Mur Lafferty's Six Wakes is a science fiction novel set on an interstellar ship, a whodunnit novel about clones and implanted memories. The premise seems interesting and I've read (and listened to podcasts of) much of Lafferty's other work.
This book suffers from writing that seems like it is trying to be adapted to a movie or maybe a TV series. Descriptions are sort of basic and don't use the full expressivity of written language. (I know this is a niche complaint, I am a reader of Specific Tastes.) Every chapter ends with a dramatic cliffhanger. These cliffhangers are often resolved by suddenly revealing backstory that the audience (and other characters) could not possibly have known or guessed. I was most irritated by the reveals that critical plot points depended on societal norms and laws about cloning, since the existence and details of those laws would have precluded a lot of the earlier points of confusion and plot.
If what you want is a mystery puzzle set on an interstellar colonizing ship, I've been enjoying Derin Edala's Time to Orbit: Unknown (which you can read free online).
This post's theme word is aspersion (n), "a damaging accusation; slander." It's strange to me that I have read so many books upon which I cast aspersions.
No comments:
Post a Comment