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A review by ljcarey011
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
2.0
I'm so incredibly disappointed in this book. I also can not believe it was nominated for both a 2018 Hugo and a 2017 Nebula Award. Were the choices seriously that thin?!
Backtracking: I read the opening scene and was delighted. I've been on a serious dry run with books and the first chapter hooked me fast and hard. The writing/prose wasn't immaculate but it was full of intrigue: six clones wake up in their cloning vats in a multi-generational ship carrying them across the galaxy to a new world. The ship has lost gravity and the gory after-effects of their murders float around the room with them. They have zero memories of what happened in the last 25 years of their previous life on the ship. That's a gripping scene. Too bad the book rapidly degrades from there.
The pros:
I think the hook is fantastic. What a great start!
The author does in fact (mostly) weave together a complete story that ties up the ends.
The cons:
The prose is so bad that for the first time ever I looked up the editors in the event that I ever get trad-published. This was downright embarrassing. Yes, the commas are in the right place but the chronic shifting between using contractions and not using contractions dramatically altered the voice within the same sentence. That's an incredibly easy thing to fix, which means it either got ignored or the author stetted the hell out of this book for some ridiculous reason.
It's not just the erratic use of contractions. You'll get smooth flowing lines broken up by acres of stilted, ugly prose that would take nearly zero effort to make active, interesting text. Take these examples:
- "Hiro got worried." Did you Hiro? Did you get worried? How dynamic! How interesting!
- "She took another step backward, forgetting she was on the edge of the lake, and fell in." This is in the midst of a dramatic scene. Do you get that from the prose? From this line she could be: a clumsy YA romance girl, a dogwalker trying to handle a wild gang of pups at the park, a dementia patient, a protagonist hanging out at the lake house. The prose sure does tell you things but it repeatedly eschews all emotion in the descriptive language - or rather there is little to no descriptive language.
The entirety of the prose drags the book away from that interesting/exciting start, into language that moves so stilted and bare-bones dull that you're just reading a slow listing of what happened to them. It's like the story was written via outline and the author never went back to add emotion or smooth the prose
The telling. Oh my God. So much telling. Listen, a certain amount of telling is required in spec fic, but you don't have to say "Character XYZ looked up and saw Character ABC drag item 2 over." Just say "Character ABC dragged item 2 over." The prose is just repeatedly so filled with filter words that it feels removed and stilted.
Info dumps. We get a reveal of each character's history. They neatly tie up the loose ends in that they do explain how everyone is connected. We get treated to multiple dull scenes at the end where they explain things to each other because there is not slow development of discovery by the group, just each one revealing their past throughout.
The "bad guy" is obvious by the time their story is told. On the one hand, it was easy to tell who the killer was so it wasn't odd in terms of feeling wrong for the plot. It's just that they killer makes no sense, because
Decisions made at the end make zero sense.
Anyway, prose was horrifically amateur and I can't believe TWO editors were involved, much less that so many people have lauded this book. Sorry, it's not something I can get past.
The prose robs the narrative of power thanks to the filter words, info dumps, and the need for characters to sit around and repeatedly tell each other their stories in order for them to "solve" things at the very end, rather than having things slowly and interestingly revealed. (Thankfully the author doesn't have the characters repeat their tales to each other - small graces.)
The killer is both obvious (this is not a mark against the prose, the killer makes "sense" on paper) and totally unlikely.
Backtracking: I read the opening scene and was delighted. I've been on a serious dry run with books and the first chapter hooked me fast and hard. The writing/prose wasn't immaculate but it was full of intrigue: six clones wake up in their cloning vats in a multi-generational ship carrying them across the galaxy to a new world. The ship has lost gravity and the gory after-effects of their murders float around the room with them. They have zero memories of what happened in the last 25 years of their previous life on the ship. That's a gripping scene. Too bad the book rapidly degrades from there.
The pros:
I think the hook is fantastic. What a great start!
The author does in fact (mostly) weave together a complete story that ties up the ends.
The cons:
The prose is so bad that for the first time ever I looked up the editors in the event that I ever get trad-published. This was downright embarrassing. Yes, the commas are in the right place but the chronic shifting between using contractions and not using contractions dramatically altered the voice within the same sentence. That's an incredibly easy thing to fix, which means it either got ignored or the author stetted the hell out of this book for some ridiculous reason.
It's not just the erratic use of contractions. You'll get smooth flowing lines broken up by acres of stilted, ugly prose that would take nearly zero effort to make active, interesting text. Take these examples:
- "Hiro got worried." Did you Hiro? Did you get worried? How dynamic! How interesting!
- "She took another step backward, forgetting she was on the edge of the lake, and fell in." This is in the midst of a dramatic scene. Do you get that from the prose? From this line she could be: a clumsy YA romance girl, a dogwalker trying to handle a wild gang of pups at the park, a dementia patient, a protagonist hanging out at the lake house. The prose sure does tell you things but it repeatedly eschews all emotion in the descriptive language - or rather there is little to no descriptive language.
The entirety of the prose drags the book away from that interesting/exciting start, into language that moves so stilted and bare-bones dull that you're just reading a slow listing of what happened to them. It's like the story was written via outline and the author never went back to add emotion or smooth the prose
The telling. Oh my God. So much telling. Listen, a certain amount of telling is required in spec fic, but you don't have to say "Character XYZ looked up and saw Character ABC drag item 2 over." Just say "Character ABC dragged item 2 over." The prose is just repeatedly so filled with filter words that it feels removed and stilted.
Info dumps. We get a reveal of each character's history. They neatly tie up the loose ends in that they do explain how everyone is connected. We get treated to multiple dull scenes at the end where they explain things to each other because there is not slow development of discovery by the group, just each one revealing their past throughout.
The "bad guy" is obvious by the time their story is told. On the one hand, it was easy to tell who the killer was so it wasn't odd in terms of feeling wrong for the plot. It's just that they killer makes no sense, because
Spoiler
really? I'm expected to believe neurotic, untrained, unfit Paul managed to murder a dude with trained assassins in his head, a military trained captain, and a serial murderer and no one wrote Paul's name in blood on the wall or something? Yes, he was the one with supposed reasons to kill (I mean, not really, but okay...), but it seems a stretch to think he'd somehow be good enough to murder multiple people in a very short timeframe?Decisions made at the end make zero sense.
Spoiler
Wolfgang wants them to program/hack Paul to have no ulterior motives? To hack him the way Wolfgang was hacked? I'm sorry, I realize Wolfgang is meant to have some momentary understanding about clones - I think that's what I'm supposed to get about whatever moment he's having with Joanna - would ask to hijack Wolfgang's mind the way he was hijacked? Nah. And Paul only agreed to being a clone to mess with them. He didn't really agree to being a clone. Just kill him. IAN's totally in control of himself and doesn't need Paul.)Anyway, prose was horrifically amateur and I can't believe TWO editors were involved, much less that so many people have lauded this book. Sorry, it's not something I can get past.
The prose robs the narrative of power thanks to the filter words, info dumps, and the need for characters to sit around and repeatedly tell each other their stories in order for them to "solve" things at the very end, rather than having things slowly and interestingly revealed. (Thankfully the author doesn't have the characters repeat their tales to each other - small graces.)
The killer is both obvious (this is not a mark against the prose, the killer makes "sense" on paper) and totally unlikely.