There was a lot of good with this one, by Mur Lafferty, but by the end I was kind left with an “eh.”

The book begins with a big bang and lots of intrigue. The crew has been murdered, but this isn’t your mother’s “whodonit.” Maria is a junior tech who awakes in her clone pod but knows things have gone wrong when she can’t remember what put her there or why there’s blood on her pod. Never mind that they are on a colony ship heading to a new world and the crew is solely responsible for them.

The conflict escalates from there and Lafferty does a decent job making a crew of six feel human. There are some various archetypes and tropes that are fulfilled, but then people in a group fulfill roles anyway, right? The flashbacks that each character receives is helpful and paints more tension between problems that consistently arise on the colony ship.

The world building alone really helps carry this book, especially since Lafferty didn’t shy away from the impact clones would have on society. I think what made this book not sit with me as well as others, was that the middle pacing wasn’t all that great and the ending wasn’t enough.

Either way, I’m going to read more Lafferty, because she kept me entertained and the science fiction elements were top notch, but this was one that could not cross all the “T”s for me.