Six Wakes by Mur LaffertyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's very difficult to do a good SF mystery because the
author has to create the setting of what is possible, and then set up
the mystery itself. It's very tempting to create technological "cheats"
to resolve the mystery. Lafferty doesn't fall for this--mostly.
I readily concur with the Nebula and Hugo nominations--it's a solid book. Probably not a winner, but definitely a contender. The pacing is great, it kept me eagerly reading the entire time, from the opening gory mess through to the end. The reveals of each character's capabilities are timed pretty well and pull you along.
I don't want to do a plot summary, you can read the rest of the reviews for that. My quibbles are spoilers, so I'll put them behind the spoiler wall:
[Lafferty successfully holds off magic solutions until the very end, where one might think they don't matter anymore. Lafferty sets up the solution with mind maps--complete representations of a person's personality and memories, that can be downloaded to a person's clone--or others, as it turns out. Maria Arena, the super brain hacker, is able to edit these maps to both insert and delete obvious or subtle personality traits. But it apparently has all one's DNA as well. This to me implies that a mind map is a model that can be read from, and written to, the brain, but leaves the DNA part confusing. I mean, you can load a mind map into a brain, but how do you edit the existing DNA as part of the same process? Not explained and not sensible.
But then a piece of the ending involves a super-advanced food printer that can determine one's preferred foods from a spit sample. It apparently does that by making a mind map. The DNA I understand, but recreating memories from a spit sample does not jive with how memories actually form in the brain. They aren't encoded in DNA. Magic alert. (hide spoiler)]
It's still a very good book, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.
I readily concur with the Nebula and Hugo nominations--it's a solid book. Probably not a winner, but definitely a contender. The pacing is great, it kept me eagerly reading the entire time, from the opening gory mess through to the end. The reveals of each character's capabilities are timed pretty well and pull you along.
I don't want to do a plot summary, you can read the rest of the reviews for that. My quibbles are spoilers, so I'll put them behind the spoiler wall:
[Lafferty successfully holds off magic solutions until the very end, where one might think they don't matter anymore. Lafferty sets up the solution with mind maps--complete representations of a person's personality and memories, that can be downloaded to a person's clone--or others, as it turns out. Maria Arena, the super brain hacker, is able to edit these maps to both insert and delete obvious or subtle personality traits. But it apparently has all one's DNA as well. This to me implies that a mind map is a model that can be read from, and written to, the brain, but leaves the DNA part confusing. I mean, you can load a mind map into a brain, but how do you edit the existing DNA as part of the same process? Not explained and not sensible.
But then a piece of the ending involves a super-advanced food printer that can determine one's preferred foods from a spit sample. It apparently does that by making a mind map. The DNA I understand, but recreating memories from a spit sample does not jive with how memories actually form in the brain. They aren't encoded in DNA. Magic alert. (hide spoiler)]
It's still a very good book, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.
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