Six Wakes

I finished this book, even though I wasn't enjoying it, because I was curious to find out all the details of what was going on. But I had guessed the correct explanation pretty early, and there wasn't much detail given about it, when everything was revealed. One plot twist really did surprise me: the nature of the AI. Otherwise, there were not many surprises.

Maria turns out to be unbelievably powerful, capable, and intelligent, and yet she isn't fully responsible for almost anything she's done. Yes, she was tortured, but the narrative gives her original ethical lapse (editing Sally's partner's mind map) very little scrutiny, and Maria agreed to do that without any torture. So the story seems cowardly in that it fails to make Maria responsible for any of her own choices.

The worldbuilding is really weak, in my opinion. It's set several centuries in the future but it could almost be our world plus cloning, spaceships, and driverless cars. Until late in the book, when we learn what's up with the aunt-impostor in Maria's memory, there are very few references to any made-up culture of the future, or history, except what readers already know and the fictional clone riots (which never get all that much exploration). I didn't understand the “life” substance at all. Is cloning the only change in human society that has come about because of its discovery or invention?

Okay, the changes in the Catholic Church were unusual, but also pretty unbelievable to me. But I had a lot of trouble suspending disbelief at different points in this book, which might have been my own problem. The portrayals of mind hacking also seemed ridiculous.

Most of all, I don't understand why we needed to be in everyone's point-of-view almost all the time. It felt like lazy writing. It was also very annoying to spend so much time in Maria's and Hiro's PoVs early on, only to learn that I didn't know much about either of them. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, and it was not a good experience. She doesn't differentiate between character voices very much, which is especially bad because of the constant PoV shifts.

I noticed that Audible has it classified as a technothriller, and that makes a lot more sense than science fiction. There's no sense of wonder or possibility. I don't understand why it got a Hugo nomination. I've really enjoyed several other works on the nomination list this year, but I've also read lots of great books that would never get anywhere near that list.