The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus
S&S/Saga Press
Publication Date: June 23rd, 2026
Hardcover. 464 pages. About The Sixth Nik:
"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."
The Sixth Nik is a book that feels extremely hard to summarize in any cohesive and coherent manner, but I'll do my best to give a general gist of what to expect and what I thought about this bizarre and incredibly thought-provoking and compelling story.
In The Sixth Nik, we follow Sisilla, a nine-year old child of the Niffakoq, which is essentially a cult where the female children are typically sent off to embark upon a "Chore" before they reach the end of their life (aka sacrifice themselves) around age 12. Sisilla is at the age where she is sent off to complete her Chore, which in this case involves embarking upon a ship called The Sickness with a crew of unique and carefully picked individuals that must now all work together on this journey. The Sickness itself is possibly the weirdest spaceship I've ever envisioned: it is essentially made of live tissues and organic matter, essentially as if it is alive and growing, and most importantly, it can constantly mold and adapt to whatever its crew members seem to need for their journey's success. And if that's not weird enough, the crew are on their way to try to figure out what has happened to a group of people on the far-off planet of Fem--people who were initially relocated to the planet in order to experiment with eradicating a horrible plague that they contracted while on Earth. It sounds like a lot, and it is a little bit, but it's terribly fascinating and I was pretty hooked on this story.
The Sixth Nik had a slightly slower start for me before I really became fully invested in the story. I think this will vary depending on what you like in books, but I found it struggled to initially get off the ground and move away from language that felt like I, as the reader, was being held at a distance from the story. But once I felt a bit more grounded in the world, understood Sisilla and her world (or attempted to), and better understood where the plot was going, I was pretty hooked from then on. The pacing I'd say is fairly steady from that point. It's generally a slower pace, but there are some more intense moments and occasional jumps that created a feeling of meaningful movement in the plot that kept things moving.
I really liked meeting the eclectic cast of characters selected to be a part of the crew of The Sickness. Sisilla, for one, is a fascinating character to follow given her background, and it was especially interesting to see her learn more about other people and learn how to socially orient herself in different situations. I also loved Jayne and would've loved if she had even more page time than she does because her words and discussions were always so intriguing and thought-provoking. I also have quite a soft spot for Feng, who I think brought some much needed levity to the story at times, as did Murder 05 in their own unique way. And of course there's Captain Arzan, who was possibly more of an enigma than Murder 05 and whose story I very much enjoyed unraveling along with Sisilla.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned yet how much body horror there is in this book and how truly disturbing some of the imagery developed in this book was. There were some things that were just plain gross, but it all fit really well into what felt like an overwhelming theme around bodies, autonomy, what makes someone human, what makes some "worthy," etc., and it just all felt very purposeful and masterfully woven together. There were definitely some scenes that made my skin crawl a bit, and I truly hated almost every description of the ship that appeared--I am so serious when I say I hate the sound of that ship so much because it disturbs me to no end. Kraus also does some super f*cking weird things with that ship that I couldn't even begin to describe, but I also can't help but be impressed by the sheer creativity. There are also plenty of other moments and ideas that will also leave you wondering if Daniel Kraus is okay (and somehow the plague of Wolosis doesn't even reach the top five of disturbing things).
The main drawback I'll note is that there are a lot of moments that feels very much like info-dumping and are full of technical talk or terms (sometimes made up and unique to the world, sometimes not) that made it extremely difficult to maintain my attention. There are times when I'm pretty sure this was intentional and meant to reflect some things about our characters, but other times I could've perhaps used a bit less. But there's a part of me that also thinks all of it is necessary to the story because it really helped convey just how detailed and in-depth Kraus has gone into crafting this world and story, and I always really like and appreciate that level of detail. It's also still endlessly fascinating no matter how its presented, and I felt like so many aspects of how things worked, such as The Sickness, for example, were still so interesting to learn about, even if it wasn't always in the most entertaining way
Overall, The Sixth Nik is a weird, disturbing, thought-provoking, and endlessly intriguing science fiction/body horror story that is absolutely worth the read if you don't mind some pretty intense (meaning: gross, emotionally affecting) imagery. I absolutely recommend it if it sounds like something you might like!
*I received a copy of The Sixth Nik courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This has no effect on my rating or enjoyment.*
Buy the book: Amazon | Bookshop.org
