Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock

Publisher - Angry Robot

Publisher - Out Now

Price - £9.99 paperback £4.92 ebook

Her purpose is to track down and eliminate her predecessors. Simple, right?

In the glitz and glamour of Bubble City even a washed-up film star simply has too much to do, too many places to be. Thank heavens for clones. Lulabelle Rock has twelve, doing the tiresome celebrity rounds.

But times have changed: you can have too much of a good thing. And time is up for the twelve Lulabelles. A thirteenth clone, an assassin is created.

Killing yourselves should be easy. We’re talking clones, not people; it’s not murder. Not really. But love has a way of complicating things…

Our sense of identify is constantly changing. You think of me as a blogger, my family definitely doesn’t usually and let’s just say workers would be surprised I even know about social media. The twenty first century perhaps underlines that we are often presenting multiple personas in media and reality and that is definitely weird, confusing and sometimes draining! Science fiction has long grasped with a sense of self and not just about what androids dream of. In Maud Woolf’s surreal and dreamy science fiction novel Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock one clone’s journey to kill her other selves goes in many unexpected ways and has a few things to say about getting lost in our facts rather than loving a life. It’s a very impressive debut.

Lulabelle Rock is famous in the movies as an actress but as a star at events, online, media and more. Her new remake of Medea is though looking to be a potential bad film and so some publicity is needed. As life is so busy she has created Portraits - clones of herself to do certain key functions and to make a media splash a thirteenth Lulabelle is needed for an audacious plan to kill the other Portraits. Our newest Lulabelle is handed within an hour of her birth a gun, a binder and an automated car to get her mission underway and while initially easy coming up against yourself again and again can lead to unexpected outcomes.

This took me a little to lean into. Initially other a lot and having a movie star as the main character who doesn’t immediately win us over with a plan to kill her other selves without their knowledge feels hard to root for. But what soon takes place is our actual narrator is the Lulabelle on her mission she’s not the demanding movie star but someone who just looks like her and carries distant memories. Initially she is just doing the job and we watch various Lulabelle’s meet their fate but then things start to get weird and really intersting and what could easily have been a pot boiler SF action tale becomes something more thoughtful and unexpectedly has a lot more heart.

Our narrator knows her purpose and she even tries to call herself Death but that’s not on the menacing way. A recurring symbol is the tarot deck and death cards are also about change and this story explores being both stuck in one identity and having at the same time confusion on who you really are. We meet Lulabelles who just do a job very well be that at work or being the face of myriad online accounts, the one who parties forever and the one who has actually become a happily married mother of two (who has a secret movie shrine to Lulabelle) and if you’ve ever worried about how you can be stuck in work mode or online mode a little too long I think the feeling of submerged identities may click. Deciding to take these personas out could be seen as quite drastic therapy.

But things don’t go to plan and our assassin is shocked to find several Lulabelles want to encourage their death they’ve got lost in this. The one who manages social media is one even the main Lulabelle feels sorry for. Our main character also finds one a Lulabelle is an artist (of little talent but a lot of passion) and falls in love with her. can you perhaps not do that one thing you’re known for? Be someone new and perhaps choose a new life of your own?

Woolf’s writing is the main standout for me and we start to really get into the head of someone just starting to learn to be human and understand they have choices. The narration shifts from slick to thoughtful to emotional to violent with style just as much as the personas differ in roles and yet while in some ways this feels a day-glo not quite Hollywood goldfish bowl of a city where everyone wants a piece of you - indeed the city’s founding legend we are told was also sacrificed like that there is kindness and when we do meet other characters they all have other hidden sides to them that come out. A sinister underling may also change when off shift or a magician may also be a young goth not sure on their own career. These all circle back to no one is ever just one thing and learning to balance those identities perhaps is key to a happier life. The warmer scenes really balance out the artificial sleekness of the early chapters and help show the growth on our character as she learns to live. There are a few times it feels a little too artificial and that slightly reduced the impacts of some scenes but I feel the novel gets stronger as it progresses.

I found myself really falling into this as a read. The constant change of style and the subtle inversions of Lulabelles come together to create a fascinating tale that is very well crafted. It’s a story you can definitely chew over after reading and perhaps my one issue was the start feels a little too artificial and jarring but I increasingly feel you need that to learn not to take the Portraits at face value. I’m going to be very interested in what Woolf does next and this is highly recommended!