Hardcover, 256 pages

English language

Published Nov. 14, 2023 by Tordotcom.

ISBN:
978-1-250-82697-8
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4 stars (6 reviews)

Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.

3 editions

New adventures!

5 stars

Just finished the newest book in the murderbot series and it was awesome. Picking up where the last book left off it explores relationships with "lost" human colonies, and working to translate the cultural and social consequences of being reconnected to the corporate rim world's and the corporations and capitalism space feudal logics that entails. Really like this one alot, recommend it for anyone already in the series but hasn't picked it up yet.

System Collapse

4 stars

I deeply enjoyed System Collapse--it was a nice followup book to the events of the previous one and I don't think could stand alone. Murderbot has certainly been through a lot, but the last book was particularly intense and it makes sense that there's lasting effects from it. It felt like a smaller and more internally-focused book with less snark and more trama, but I am here for that.

To me at least, Murderbot and its series feels like the embodiment of vulnerability avoidance: handwaving, the first few books seemed like Murderbot coping with learning it cared and people caring about it; Network Effect was about """relationships"" (with ART and 2 and 3); this book in particular explored the vulnerability of trauma and being partially human (or at the very least having some fleshy parts). I think it helps to better situate Murderbot as a construct--not a bot, not human, …

A great followup to "Network Effect".

4 stars

An enjoyable episode in the Murderbot Diaries, this one continues from where "Network Effect" left off, with a colony left on a world contaminated with alien material that can infect both humans and AI and constructs. In the book, Murderbot and its friends continue to talk to the colonists, hoping to convince them that life with the corporation that is coming to claim their planet is not good (think bonded slavery). Then they learn that there was another colony established and now their job just got twice as tough (or harder).

As if this wasn't enough, Murderbot is suffering from a personal "redacted" problem that is affecting his efficiency. It is only later in this story that the nature of the "redacted" problem becomes clear, and it is something that can also affect humans, which makes Murderbot feel more human (ugh).

The first half of the book is more about …

Reaping territory

4 stars

This was a delight, as is usual with Murderbot. I enjoyed the treatment of trauma recovery as a confusion of "why can't I just keep using my old coping mechanisms" "what the actual fuck is my brain doing, this is not helpful" "if you do not schedule time for maintenance, your systems will schedule it for you, and their timing will be antagonistic".

Noticeably less snappy than the earlier books though -- it was easy to lose focus in descriptive stretches, and I wound up reading it twice to see if I could catch the things I missed the first time around.

I may be reaching my limit with this series

3 stars

This will probably be the unpopular minority opinion, but here goes...

This book was still enjoyable, but the first half was extremely slow. It picked up once we got into the action, but it was somewhat more subtle this time around. There is nothing wrong with the book, but it feels like Wells thinks she needs to do more to evolve this character, but doesn't really know what, so we just get tiny bits.