System Collapse

It’s been long enough between books that I looked up a recap of where we last left Murberbot. Glad I did, because then I was able to just enjoy this one. It’s more of the same, which is what it’s felt like for a while with Murderbot, but that’s OK! Very incremental character development on their part, but the character is interesting enough that I’m happy to spend more time with them.

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.

Yes. It is just more Murderbot. And that is a good thing.

While the complexity of trauma and self-doubt was a welcome thread here, this felt like a solid novella lost its way in variations.

Murderbot just has near infinite potential as a character. It's multiprocessing nature makes the stories complex but so rich, I feel like starting the whole series again now to pick up the bits I missed.

I was excited to hear more about other SecUnits with hacked governor modules.

I continue to love the Murderbot series. By this point, the action parts have lost impact because there's too much precedent for how they're going to turn out, so I think it's wise of Wells to play that part down a bit in this book, in favour of a story more about persuasion and trust building. And the ongoing saga of Murderbot learning about both its limits and capabilities continues to be one of the most relatable arcs in SF/F.

I went back and re-read the two previous books to this one. That was helpful to me to know what was happening. Interesting (redacted) stuff.

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.

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.

I'm a sucker for Murderbot, so liking this wasn't not going to happen. I've read all the previous books and enjoyed all of them. While I liked Network Effect, Murderbot really seems to work best as a novella.

I wouldn't suggest starting with this one, as it picks up immediately after Network Effect, but the first book, All Systems Red is good too.

I will say that I read this in 94 hours, which is the fastest per capita I've read any book this year. In a year where reading has been hard for whatever reason, this book was a welcome reprieve from that.

Oh my [REDACTED] god, it was just too short.