“Six Wakes”: The Space Opera Puzzle You Can’t Put Down The latest by Mur Lafferty appeals to fans of thrillers, mysteries and space operas

I can’t help myself… I’m a sucker for space opera (and westerns, which some might argue are the same story in different settings, but that’s a geek argument for another time). I’ve read my way a few books into a series even if the first one let me down in some way, hoping that the promise of the story I see lurking beneath will come to fruition.

In Six Wakes, there’s no waiting. The intrigue is in your face from those first moments, and the reader is left playing catch-up along with the crew without feeling entirely lost, and the ride is fun.

There’s no easy way to describe the story without giving away too much of the gleeful twists and trust me, you do not want to be spoiled with this story. Most of the time, I don’t care if I know spoilers going in or not, but in this case, I’m glad I didn’t know what was coming.

The best spoiler-free overview I can give is: what happens when you and your crew have been murdered, and when your clones are regenerated and awakened, each one of you is missing all recent memories… and no one knows who the murderer is or if they might strike again?

The story is a slow burn build, going through each character’s motivations, flaws and secrets, including flashbacks and the history of Earth as they’d left it for their journey years before. You get a feel for what these people were doing before their murders, and everyone is a suspect until things start speeding up and the ride starts again. Saying anything more than that would be irresponsible… you want to read this for yourself.

This story reminds me of a “Six Characters in Search of an Author” style of storytelling, with a bit of Midsomer Murders by way of Machiavelli as interpreted by Rod Serling added in; meaning if you enjoy intrigue and redemption along with your space opera, and you enjoy the kind of story twists that make you rush to reread the previous few pages to figure out when the author snuck that one clue past you, this is one book to add to your “must read” list for 2017.

Rating: 4.5 stars

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…

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Orbit (January 31, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316389684
ISBN-13: 978-0316389686