B+
Genre: Novella, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Amanda and I have discussed many times on the RT Rewind podcast episodes that reviewing a book that’s deep into an existing series is a fraught proposition. The potential for spoilers is significant, and the question of audience can be a puzzler, too. Am I writing for new readers who might enter the series with this book (TL;DR, don’t do that, you deserve the whole Murderbot series!) or am I addressing folks who already love the series and want to know how this book fits into the larger story arc?
In this case, it’s the latter. I know that most of y’all know about the series, and that it is one of my major comfort re-reads, especially for middle-of-the-night anxiety insomnia.
So here are a few non-spoilery things to know about the latest book in one of my favorite series.
It starts out slow and confusing.
The opening dropped me into the middle of a moderately tense moment with no understanding of what is happening, why, and where they are aside from ‘space, somewhere? What’s a torus?’ The development is deliberately slow in the initial chapters.
The cover copy is deliriously sparse, too:
Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment of Martha Wells’ bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.
Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.
After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know.
Including human children. Ugh.
This may well call for… eye contact!
(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)
The sparseness works because the most you need to know is there’s a rescue mission, and Murderbot is really pissed off about it.
The story trajectory follows a slow acceleration until the plot is racing, kind of like a mammoth jet on a runway.
I was worried I didn’t like this book until I got to about chapter 5 or 6!
Me?! Not like a Murderbot book? WHAT THE HELL. IS MY BRAIN BROKEN.
Nah, the story is a bit of a tease, dropping pieces until I saw the full picture and had an “OH SHIT” realization of the stakes and the operation in progress. Then I couldn’t stop reading.
There are little moments that I had to re-read because I needed to experience their emotional significance a second (or third) time.
In fact, I started the book over the minute I finished it and have now read it twice. Well, no, twice and a half because I re-read even more while writing this review.
One of my favorite aspects to Murderbot’s character is how it remains surprised at its own capacity for generosity, observation, care, and creative lateral thinking, and gets SO ANNOYED when it notices said capacities. There’s a lot of that disgruntled kindness, and I definitely re-read those sections on repeat to savor my emotional reaction.
I highlighted a lot, too, and I will share one tiny clip:
(It’s weird how meal and sleep breaks fix a lot of the annoying things about humans.) (Maybe that’s how you restart an organic brain?)
Excuse me. I didn’t need to be called out like that.
Not spoiling is difficult.
The major themes of this story are how comprehensively a corporation with no fucks and much money can interfere with the lives of determined humans who are committed to helping one another get to safety:
…if they aren’t bothering to hide anymore, it basically meant whoever was in charge didn’t care about any kind of plausible deniability….
Sounds familiar, huh? As usual with this series, the exploration of the decay caused by unfettered power, wealth, and aggression is relevant and chilling and familiar. I think that’s part of what makes this series so reassuring for me: the only option is to keep trying to help produce a better outcome for everyone.
And the more Murderbot becomes emotionally stable and enters fair relationships with humans, other constructs, and bots, the more it learns how much power and leverage it has to better assist in creating those outcomes.
The other theme is about trust, and I won’t say more because there are way too many components to the theme and I really don’t want to do anything but encourage you to read through the first slightly confusing chapters to the point where the plot takes off.
I hope you enjoy the flight as much, if not more, than I did.
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I am now prepared to tackle the book. Although… do I dare start it on an evening where I need to get to bed early… should I carve out dedicated time on a day off to savour it? For a series as wonderful as this, each book deserves ideal reading circumstances.
@Lara: I think whether you go to bed early with it depends on how willing you are and if your day the next day is accommodating of you joining the Bad Decisions Book Club. 😀 I’m all about the Bad Decisions Book Club, personally. There’s something very satisfying about finding a read that is so good, you can’t put it down until you’ve finished it and your tomorrow self with have to live with the choices of your present self.