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Mur Lafferty

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Six Wakes Kindle Edition

by Mur Lafferty (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 3,103 ratings

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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In this Hugo nominated science fiction thriller by Mur Lafferty, a crew of clones awakens aboard a space ship to find they're being hunted-and any one of them could be the killer.

Maria Arena awakens in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood. She has no memory of how she died. This is new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.

Maria's vat is one of seven, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it can awaken. And Maria isn't the only one to die recently. . .

Unlock the bold new science fiction thriller that Corey Doctorow calls Mur's "breakout book".

Print length

402 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Orbit
Publication date

January 31, 2017
File size

904 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Six Wakes is [Mur Lafferty's] breakout book."―Cory Doctorow

"This is one of the cleverest and most exciting murder mysteries I have ever read. The confined space of the colony ship Dormire is filled with feisty and memorably strange characters who bounce off one another in ways that vary from the comic to the horrific. You like ideas in your science fiction? Lafferty does for clones what Asimov did for robots. Six Wakes will keep you turning pages right up to its startling climax. Mur Lafferty scores in this, her best book!"―James Patrick Kelly, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards

"Mysterious and tense . . . . I wish I wrote this book."―New York Times bestselling author Chuck Wendig

"A taut, nerve-tingling, interstellar murder mystery with a deeply human heart."―NPR

"An exquisitely crafted puzzle box that challenges our thoughts on what it means to be human - Six Wakes is a scifi murder mystery of light speed intensity."―p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler

"Lafferty keeps the reader guessing and throws in just enough twists and turns to keep us on the edge of our seat . . . . I loved this book and am excited to read what Lafftery has in store for us next."―Barnes & Noble Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog

"Lafferty delivers a tense nail-biter of a story fueled by memorable characters and thoughtful worldbuilding. This space-based locked-room murder mystery explores complex technological and moral issues in a way that's certain to earn it a spot on award ballots."―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Polished writing and a cast of characters who are emotionally on edge make this space adventure a compelling murder-mystery that takes its time revealing the details necessary for readers to rule out possible culprits. The suspense is kept at the forefront of this clever, politically charged tale."―RT Books Reviews

"Lafferty delivers the ultimate locked-room mystery combined with top-notch sf worldbuilding. The puzzle of who is responsible for the devastation on the ship keeps the pages turning."―Library Journal (starred review)

"This is a great book with so much going for it: clever structure, wonderful characters, and a fiendishly clever puzzle that you'll roll over in your mind for months after you close the covers."―BoingBoing

"AndThen There Were None meets Alien in this locked-room, SF-thriller, which grips you from the first scene in the frozen depths of space."―Mysterious Galaxy

"Six Wakes is engrossing and thoroughly satisfying, and Lafferty succeeds at both laying down a mystery and creating a stand-alone sci-fi novel."―Sword & Spaceships (Book Riot)

About the Author

Mur Lafferty is a writer, podcast producer, gamer, runner, and geek. She is the host of the podcast I Should Be Writing and the co-host of Ditch Diggers. She is the winner of the 2013 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She is addicted to computer games, Zombies, Run!, and Star Wars LEGO. She lives in Durham, NC with her husband and daughter.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01CDDAETS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit (January 31, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 31, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 904 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 402 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0316389684

Best Sellers Rank: #181,341 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #437 in Technothrillers (Kindle Store)
- #2,004 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,534 in Science Fiction Adventure

Customer Reviews:
4.2 3,103 ratings

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Mur Lafferty

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2018 Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Manly Wade Wellman Best Novel nominee (Six Wakes)

2018, 2017 Hugo Best Fancast nominee (Ditch Diggers)

2014, 2015 WINNER Manly Wade Wellman Award (The Shambling Guide to New York City & Ghost Train to New Orleans)

2013 WINNER Astounding (John W. Campbell) Award for Best New Writer

"...the doyenne of scifi podcasting." ~Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net

Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster from Durham, NC. She made her name with podcasting (I Should Be Writing, Ditch Diggers, and Escape Pod) and has written for magazines, roleplaying games, and audio and video podcasts.

She's the author of Station Eternity, The Ophelia Network, Solo: A Star Wars Story, I Should Be Writing, Six Wakes, The Shambling Guides, and part of the team that writes Bookburners.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

3,103 global ratings

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Neil Hepworth

Why is this book not getting more buzz!??!

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2017

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TL;DNR Review:
Go buy SIX WAKES now. Read it, enjoy, pass it to the person next to you. When you’re done reading it, you may thank me. (You’re welcome.)

Review:
SIX WAKES has all the elements of great science fiction: well explored moral and ethical dilemmas, fantastic but believable science, great setting, great characters, great plot, engaging writing. It will appeal to those who read very little science fiction, and to those who read tons of science fiction... So...WHY IS THIS BOOK NOT GETTING MORE BUZZ!??!

Highlights:
1. It’s like Murder, She Wrote - In SPAAACE! (Assuming, of course, that Jessica Fletcher is both a clone and a criminal -- and a bada$$!!) (Also with more swearing and slicing.)

2. I love Generation Ships. I just do. They’re one of my favorite scifi concepts and settings and Six Wakes nails it.

3. Lafferty creates engaging characters each with enough skeletons in his or her closet to keep the murder mystery murderously interesting.

4. The plot is tight, tense, and...um...well-plotted...yes it is.

5. Lafferty’s cloning concepts are fantastic enough to engage the imagination, but grounded enough that it all feels terribly plausible.

6. The morals and ethics surrounding cloning are well explored, and even when you feel like Lafferty is going to send a character into well-treaded territory, she usually doesn’t.

A Side Note:
One of my biggest complaints with current science fiction is that most scifi novels fall into one of two categories: either the ideas are awesome but the writing is overly complicated OR the writing is engaging but the ideas are shallow. SIX WAKES, thankfully (wonderfully), is the best of both worlds: engaging writing AND insightful ideas (AND a terrific plot to boot).

Lowlights?:
1. Um...it took me a while to buy into each character’s personality, I guess? But once it clicked into place, it worked well.

2. By the same token, I guess, it took a little while for me to separate the characters in my head. A Personae Dramatis presented at the front of the book would have been helpful.

3. The ending felt a touch like a Murder, She Wrote what with some of the pieces just “coming together.” But this is just a nitpick in an ending that is otherwise very satisfying.

In Summary:
SIX WAKES is excellent, intelligent science fiction that should appeal to anyone who likes science fiction, and if this book isn’t on the Best SciFi Novels Of 2017 come December, then there’s something seriously wrong with all y’all.

4 people found this helpful

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Joe Karpierz

both a Hugo and Nebula finalist for Best Novel in 2018 combines two genres - science fiction ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2018

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SIX WAKES, both a Hugo and Nebula finalist for Best Novel in 2018 combines two genres - science fiction and murder mystery - in an interesting tale in which almost all of the characters in the book are clones. So, what we have is a murder mystery in a space ship where clones are the only suspects (well, I suppose that's not exactly true, but we'll get to it). In a time honored tradition, it *must* be one of them because they are the only ones awake.

The setting is the star ship Dormire, which is carrying thousands of colonists from Earth to the planet Artemis in the Tau Ceti system. The crew is made up of six clones and an AI computer. One of the clones wakes up in a cloning vat (more on that in a bit as well) to find that her most recent self, as well as the rest of the recent selves of the crew, have been murdered. What also is evident is that everyone's memories of the trip so far have been wiped and the ship itself is slowly veering off course. To complete the mystery, the AI, IAN, is also malfunctioning. Whoever is responsible for the murder actually has the blood of six murders on their hands.

And thus we have the following problems: who committed the murders, why is IAN malfunctioning, why is the ship off course, and what is the motive behind all of this?

The novel starts out with the statement of the "International Law Regarding the Codicils to Govern the Existence of Clones". While essentially an infodump, and one to start off the novel rather than it appearing later on, the Codicils are important to the story and it's a good thing to have them right up front, as clones, cloning, and the ethics and morality of cloning are key elements in the story. Lafferty has done a nice bit of world building with these Codicils. It's not just the Codicils themselves, but how they came about that fits into the story.

It really is somewhat difficult to talk about a murder mystery without giving much away. The interesting thing about all clone crew members is that they are former criminals, and have been given their positions on the ship as a way of atoning for their crimes and, at the end of the journey, will get a fresh start on Artemis. The novel interweaves the present dilemma that the clones are attempting to solve with flashbacks for each character - sometimes multiple flashbacks - which gives the foundation for each character's behavior as well as providing clues as to What The Heck Is Going On and Why. We learn about each character's crime, what their motivations are, and how they got to be on the crew of the Dormire. Pile on top of that the fact that everyone is a clone - and that there are rules governing a clone's existence (which comes into play with one of the clones) - and you have quite the engaging and entertaining story.

I liked SIX WAKES, of that there is no doubt. It's a fast paced and complex murder mystery, made all the more interesting by the fact that not one of the characters on the ship is a standard human. Even IAN, the AI running the ship, has a very interesting story and background that plays an integral part of the story.

However...I'm not on the bandwagon that says this is an award-worthy book. I've said a lot of nice things about it over the course of the last few paragraphs, but it didn't strike that resonance with me that wants to give it an award. I've written many times of the last several years how I measure Hugo-worthiness, so I won't get into that here. I wouldn't mind if it won the Hugo - or Nebula, but as I write this it didn't win that award - it's just not what I'd put at the top (or near the top)
of my list.

There are a ton of science fiction murder mysteries that have been written over the decades, and this will go down as one of the better ones and one of the more inventive ones. I do recommend it.

29 people found this helpful

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Manda Scott

Brilliant, intriguing exploration of the morals of cloning

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2024

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…and spaceships. This is a really clever take on the closed room mystery, where death doesn’t (might not) always mean death and memories are not always reliable. Where revenge is a dish best served frozen and a long, long way from home. Brilliant… I loved it.

Perceptive Reader

One-time good read.

Reviewed in India on January 14, 2024

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A bunch of clones wake up to find that most of their previous iterations had been murdered, with one committing suicide. Trouble is, this is happening in space. Yes, space— where nobody can hear you scream, and also where nobody can simply walk in and kill.
The killer is there among them!
It’s an interesting premise. Unfortunately, with every character turning out to be rather obviously unlikeable, with everyone acting as unreliable narrators, the book became a slog.
And the ending was so ludicrous that I seriously felt like leaving the plot of a murder mystery and entering one of those 'travel guides for zombies' that the author had written.
It was a good one-time read. That's all.

Rodrigo Menendez Arzac

Novela sobre clonación

Reviewed in Mexico on May 22, 2019

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Muy recomendable novela de ciencia ficción que trata sobre los dilemas éticos de la clonación así como sus ventajas y sus alcances futuros. Este tema se desarrolla dentro de un escenario digno de una buena novela policiaca, pues se trata de un crimen cometido en una nave espacial en viaje a colonizar un nuevo planeta.

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Franco Giambalvo

Non un "giallo," ma nemmeno opera spaziale.

Reviewed in Italy on July 30, 2018

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l'inizio del romanzo sembrerebbe ipotizzare una specie di "poliziesco" spaziale: su una astronave piena di esseri umani congelati e diretta verso una stella non troppo lontana, si è deciso di utilizzare un equipaggio di sei "cloni." Si tratta di persone che ad ogni morte possono essere sostituite da un loro clone, in cui viene riversata tutta la memoria fino al momento del decesso. I cloni dovrebbero restare alla guida per tutti i 400 anni necessari a raggiungere la stella. Invece, all'inizio del romanzo, i sei cloni si scoprono tutti morti e tutti in rinascita nella vasca di scambio: chi li ha uccisi tutti? Uno dei sei, di sicuro, Ma perché?
Lo sviluppo non è altrettanto entusiasmante: a parte la soluzione del mistero che appare piuttosto arzigogolata e deludente, il romanzo si trasforma in una serie di racconti in cui vengono spiegate le vite dei sei cloni. Il tutto si svolge in un ambiente piuttosto asettico e limitato: della grande nave spaziale si ha soltanto un misero bagliore. Durante la descrizione delle sei “vite” il loro mondo e l’Universo futuristico in cui sono vissuti ha pochissimo rilievo. E tutto ruota attorno ai sei cloni.
Interessante proposta, ma a mio avviso non svolta al meglio.

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Cliente Amazon

A must-read for fans of sci-fi and/or mysteries!

Reviewed in Spain on September 8, 2017

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In Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty veers away from her previous work in both genre and tone, and does so to remarkable success (not to rob her past books of their rightful praise).

The story’s premise and high stakes immediately suck you in. Tiny details of the intricately built world and its colourful cast are dispersed gradually as the plot unravels through the most effective use of flashbacks I’ve ever seen. There wasn’t a character I didn’t feel invested in by the end, and I often found myself going back to reread these flashbacks to get a better understanding of them and how each of their timelines were connected. Just thinking about all the thought and planning that must have gone into developing this detailed world and its extensive history makes me want to lie down!

 I can’t help thinking about how this story would sing on the big screen, and I hope someday we are treated to a feature film based on Six Wakes. In the mean time, I can’t wait to see where Lafferty takes us next.

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