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The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus

from $11.99
Hardcover:

A nine-year-old girl. A living ship. A plague-ridden rogue planet. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angel Down just wrote the science fiction horror novel of the century.

Daniel Kraus's Whalefall is closing in on 50,000 copies sold — and this is the book that takes him to the next level.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00

_______________________________________

About the book:

The Sixth Nik is set deep in a future universe where a biomatter ship called The Sickness soars past the last human outposts, carrying a crew of misfits toward a planet no one can explain. At the center of it all is Sisilla — a nine-year-old cultist, her brain laced with arcane enhancements called "niks," sent to uncover the secret of Fém, a plague-ravaged world that has inexplicably gone rogue.

The crew surrounding her is anything but ordinary. A faceless assassin, a surgeon-sculpted engineer, a peyote-addicted medic, and a dangerously capable captain who has a personal score to settle with Sisilla — each one is a world unto themselves, and each one makes the voyage more volatile.

The ship itself is no safe haven. The Sickness is a living organism, reactive and evolving, and something aboard it is changing in ways that defy explanation. A hacked robot has begun to believe Sisilla is its daughter, and the mutations spreading through the vessel suggest the ship may be doing something no one anticipated.

What Kraus builds here is unlike anything else on shelves — part space opera, part body horror, part dark coming-of-age. Readers who thought they knew what a science fiction novel could feel like will finish The Sixth Nik with their assumptions in pieces.

A nine-year-old girl. A living ship. A plague-ridden rogue planet. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angel Down just wrote the science fiction horror novel of the century.

Daniel Kraus's Whalefall is closing in on 50,000 copies sold — and this is the book that takes him to the next level.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00

_______________________________________

About the book:

The Sixth Nik is set deep in a future universe where a biomatter ship called The Sickness soars past the last human outposts, carrying a crew of misfits toward a planet no one can explain. At the center of it all is Sisilla — a nine-year-old cultist, her brain laced with arcane enhancements called "niks," sent to uncover the secret of Fém, a plague-ravaged world that has inexplicably gone rogue.

The crew surrounding her is anything but ordinary. A faceless assassin, a surgeon-sculpted engineer, a peyote-addicted medic, and a dangerously capable captain who has a personal score to settle with Sisilla — each one is a world unto themselves, and each one makes the voyage more volatile.

The ship itself is no safe haven. The Sickness is a living organism, reactive and evolving, and something aboard it is changing in ways that defy explanation. A hacked robot has begun to believe Sisilla is its daughter, and the mutations spreading through the vessel suggest the ship may be doing something no one anticipated.

What Kraus builds here is unlike anything else on shelves — part space opera, part body horror, part dark coming-of-age. Readers who thought they knew what a science fiction novel could feel like will finish The Sixth Nik with their assumptions in pieces.

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster / Saga Press
    Title: The Sixth Nik
    Author: Daniel Kraus
    On Sale Date: June 23, 2026
    ISBN-13: 9781668079478
    ISBN-10: 166807947X
    Format: Hardcover
    Retail Price: $30.00 USD
    BISAC: Fiction / Science Fiction / Space Opera
    Page Count: 464
    Dimensions: 9 in H | 6 in W | 1.5 in T
    Weight: 1.4 lb

  • Daniel Kraus is a New York Times bestselling author whose work spans novels, television, and film across horror, thriller, and speculative fiction. His novel Angel Down won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and landed on the New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year list, while Whalefall earned a front-cover review in The New York Times Book Review, won the Alex Award, and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and others. He has also co-authored novels with Guillermo del Toro — including The Shape of Water, based on the same idea behind the Oscar-winning film — and with legendary filmmaker George A. Romero.

    Kraus has won the Bram Stoker Award, the Scribe Award, and two Odyssey Awards, with work translated into more than twenty-five languages and blurbs from writers including Gillian Flynn and Owen King. The Sixth Nik marks his first full foray into science fiction-horror and represents perhaps the most ambitious project of his career. He lives in Chicago with his partner.

  • Pre-release readers are calling it visceral, unforgettable, and genre-shattering:

    • Early readers describe The Sixth Nik as a masterpiece that seeps into your bones — brilliant for adventurous readers unafraid of brutal metaphors, and especially suited for fans of CJ Leede, Stephen Graham Jones, and Gretchen Felker-Martin.

    • Booksellers note that Kraus has a rare gift for building sci-fi worlds so believable on a visceral and spiritual level that they feel less like invention and more like lived experience.

    • Librarians liken the book's DNA to a collision between Firefly, Ender's Game, and a bioship nightmare — with world-building so rich it stands among the best in recent speculative fiction.

    • Readers report that The Sixth Nik shapeshifts across genres — from inventive sci-fi to body horror to dark dystopian thriller — while remaining unmistakably, distinctly Kraus, complete with his gift for sticky imagery and breathless plotting.

This book is for you if:

  • You love genre fiction that refuses to stay in one lane — this one starts as sci-fi, pivots into horror, and lands somewhere entirely its own.

  • You're drawn to unconventional protagonists: Sisilla is one of the most original characters in recent speculative fiction, a child raised to complete one mission and then die, who decides she isn't done yet.

  • You devoured Iain M. Banks's Culture series or Ursula K. Le Guin's work and have been waiting for the next great galaxy-spanning adventure.

  • You want literary ambition alongside genre thrills — Kraus is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and that precision with language and imagery is present on every page.

Quotes:

“A bold, utterly propulsive masterpiece.”
— Eric LaRocca, author of "Wretch"
“The redefinition of body horror. People will tell you this book is like drugs. The truth is that it is drugs.”
— Meg Elison, Philip K. Dick Award- and Locus Award-winning author of "Number One Fan"

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