The Sixth Nik, scheduled to be released later this month, is the latest novel from Daniel Kraus. Kraus’ previous novel, Whalefall, takes place almost entirely inside a sperm whale. This becomes relevant later, I promise. All told, though, he has over twenty novels to his name, including novelizations of a few Guillermo del Toro movies (The Shape of Water and Trollhunters) and was tasked with completing The Living Dead, a novel that George A. Romero was writing when he passed in 2017.
The Sixth Nik is due to be released in a few weeks, so I don’t want to give away too much. Aside from the characters and setting, most of this is divulged in the opening chapter. And man, no one writes an opening like Kraus; he has perfected the art of lore-dumping without being boring. In the first chapter, we learn that the story takes place on Earth at some point vaguely in the future, because humanity has colonized both Mars and Europa.
Let’s Meet the Cast
The main character is a nine-year-old girl who has had a great destiny foisted upon her; or more specifically, inserted into her brain. Most of what I’ve read about The Sixth Nik compares it to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas; a much-adapted story about a Utopic city whose prosperity relies on the suffering a single child (most recently retold in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach”).
The child in this case is Sissalla, the 55th Nikkanoq. As an infant she had six devices (called niks) implanted into her brain to make basically a super-genius. The Nikkanoq are then trained and educated until they are nine years old, when they are given a Chore; some great feat that will help all of humanity. Because of the niks in their brains, the Nikkanoqs almost all die in their eleventh year, so time is of the essence. This is especially true for Sissilla, since her Chore involves traveling to a distant planet and, given the technology available, the stasis tubes they stay in still count as aging for two years.
You might be asking, if the niks are lodged in a child’s brain when they die; how do they get to the next Nikkanoq? Remember, it’s a horror novel.
Speaking of space travel and horror, in this world the ships are biological entities grown in enormous vats. They are also apparently designed by Clive Barker with help from David Cronenberg. Remember when I said his last novel took place inside a whale? Those vibes definitely come through in this one. Everything is based on animal biology. Hallways and called throatways, lights are glowing eyeballs, furniture is all either callus or scab, curtains are hair, you get the gist.
Everyone in this universe everyone acknowledges these ships are horrible, but there’s nothing they can do about it; that’s just how the technology works. This one is apparently particularly bad because it is christened The Sickness. This is where the entire second act, and a bulk of the story itself, takes place.
The rest of the crew of The Sickness includes Jayne, an engineer who is addicted to body modifications; Feng, a doctor who is addicted to peyote; Arzan, the captain who resents being essentially second in command to a child; and Sisilla’s bodyguard, Murder 005 who is not a robot, despite having a robot name.
My One Gripe
Murder 005 is actually one of my biggest complaints about this book. The short story is that they’re part of an organization (cult?) who murders bad people. This is fine, I do love a good murder cult. The problem is that there is no long story. The book references the Murder Tenet a lot, so much so that you might expect the Murder Tenet to be expanded on or even specified. It is not. Everyone else gets a ton of backstory; Murder 005 gets super-interesting vagueness.
Cults and free will are a recurring theme throughout The Sixth Nik; a great many of the characters are either in a cult, or believe everyone else is in a cult. How much free will do you have if you’ve been raised to believe certain things and behave a certain way? But on the other hand, isn’t that just what culture is? Is someone in a cult just because we disagree with them, or does the fact that they’re destined to die enter into the equation? Aren’t we all destined to die anyway, though?
The third act begins when The Sickness arrives at the planet in question (called Fém) and begins her Chore. That’s where I’ll leave off so as not to spoil too much.
The Big Picture
All told, The Sixth Nik is a great balance of character and plot driven. There’s a lot to absorb, but Kraus doesn’t overload the reader with anything unnecessary. The only thing I felt was lacking was the Murder Tenet.
I think it’s prudent to say that this is definitely a horror novel and includes extremely graphic descriptions of abuse to children and animals, sexual violence, cannibalism, and drug addiction. These are all the more jarring when you’re reminded that the protagonist is an eleven year old girl, super-genius though she may be. I would often forget, or just occasionally stop thinking about this aspect of the story, then something happens like she gets her first period and it’s brought back to the forefront.
I’ll leave you now with my new favorite sentence, “The placenta let go of my face with a flatulent hork.”
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