway through I realized it wasn't very good. Besides being quite slow at times, the characters weren't believable, and the science was weak. Good SF hangs together: there were too many parts of this story that were just dumb.

I finished it just to be sure, but by the end, I didn't care who lived, died, or was good, evil, or indifferent. Some details below.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

So the food synthesizer can fake anything, including coffee, but not booze, so they were sent with a supply. A many-year supply. For no discernible reason, on a ship where folks shouldn't be drinking. Wait, what? OK, yeah, it said that things didn't taste quite right--yet it can synthesize living tissue. Sorry, no. Just no.

The hold contains several thousand bodies and enough supplies to start a planet, but Hiro finds a crate full of guns (conveniently stored with ammunition) in minutes.

"Smart" syringes, which only work in a registered user's hand. Not entirely dumb, but: if the doctor is injured, then what?

As others have noted, lots of current tech that hasn't been updated.

Reminded me of a TV show--and not a particularly good one. ST:TOS, for all its huge warts, was more coherent, I'm afraid.

Extremely cleverly plotted but so badly written, with the kind of exposition one thinks of as aimed at children but which is not found even in good children's books. What I mean is, present participles in place of action or dialogue, like so: "Maria sat down, explaining to Wolfgang what she had just seen." Oh my. And editing fails - between two pages a henchman turns into a henchwoman, at another point two characters are in a theater then a private room without ever standing up and going. The who-done-it aspect was fun, I wanted to know how it turned out, but the writing! Not sorry I read it but glad I borrowed it from the library rather than paying for it.

Review of “Six Wakes” by Mur Lafferty

What makes this book worth reading is its’ characters and the overall presentation is what makes it special. When Maria wakes up in her new clone body, she knows that something out of the ordinary has happened in her last life. The cloning chamber is full of dead bodies that are floating in zero gravity and the AI is unresponsive.

What’s different from normal is that she can’t remember what happened in the last twenty-five years that she has travelled in interstellar space. Her last memories are getting ready to board the ship and meeting her colleagues and crew. Of the five other crew, three have been butchered, one has been hanged, the Captain is barely alive (but has a new clone) and the AI has lost control of the ship.

So what we have here is a “locked room” scenario, set on a “generational” spaceship. Lafferty does a marvelous job of bringing the characters (all who are ex-convicts) past lives to the fore. What she doesn’t do is waste time explaining what has happened on the ship since launch. It all becomes unnecessary when we learn what “crimes” they committed to get them on the ship.

There is a lot of tension among the characters, and it is not apparent who the killer is, until very near the end, and that what makes the book so great. Highly recommended.

Zeb Kantrowitz [email protected] zworstblog.blogspot.com

SIX WAKES is a fun, twisty, intellectual, humorous, mysterious, socially conscious and mostly captivating sci-fi thriller, even if occasionally stumbles into the realm of confusion.

I enjoyed Mur Lafferty’s novel; she’s created a work which is difficult to put into a nice little box: it’s a murder mystery on a train, but at the same time it’s a socially conscious dystopian novel. It’s a grim whodunit with bodies and blood and murder and hanging and stabbings, but at the same time it’s silly and funny and occasionally almost slapsticky. It’s a little bit Hyperion, with characters revealing their pasts on their journey; it’s a little bit Murder on the Orient Express; it’s a little bit 2001; a Space Odyssey, as the computer here has a vital part, too… and I could go further, but the movie references would start to get pretty obscure.

While this work takes place inside a future that is replete with conundrums, I wouldn’t necessarily call it dystopian – at least, if our own present world is held for comparison. The thing is, almost every glance at the social future is accomplished through recollection...that is, their present day is almost 500 years in the future, but this “present” is on a spaceship...characters must reflect so that we view their society.

I enjoyed the looks back, and found the genetic meddling scenes to be thought-provoking. It’s uniquely disturbing to think of the human brain as this kind of a machine one can tamper with so But they displayed what I liked most and least about the book: while I found the concepts to be galvanizing, their presentation was occasionally choppy and chaotic. One scene would be 200 years back, then the next 100, and then 400. While in the long run it didn’t really matter—it all made sense in the end—it was tough going at times.

Even the present scenes were a little confusing as well: after a long episode of reflection, we jumped back to the “present” story, and these had their own difficulties and conflicts. Thank heavens there were only six main characters; even so, one of them – Paul – seemed to be superfluous. He spent a huge chunk of the book alone in his room or some other isolated spot. Even so, keeping track of the characters’ “current” stories AND their retrospectives could be a bit cumbersome to keep track of as the pages swam by. It

Where SIX WAKES was strongest was in the author’s decision to have a little fun with her tale: the interplay between the characters and the technology managed to convey dread as well as humor. There were occasional scenes that were full of raw savagery that the author coupled with dark comedy. For instance, there were several comedic uses of their food creator/processor, some mundane, and some...well, you’ll just have to read the book.

One thing I liked about the end was that it left room for a sequel, but a follow-up is by no means necessary. That’s refreshing in today’s extension-hungry literary world.

This is a sci-fi murder mystery. It has strengths and weaknesses - unfortunately, more of the latter. The basic premise (that on an important, historic space mission, the captain and crew would be comprised of serious ex-criminals because they are cheaper) is silly beyond belief. The writing is somewhat clumsy. The characters are exaggerated and uninteresting. And the action-packed climax and denouement is unconvincing. The clones and mindmap idea is not original, and even tying this up in a murder mystery isn’t new; eg., Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, published in 2002.

And there are “science” errors. One major one is that the ship is a cylinder that rotates around its axis to generate gravity, but the book has this rotation produced by a “grav drive”, and when this is turned off, the rotation slows quickly, and gravity is lost (which is important in the plot), though not immediately because it would “continue to spin for some time on inertia". Of course, a rotating cylinder in space doesn’t require a drive to keep it rotating; it will rotate indefinitely precisely because of its angular momentum. I found it quite disheartening that a “sci-fi” book would make such a basic error, and it is not the only one in this book.

So what is positive about the book? Well, it a pleasant, inoffensive read. It has a strong female lead (Maria). I guess it is engaging. A lot of people obviously liked it; it was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, which is why I read it- though I am thinking now that being nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards is not a good criteria for choosing a book.

Ahoy there me mateys! So me crew has been recommending this one. It is a sci-fi with murder mystery and philosophical bents. Six crew members run a generation ship that is supposed to take a 400 year journey to a new planet. All six of them have criminal backgrounds and if they run this mission successfully then all of them get clean slates on the new planet. How are they supposed to live that long? Well, they are clones of course! Everyone else on board is in stasis.

The hitch is that all six crew members wake up in new bodies at the same time only to find their own dead bodies floating around them. And they have lost at least 25 years of memories. They seem to have been rebooted with copies that only contain the memories of up to when they first entered the ship. The evidence, of course, points to murder but which one of them did it?

So this book is 361 pages. I adored it up until page 268 and then the momentum went down from there. This is not to say I didn’t like the book. I thought the plot was suspenseful, the characters were fun, the legal and philosophical debate around clones was fascinating, the technology was cool, and most of the murder solving was great. There were flashback scenes that enhanced both the characterizations and the mystery. I just didn’t love the climax and the ending. I knew overall why the crew was placed there but didn’t really guess any of the details. And the details were a mixed bag. I would say I liked this book very much but overall it left me strangely unsatisfied.

I am however in the minority and most readers seem to have adored it. So don’t just take me word for it . . .

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

----Voltaire

Mur Lafferty, an American author, has penned an intriguing science fiction thriller called, Six Wakes that centers around a spaceship carrying six crew members, where each one wakes up as a clone with no memory or record of what happened or who killed them, but only with the memory of dying. And as their bloody bodies floated around the space ship under zero gravity and with the ship's controlling AI being offline, the six crew members are pretty sure that someone amongst them must have killed them, but why? Set in the 25th century, this story is going to thrill the readers in a subtle manner.

Synopsis:

A space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer -- before they kill again.

It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.

At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.
Maria's vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn't the only one to die recently.

Maria Arena is the first to wake up inside her cloning vat, only to be greeted by the sight of dead bodies, blood and everything floating around in zero gravity in the generation starship called, Dormire, carrying a cargo of six individuals to the planet of Artemis, with no memory of how she died or what happened since she and the others boarded the spaceship, only with the memories of her long time ago past. Eventually, one-by-one and after a long wait of their previous bodies' permanent death, Captain Katrina de la Cruz, pilot Akihiro Sato, security chief Wolfgang, engineer Paul Seurat, and Dr. Joanna Glass woke up to find themselves surrounded by the death and zero gravity and also with their ship's controlling artificial intelligence, IAN, being offline. Hence they have no idea how they all died or why or who killed, even though it is very obvious that the killer is in that ship and someone from the six passengers. And with no memory backup, the lives of the six individuals are doomed, so they must hurry and figure out the gory mystery behind their murders.

Although, I'm not much big of a fan of science fiction books, yet this book allured me, for being a thriller, (I'm a die hard thriller fan, be it of whatever or any kind) and also for the concept of cloning, which is my favorite sci-fi topic to explore. And Lafferty’s book not only covers both the things aptly but also intrigues all through out. (PS: For a seasoned crime fiction reader, it will be easy enough to predict the whodunit!) The author has explored and has introduced her readers with a world that allows multiple cloning until immortality but with lots of terms and conditions and strict laws, so that no one abuses the option of cloning.

The world building with the prospect of cloning and future advanced technology to preserve mankind is strikingly explained and depicted by the author into the story line. Although not believable, but somehow, the author has managed to make her readers find the honesty and logic behind such a superficial universe. A world where mankind can be exploited both with cloning and with corruption. Yes it was thrilling for me to experience such a make-believe future world.

The writing is strong and articulate and is laced with enough tension that will grip its readers and will keep them engaged till the very end. The narrative is not that engaging enough to peak the readers' interests, but with a fast pace and with zero technical jargon filled with lots of unforeseeable twists and turns, the plot will only become more and more intense. The mystery is tightly wrapped under layers and dimensions of backstories and twists and the edgy suspense is bound to make the readers anticipate till the very last page.

The characters are not only well developed but are also multi dimensional, which only makes them real and relatable in the eyes of the readers. There is a huge twist about the characters' real identity, and although some of the reviewers have shamelessly mentioned that, yet I would refrain myself from repeating it. And its the key thing that will compel the minds' of the readers with fear and tension. All the characters will intrigue in their own way and with their fatal psychological flaws, they will coil around the minds of the readers like a snake. The characters are the "cherry-on-the-top" of this book, they steal the complete show.

In a nutshell, this book is thoroughly engrossing and extremely captivating enough to keep the readers turning the pages of this book frantically.

I’ve always loved science fiction mysteries, and Six Wakes did not disappoint.

Maria Arena is a clone. Whenever she dies, she wakes up in a new body with memories from whenever she last downloaded them. But now Maria has awaken in a new body where her old one is still floating dead — the entire six person crew of the spaceship Dormire are clones, and all of them have woken up with no memories of the last twenty years after they’ve apparently been murdered. Not only that, but the cloning machine is broken. If the killer strikes again, there will be no more second chances.

Going into Six Wakes, all I knew was that it was a locked room mystery in space with clones. Basically, a sci-fi version of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. And that turned out to be true! But Six Wakes also had the inventive idea of the cloning itself and a glorious tangle of character backstories and motives.

The entire crew of the Dormire is criminals who agreed to spend hundreds of years running a colonization ship in exchange for having their records wiped clean upon arrival. Their records are sealed, and none of the crew is supposed to know what crimes lead to their fellow crew mates serving alongside them. Obviously, the mysteries of the character backstories and the mystery of the murders are not entirely unrelated. Six Wakes is a brilliantly plotted story with plenty of twists and turns. I devoured it in short order.

While Maria Arena is the viewpoint character for the first chapter, Six Wakes delves into the viewpoints of each of the six crew members. The story also contains flashbacks revealing the past lives of the crew. This could have taken away from the story and thrown off the pace, but I never felt like skipping over any of these sections to get back to the current timeline.

As for the cloning technology itself, how imaginative! Between technology capable of printing a fully grown human body and mind mapping tech that can save and imprint a memories and personality, clones are practically immortal. Yet not all humans have chosen to become clones, and much enmity exists between the two groups. Long before the start of the story, a peace accord laid out laws to regulate cloning, making any modification of DNA or personality illegal. Yet criminal hackers are still willing to change a person’s mind or DNA for the right price.

Six Wakes is a great story, one I had a lot of fun with. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

Being open and honest in this review I listened to Six Wakes on audiobook as opposed to reading it in the traditional sense. Why does that matter you might ask? Well, honestly it doesn’t matter, except it allows me to say that not only is Mur Lafferty a great writer, but she is an absolutely fantastic narrator too.

And thus ends the audiobook portion of the review.

As for the book itself, I thoroughly enjoyed Wake Six. Lafferty has crafted a compelling and suspenseful “who done it” thriller in space. But unlike most “who done it” thrillers Lafferty has created a set of circumstances that makes it so that not even the killer knows that they killed the rest of the crew. Yes, you heard me correctly, NOT EVEN THE KILLER KNOWS! How can that be you might ask? In Wake Six the six narrators/crew members are all clones, but something has gone wrong and not only do they all wake up to their mutilated and poisoned bodies floating around them, but their memories were destroyed for the decades that they were in space, leaving them instead with their last known memories being the day before they left on their voyage. That doesn’t do it for you yet? Well not only does Lafferty perfectly time the suspense, jumping between narrators to keep the reader guessing, but she also sprinkles in each of the crew’s past memories, coloring in the world around Six Wakes as well as the motivations and personalities of each of the characters.

All in all, Six Wakes is a gripping suspense filled voyage, crafted in such a way that even at the end, readers will be left guessing, and while I don’t anticipate a sequel I certainly wouldn’t turn it down. Another great book by Mur Lafferty.

Rating: 4.5 stars

This book. /This book/

One of the best books I've read in a while. My mind = blown.

Overall, two things really stood out to me in SIX WAKES: the intricacies of the character back stories (and how they were revealed to the readers) and the amazing plot.

NO SPOILERS but let's just say these two factors (plot + character's history) are woven very tightly together and presented beautifully. And so. many. plot twists. GOOD plot twists that had me gaping.

'Nuff said. Go read this book if you like:

-mystery
-murder
-sympathetic characters (some characters may be a bit unlikable at first, but the more you learn about them, the more you'll start to care and empathize with them)
-richly developed characters
-a twisty plot
-a slow but steady burn pacing*
-SPACE

*the book opens with a fairly quick pace then slows down considerably, but I was never bored since new information is constantly being revealed, and small details in seemingly (short) mundane scenes will later become important. Lots of breadcrumbs and threads throughout this story that will all tie together eventually

I loved Six Wakes, enought that I'm still thinking about it now several months after I last reread it. Mur Lafferty sets up a brilliantly plausible near(ish) future in which cloning has become an accepted technology, one that's especially useful to anyone who wants to transit the stupifyingly long distances involved in space travel.

Normally stories involving cloning or resurrection of any kind lack good narrative tension, but right away we find out that there are more than a few problems with the cloning system aboard the spaceship the Six Crew members are on.

Oh yeah, and there's been a murder.

What follows is a locked room (ship) mystery in which the six characters have to figure who's doing the killing and why. On the face of it this would have been a great light novel to read over a few days, but there's a lot more happening in Six Wakes than first appears. It helps that the author has a knack for great dialogue and building character relationships that seem organic.

So, if you're up for a really cool sci fi/adventure/mystery with hidden depths...or if you've ever wanted to clone bacon in space, then I can't recommend Six Wakes enough.

A closed door murder mystery set in space but none of the people involved have any memory of the events because they are newly awakened clones.

I loved the two Mur Lafferty's previous books that I read Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans. Both were urban fantasy novels involving werewolves, zombies, and other paranormal creatures. This book is quite different. This is true science fiction. However, it still involves quite a bit of Lafferty's signature humor.

It begins with a group of clones waking up in what looks like a murder scene. Their previous bodies are floating with blood, vomit, and various other things in the room. From there we see the current happenings as well as the lives of the 6 crew members that got them to this point except for their lives on the ship.

The characters are extremely well written. Their motivations make sense in context. The settings feel realistic. The pacing is perfect.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book

A very interesting locked-room mystery, with six clones waking on a spaceship to discover that their previous selves had all killed each other. It's a fun idea, and there's a lot of intriguing convolutions along the way to discovering why everything happened; it's not the top of my list for the 2018 Hugos, but I can definitely see why it was included. I'm kind of interested in what sort of world they'd use their generation-ship to build now that everything's (sort of) straightened out, but that'd be a completely different sort of novel, if such a sequel ever happens. As it is, it's a quick fun read, especially for anyone who likes the idea of the complications of cloning.

One of the more interesting and unusual standalone sci-fi books I've read in the last few years!

The cloned crew of an Earth colony ship wake to find they've all been recently murdered - and the suspect is one of them. Over the course of the novel, we learn more about the six individuals, their beliefs, backgrounds and reasons for being on the colony ship. It's suspenseful and thoughtful and a little convoluted as the scenes vary in time and place. Mostly I thought it worked well; both the ideas and the individuals were interesting and almost all of the crew could be the killer. Including the ship's AI.

I was, slightly, letdown by the ending. Mostly because it was a little abrupt and a bit tidy. However, I'd read this work again because I enjoyed the unfolding of the story. Athough the story's a mystery whodunit, I think it'd still be a fun read.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK Mur Lafferty has a winner here and it would make a hell of movie too. I'm thrilled that a futurist is asking these questions: does a clone have a soul? What if a clone leaves their inheritance to themselves? Should they be allowed to father/mother children? When they die, should they be recycled and disposed of without ceremony because they'll just clone again? Are they human and will "real" humans discriminate against them and be clone wars? What makes us what we are, environment, genes, experience? The topic is timely given the fact that cloning animals is common now and with organs grown in vats and animals, what is the right thing to do. Lafferty asked some very important questions that we all should give more thought to given we are already cloning many things. I don't care about the writing style, or even the ending, I just want to read more by him

This book is essentially a whodunnit murder mystery in space. Before we get to the meat of this review, there needs to be a little prefacing. In the future, cloning is used to create longevity of life, a type of immortality you could say. You are only allowed one clone at a time. When your clone dies, you have on backup a brain scan called a "mindmap" that essentially has your personality, memories, and DNA encoded. This mindmap is uploaded to your new clone body when your previous clone dies. This story is about a six member cloned crew who are on a 400 year mission to arrive at a habitable planet where they will begin life anew. On their space ship is a payload of thousands of human beings/clones in cryo tanks.

The story starts off with a bang as in the beginning, we find our characters waking up in their freshly cloned bodies to witness a graphic scene. They are horrified to see that their previous (murdered) bodies are floating above them in zero gravity. The six member crew has no idea what has happened in the past 25 years of their mission as they have had their memories of the journey wiped.

What is so fascinating and refreshing about this book is that due to the crew's lack of memory, the murderer does not even KNOW that they are the one responsible for the killing their shipmates. Due to switching points of view, we are able to see into the minds of all the crew members. We begin to get to know them and make assumptions about them that are completely shattered later due to new revelations of information about their previous lives. The crew's moral compass is also very grey. There are no good guys or bad guys here. Everyone had motive to murder the crew or had done something horrible in their previous lives: that was what made it so difficult to guess what the ending might be. Mur Lafferty did a fantastic job of staying one step ahead of the reader and propelling the plot forwards. I can truly say that I was never bored and could hardly stop myself from trying to skip ahead and see what happened next.

This book also tackles some really interesting concepts in terms of technology and morality. For example, just because we have the ability to clone, is it morally acceptable? If you kill a clone who can simply regenerate, is it murder? Does a clone have a soul?

Lafferty also creates a believable future where this kind of experimentation seems possible if not imminent. We already have the technology to clone. Where will it go from here?

I really don't want to go into any further detail on what happens in the book as it would spoil the fun. All I can say is that this is the BEST book I have read so far in 2017. Read it! You will not be disappointed.

The starship Dormire is bound for the planet Artemis, a paradise virgin planet that will be colonised by the ship’s sleeping cargo of thousands of humans. Watched over by the AI, named IAN, the ship is crewed by three men and three women. Not quite human, the six are clones whose bodies can be rebooted at lifelong intervals during this long voyage through the stars. But something terrible has happened. All six awake at the same time, reborn in the cloning tanks, and around them in the zero gravity float the slaughtered, murdered corpses of their clone predecessors – themselves.

The six soon realise that years have passed and none of them has the memories of what has happened. But the ship is off course, the AI is disabled and the food printer produces only hemlock. There can be no doubt – one of the six is a murderer. But which? It could be any of them for not only are all six clones, they are all criminals and each has secrets to hide.

Six Wakes is a fantastic, brilliantly imagined and executed novel, combining science fiction with crime mystery and doing such a good job of both. We have a small group of suspects, confined together in a completely isolated environment, and every one of them has a motive. But it’s much more complicated than that because of the added clone dimension. Some of these people have lived for hundreds of years, witness to the struggle of clones to achieve legal status and all too aware of the ways in which clones have been abused and manipulated. Each of them has a story to tell and we hear them, interspersed throughout the novel, and this mix of past and present adds such depth and curiosity to the murder mystery at its heart.

The characters are great! Each has a distinct voice and they are so fascinating. We know that each is a criminal but this is much more subtle than that. There are reasons for what they’ve done. And this means that our sympathies are torn. Good and evil aren’t quite as simple in this world and in this extraordinary place.

The cloning aspect of the novel is compelling and clever. It mixes politics and ethics with something much more human and also much more devious. I love the way in which the stories from the past throw light on the present and it’s such a rounded world, even though we see most of it from within the claustrophobic confines of the Dormire, only escaping in the flashbacks to the past.

The mystery element is just as successful as the science fiction and we are caught throughout in twisty traps and surprises. I don’t think I guessed any of it. The atmosphere is sustained throughout and I loved its mood. There are characters here I won’t forget in a hurry. Six Wakes isn’t currently published in the UK but you can buy the import paperback (linked to at the head of the post). I really recommend it as this well-written novel is one of the most enjoyable science fiction and mystery tales I’ve read in quite a while.

Horror/mystery plot. Locked-room murder mystery, set on a spaceship.
The critical reviews point out that the science is weak, and I agree. This is not hard SF. BUT it does not attempt to be. It is about ethical and psychological complexities when human bodies, and human minds, become portable. People, with complex back stories and missing pieces of memory, don't fully understand themselves, and struggle to trust each other when it's clear that in the past they were betrayed.

This said, it's not as good as Richard Morgan's explorations of this theme. But Morgan (Altered Carbon) is writing military SF, which this is certainly not.

I loved Six Wakes, enought that I'm still thinking about it now several months after I last reread it. Mur Lafferty sets up a brilliantly plausible near(ish) future in which cloning has become an accepted technology, one that's especially useful to anyone who wants to transit the stupifyingly long distances involved in space travel.

Normally stories involving cloning or resurrection of any kind lack good narrative tension, but right away we find out that there are more than a few problems with the cloning system aboard the spaceship the Six Crew members are on.

Oh yeah, and there's been a murder.

What follows is a locked room (ship) mystery in which the six characters have to figure who's doing the killing and why. On the face of it this would have been a great light novel to read over a few days, but there's a lot more happening in Six Wakes than first appears. It helps that the author has a knack for great dialogue and building character relationships that seem organic.

So, if you're up for a really cool sci fi/adventure/mystery with hidden depths...or if you've ever wanted to clone bacon in space, then I can't recommend Six Wakes enough.

A closed door murder mystery set in space but none of the people involved have any memory of the events because they are newly awakened clones.

I loved the two Mur Lafferty's previous books that I read Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans. Both were urban fantasy novels involving werewolves, zombies, and other paranormal creatures. This book is quite different. This is true science fiction. However, it still involves quite a bit of Lafferty's signature humor.

It begins with a group of clones waking up in what looks like a murder scene. Their previous bodies are floating with blood, vomit, and various other things in the room. From there we see the current happenings as well as the lives of the 6 crew members that got them to this point except for their lives on the ship.

The characters are extremely well written. Their motivations make sense in context. The settings feel realistic. The pacing is perfect.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book

A very interesting locked-room mystery, with six clones waking on a spaceship to discover that their previous selves had all killed each other. It's a fun idea, and there's a lot of intriguing convolutions along the way to discovering why everything happened; it's not the top of my list for the 2018 Hugos, but I can definitely see why it was included. I'm kind of interested in what sort of world they'd use their generation-ship to build now that everything's (sort of) straightened out, but that'd be a completely different sort of novel, if such a sequel ever happens. As it is, it's a quick fun read, especially for anyone who likes the idea of the complications of cloning.

One of the more interesting and unusual standalone sci-fi books I've read in the last few years!

The cloned crew of an Earth colony ship wake to find they've all been recently murdered - and the suspect is one of them. Over the course of the novel, we learn more about the six individuals, their beliefs, backgrounds and reasons for being on the colony ship. It's suspenseful and thoughtful and a little convoluted as the scenes vary in time and place. Mostly I thought it worked well; both the ideas and the individuals were interesting and almost all of the crew could be the killer. Including the ship's AI.

I was, slightly, letdown by the ending. Mostly because it was a little abrupt and a bit tidy. However, I'd read this work again because I enjoyed the unfolding of the story. Athough the story's a mystery whodunit, I think it'd still be a fun read.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK Mur Lafferty has a winner here and it would make a hell of movie too. I'm thrilled that a futurist is asking these questions: does a clone have a soul? What if a clone leaves their inheritance to themselves? Should they be allowed to father/mother children? When they die, should they be recycled and disposed of without ceremony because they'll just clone again? Are they human and will "real" humans discriminate against them and be clone wars? What makes us what we are, environment, genes, experience? The topic is timely given the fact that cloning animals is common now and with organs grown in vats and animals, what is the right thing to do. Lafferty asked some very important questions that we all should give more thought to given we are already cloning many things. I don't care about the writing style, or even the ending, I just want to read more by him

This book is essentially a whodunnit murder mystery in space. Before we get to the meat of this review, there needs to be a little prefacing. In the future, cloning is used to create longevity of life, a type of immortality you could say. You are only allowed one clone at a time. When your clone dies, you have on backup a brain scan called a "mindmap" that essentially has your personality, memories, and DNA encoded. This mindmap is uploaded to your new clone body when your previous clone dies. This story is about a six member cloned crew who are on a 400 year mission to arrive at a habitable planet where they will begin life anew. On their space ship is a payload of thousands of human beings/clones in cryo tanks.

The story starts off with a bang as in the beginning, we find our characters waking up in their freshly cloned bodies to witness a graphic scene. They are horrified to see that their previous (murdered) bodies are floating above them in zero gravity. The six member crew has no idea what has happened in the past 25 years of their mission as they have had their memories of the journey wiped.

What is so fascinating and refreshing about this book is that due to the crew's lack of memory, the murderer does not even KNOW that they are the one responsible for the killing their shipmates. Due to switching points of view, we are able to see into the minds of all the crew members. We begin to get to know them and make assumptions about them that are completely shattered later due to new revelations of information about their previous lives. The crew's moral compass is also very grey. There are no good guys or bad guys here. Everyone had motive to murder the crew or had done something horrible in their previous lives: that was what made it so difficult to guess what the ending might be. Mur Lafferty did a fantastic job of staying one step ahead of the reader and propelling the plot forwards. I can truly say that I was never bored and could hardly stop myself from trying to skip ahead and see what happened next.

This book also tackles some really interesting concepts in terms of technology and morality. For example, just because we have the ability to clone, is it morally acceptable? If you kill a clone who can simply regenerate, is it murder? Does a clone have a soul?

Lafferty also creates a believable future where this kind of experimentation seems possible if not imminent. We already have the technology to clone. Where will it go from here?

I really don't want to go into any further detail on what happens in the book as it would spoil the fun. All I can say is that this is the BEST book I have read so far in 2017. Read it! You will not be disappointed.

The starship Dormire is bound for the planet Artemis, a paradise virgin planet that will be colonised by the ship’s sleeping cargo of thousands of humans. Watched over by the AI, named IAN, the ship is crewed by three men and three women. Not quite human, the six are clones whose bodies can be rebooted at lifelong intervals during this long voyage through the stars. But something terrible has happened. All six awake at the same time, reborn in the cloning tanks, and around them in the zero gravity float the slaughtered, murdered corpses of their clone predecessors – themselves.

The six soon realise that years have passed and none of them has the memories of what has happened. But the ship is off course, the AI is disabled and the food printer produces only hemlock. There can be no doubt – one of the six is a murderer. But which? It could be any of them for not only are all six clones, they are all criminals and each has secrets to hide.

Six Wakes is a fantastic, brilliantly imagined and executed novel, combining science fiction with crime mystery and doing such a good job of both. We have a small group of suspects, confined together in a completely isolated environment, and every one of them has a motive. But it’s much more complicated than that because of the added clone dimension. Some of these people have lived for hundreds of years, witness to the struggle of clones to achieve legal status and all too aware of the ways in which clones have been abused and manipulated. Each of them has a story to tell and we hear them, interspersed throughout the novel, and this mix of past and present adds such depth and curiosity to the murder mystery at its heart.

The characters are great! Each has a distinct voice and they are so fascinating. We know that each is a criminal but this is much more subtle than that. There are reasons for what they’ve done. And this means that our sympathies are torn. Good and evil aren’t quite as simple in this world and in this extraordinary place.

The cloning aspect of the novel is compelling and clever. It mixes politics and ethics with something much more human and also much more devious. I love the way in which the stories from the past throw light on the present and it’s such a rounded world, even though we see most of it from within the claustrophobic confines of the Dormire, only escaping in the flashbacks to the past.

The mystery element is just as successful as the science fiction and we are caught throughout in twisty traps and surprises. I don’t think I guessed any of it. The atmosphere is sustained throughout and I loved its mood. There are characters here I won’t forget in a hurry. Six Wakes isn’t currently published in the UK but you can buy the import paperback (linked to at the head of the post). I really recommend it as this well-written novel is one of the most enjoyable science fiction and mystery tales I’ve read in quite a while.

Horror/mystery plot. Locked-room murder mystery, set on a spaceship.
The critical reviews point out that the science is weak, and I agree. This is not hard SF. BUT it does not attempt to be. It is about ethical and psychological complexities when human bodies, and human minds, become portable. People, with complex back stories and missing pieces of memory, don't fully understand themselves, and struggle to trust each other when it's clear that in the past they were betrayed.

This said, it's not as good as Richard Morgan's explorations of this theme. But Morgan (Altered Carbon) is writing military SF, which this is certainly not.

A murder mystery. In space. With clones. What the heck more do you want???

The mystery presented isn't a new one -- but the way Mur presented it is a very fresh take. The characters were fully realized and their motivations, as you learn as the book progresses, are as real as they come -- If you've never read any of her books, this one is totally where you should start.

I've followed Mur for a few years and have always been impressed with her concepts -- this book is probably her most complex plot that I've read.

I did not want this book to end -- it was that gripping.

I just finished the audiobook, borrowed from my local library, and I loved it so much that I'm going to buy a copy for my teenage son. The novel raises so many interesting questions about the ethics of cloning and the meaning of being human, that I think it would be a great pick for a bookclub or classroom. There's a little light romance, but no sex that I can remember, and I chuckled a few times at the characters' dry humor. For anyone interested in the audiobook, it's narrated by the author in a tone similar to the narrations of many recent young adult novels. That is to say clear, but rather flat. All in all, I loved the book and am excited to read more things by this author.

A murder mystery in spaaaaace. With clones. And AI.

This is a super fun read, with deep character work, a solid plot, and plenty to keep you guessing.

Every character here is a victim (everyone was murdered and re-cloned), and no one has their memories. So literally everyone is the victim, everyone is the detective, and anyone could be the murderer.

It's definitely worth your time.

Great idea, good set-up, intriguing story told in a fast pace that keeps you turning the pages. Characters have interesting (albeit dark) pasts but lack development, and dialogues, as some reviewers have pointed out, are lackluster. After all the twists and turns (which are fun to read), solution of the mystery (and of the characters' predicament) comes too easily, leaving the book with little re-read value. Hence the 3 stars.

The six-person crew of a spaceship traveling to a distant world wake up in the cloning bay to find the murdered corpses of their previous incarnations. They have no memory of the 200 years since they boarded. A great premise for a mystery full of twists, turns, and revelations. Lafferty does a good job creating a world in which cloning is commonplace, making human life and death more meaningless and less valued, while setting up a solid mystery.

real page turner, had a hard time putting it down. This is a very well thought out presentation of what would happen when cloning became viable, a likely set of laws that would have to be put into place and the implications of doing them. The science presented seems like it is how things would really progress, not glossed over with "typing furiously for several minutes" hacking. Even though the subject matter is horrific in places, the text doesn't dwell on those aspects and this feels closer to suspense than horror.

This is stellar science-fiction. Most sci-fi is interested in showcasing the future. But Lafferty builds a compelling future reality so she can weave a masterful mystery. This is a locked-room murder mystery. WITH CLONES. IN SPACE! I was hooked, turning page after page until the very satisfying ending. I couldn't get enough!

Clones, 3D printed food, space travel to found a new planet ... and murder mystery. It's sci-fi but not your typical story line. Creative, compelling characters, well-written. I waited to borrow this book from the library for a while and it was worth it.