I mean, the stakes when it came to the real clone wars, the jealousy, the hate, the religious nuttery, etc., was pretty horrible, especially when one side or the other can torture you to death over and over and bring you back with all your memories intact.

I personally thought this was almost on the level of a comedy and might have been pulled off very successfully as one. Claustrophobic, even, when we consider the kinds of crazy that these folks can come up with. Resurrection!īut instead of losing us on the immediate lack of consequences because our murdered peeps keep coming back, we're dealt a hand where whole personalities can be hacked as easily as memories, and these poor saps all have richly criminal lives before they were 'chosen' to be taking a long space-boat ride to another star. This is a SF closed-room murder mystery! Six characters, six viewpoints, and a truly cool SF twist of constant cloning and memory re-investment. It's fast and exciting, though, despite its apparent flaws. There are also a few too many convenient explanations and solutions for my tastes not quite living up to the promise of the mystery at the onset. The prose/dialogue is weak but this is the kind of book that it doesn’t matter after a few chapters because the clever plot sucks you in enough to stop noticing.

The puzzle is gradually pieced together while interspersed chapters explain the backgrounds of each of the passengers aboard the ship. The format of the book is cool: six clones wake up at once to find their murdered (or near-murdered) previous bodies floating in a spaceship with no memory of what has happened since they boarded 25 years ago. Regardless, it’s a fast-paced escapist pleasure ride and sometimes that’s just what the doctor ordered. Part of it wants to be fun and kooky and another part wants to be taken seriously. All of these elements are thrown in but there’s too much going on for Lafferty to flesh any of them out sufficiently. This is a fun popcorn thriller/mystery/generation ship/near future/philosophical debate… book. I never love all of the finalists in a given year, but I can usually respect and understand why certain books are voted for. I mean, it’s good, it’s entertaining, I just can’t imagine anyone putting it on their ballot as one of the five best books of the year? Not even just based on my preference, but that seems to be the consensus among my friends based on their ratings/reviews, even the ones who enjoyed it more than me. 4/1/18 - This was voted as a Hugo finalist.

Six wakes by mur lafferty