At first glance, this book seemed almost custom built for me. A locked-house mystery in space with mind maps and clones? I'm in!
Alas, by the middle of this book, I found myself staring longingly at my to-read stack, which contained renowned authors such as Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton. Lafferty came across like a gamer kid who reads too much fan-fiction. Her writing was passable at best, and at worst, I was seriously questioning her ability to even construct sentences properly.
I did like the opening chapter, which hooked me right from the start. I tried to ignore the clunky prose and focus on the mystery, but the characterization was poor and really, the sci-fi seemed almost arbitrary at times. I've read too much Vinge, Meiville, and Hamilton for the light sci-fi concepts on display here to hold my interest. By mid-book, I was forcing myself to continue. I have never had a a DNF shelf, but I am thinking that at my age, perhaps I need to start one. This is reinforced by the fact that as soon as I finished
Six Wakes, I read a book that might end up going into my Top 10 favorite sci-fi novels of all time. This book also featured clones, and also contained a mystery, but it wasn't billed as such, so the mystery ended up being an added bonus instead of a letdown.
Another difference here was that instead of a glorified game of Clue in Space, I was reading about 6 million year-old clones that use a combination of chemicals and tech to slow their metabolism for centuries at a time as they traveled vast distances, visiting massive machine intelligences, entire solar systems enclosed in Dyson spheres, and races of people that had harnessed the energy of black holes, all the while attempting to figure out who was attempting to exterminate their entire clone line in an attempt to exact revenge for reasons unknown. I went from forcing myself through chapters of Six Wakes to sneaking in reading time whenever I could.
The worst part? I had considered both books for the club, opting for
Six Wakes because it was a bit shorter than
House of Suns. Allow me to apologize, because
House of Suns was fantastic, and I highly recommend it to anyone that likes good sci-fi.
Anyway, yea...I didn't like my submission!