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.

I received a copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

Sci-fi and high fantasy are often hard for me to settle into. I get frustrated because it takes a while for me to figure out the rules of a world, the politics, the factions, the tech, as well as try to keep up with the story. This book was no different, but once I finally got my footing, I ended up really enjoying it. It’s dark, and creepy, and bloody, and oftentimes disturbing.

The story is set in a future where humanity has spread out across the galaxy, and it centers on a ship called The Sickness. The ship isn’t built from metal. It’s grown from biological material, almost like a living organism, capable of responding and adapting to whoever is on board. A nine-year-old girl named Sisilla has been assigned to lead a mission on this ship to investigate a supposedly plague-ravaged planet called Fém, which has gone completely dark and cut itself off from the rest of civilization. Sisilla was raised inside a cult and has had her brain enhanced through technology called niks, which makes her sharper than anyone her age should be. It’s standard practice for babies to be implanted with niks so they can lead these types of missions. Oh, and they rarely live to see the age of twelve. Sisilla’s leading a crew that includes a faceless assassin, an engineer who’s had so much reconstructive surgery that she barely resembles whoever she was initially, a medic who relies on peyote to function, and a captain who stands out from everyone else because he has no modifications whatsoever. He also has this weird grudge against Sisilla. Oh, and we can’t forget the hacked robot that believes Sisilla is its daughter. But things get really weird when The Sickness begins to change, possibly growing something inside it. Something that could jeopardize the mission and the lives of everyone on the ship.

I’ll be honest with you (and you probably won’t be surprised to know) the first chunk of this book was rough for me to get through. I couldn’t get a handle on the world’s political structure, the scope of the mission wasn’t clear to me, and I kept getting pulled out of the story by the question of why a nine-year-old was in charge of anything. But once the ship left and things started going horrifically wrong, I was locked in.

This is definitely different from Kraus’s other books, but what I like about him is he doesn’t stick to writing a single type of book. He always changes things up, and you never know what you’re going to get. Whalefall was grounded on Earth and was more realistic, while Angel Down studied the horrors of war. The horrors still persist here (and boy are they gruesome) and they’re spread across the galaxy. The eventual truth about what happened to Fém is worse than anyone on that ship could have predicted, and Sisilla’s mission only gets more intense. I don’t want to spoil anything, I’ll just say that if you don’t like things bloody and disturbing, this might not be the book for you.

Even if it wasn’t my favorite Kraus novel (Angel Down still holds that spot hands down), I still really enjoyed this one once I settled in. It’s dark and frequently unsettling in all the ways good sci-fi horror should be. If you’re a fan of the genre, you should definitely check this one out.