The Sixth Nik
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
Perfectly aligned for readers of Iain M. Banks’s The Culture series and Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, The Sixth Nik is a galaxy spanning adventure from the New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Angel Down and Whalefall.
Deep into space, far past the triworld outposts, beyond range of the lethal trollbot internet, soars The Sickness: a ship woven from biomatter and capable of reacting to every need of its human crew. Sisilla, a nine-year-old cultist with a brain enhanced by arcane tech known as “niks,” has boarded to investigate the enigma of Fém—a plague-riddled planet that has abruptly gone rogue.
The mysterious crew includes a faceless assassin, a beautiful engineer jigsawed by plastic surgery, a peyote-addicted medic, and—most lethal of all—a rugged, NonModded captain with a score to settle with Sisilla. Other dangers abound. A hacked robot begins to believe Sisilla is its daughter. The Sickness itself is mutating, possibly even pregnant. And the secret of Fém is more horrific than anyone could have imagined. To survive, Sisilla will need to forsake her predetermined fate and embrace the unknown.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Multifaceted science, characters, and encounters energize this immersive far-future adventure from Pulitzer Prize winner Kraus (Angel Down). Among the Nuna Naavoq, "a nomadic tribe of Inuit lineage that eschewed technology" in Greenland, Sisilla is the 55th chosen Niffakoq, a girl embedded with six "niks," dime-sized metal "miscineurodilator" brain implants, as an infant to enhance physical, intellectual, and empathic abilities. The Niffakoq's purpose is to complete a unique, dangerous Chore for the good of mankind, generally at age nine, before dying at 11. Sisilla's Chore is to travel to the metal-covered planet Fém, where plague victims were sent to die only to be miraculously saved by rust from the atmosphere. Earth's government wants to investigate this cure, but the colonists refuse communication until Earth recognizes Fém as a sovereign nation. Traveling in a grotesque, tumor-shaped spaceship with a motley crew, Sisilla must confront Fém's enigmatic 85-year-old leader, Talfa Rees-Weber, and the planet's many perils—all while hiding the fact that, as a child, she removed the nik responsible for controlling emotions. Kraus takes his time building an impressively intricate world, infusing his tale of human atrocities with both meticulous scientific fact and bold science fiction. The result is sharp, complex, and gripping.
