The watch case holds all the complex pieces that will make the watch work but theyre not in the right place so no one can tell the time. Think of ‘Six Wakes’ as starting out as a broken analogue wristwatch. I don’t want to give the plot away as uncovering and solving the puzzle is the heart of the book, so let me describe it using a metaphor. The result is something original and fresh that feels like the genius offspring of ‘I, Robot’, ‘Lost’ and ‘ Revenge’. The storytelling uses multiple points of view to trace the backstories of individual characters while carrying the current action forward. The mysteries are complex and inter-related in surprising ways, weaving in and out of one another over centuries of activity. ‘Six Wakes’ wraps a well-thought-through view of the personal and social impacts of cloning in a fiendishly intricate puzzle, enhanced by clever reveals from multiple points of view and enlivened by frequent violent death. Mur Lafferty’s book is more ambitions than the early Asimov in complexity, scope and storytelling style. In the same way that Asimov set out the three laws of robotics and then presents mysteries that show their unintended consequences, Mur Lafferty sets out the Cloning Codicils governing the use of cloning technology and the rights of clones and then wraps a series of mysteries around them. ‘Six Wakes’ reminded me strongly of the early Asimov books.
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