Thank you again, Cannonballers, for alerting me to another treasure that would have stayed hidden from me had I not seen your many rave reviews! I am a sucker for both “robot learns to person” and “people learn to robot” stories; I do not know why it took me so long to give Murderbot a go! Earlier this year I was awed by the beauty of A Closed and Common Orbit, but this time I was delighted by some good old-fashioned gruesome space violence. Our lead calls itself Murderbot, after all!
I enjoyed the “Dear Diary” aspect of this little piece; a Security Unit, the aforementioned Murderbot, has disabled outside control and is trying to keep others from figuring out that it is an independent entity. Everything is peachy until a group of scientists start treating them like a person instead of a murder machine; awkward interactions for man and machine abound! We get a peek under the helmet of a killing machine who is struggling with matching human behavior with that of the characters they have watched throughout thousands of hours of downloaded soap operas stored within them. Murderbot just wants to sit in a closet and watch TV, but these pesky scientists want to know how Murderbot feels! They want to see Murderbot’s face! They want – gasp – for Murderbot to sit in a chair with them instead of being transported in the cargo bay!
I highly recommend experiencing this piece through audio; Kevin R. Free is an excellent robotic narrator, and listening along made me truly feel like I was given a “captain’s log” style journal. His delivery is delightfully clipped and non-reactive, it’s amazing how much feeling he puts into situations meant to be without! On the other hand, it was easy to accidentally get too comfortable with the matter-of-fact story; I spaced out a few times while names and equipment was being listed, and had to skip back to catch up. It was easier to lose myself in thought than it was to lose myself in the story. Luckily, this is just the first of many novellas, and all of the audiobooks are on Scribd. Hooray!
I will read Murderbot in any format. I’m glad you finally answered the siren call, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the series. The second novella is my favorite.
Only three stars :((((((
I’m glad you’ve finally listened to the siren call, though! The novel is great, also. I love this series so much.
I tried to do the audio on re-read and it just did not work for me. I hated Kevin R. Free’s narration, it was so jarring and discordant with my idea of who Murderbot is, I had to stop after only two minutes! I’m happy it works so well for other people, though. I imagine if I liked the narration, listening to Murderbot speak misanthropic yet loving thoughts would be very entertaining.
Oh my god unintended comment plagiarism!! How embarrassing. My brain read Emmalita’s comment, apparently liked it a lot, immediately forgot where it heard the phrase, and then spat it back out again. Wow, is this what getting old feels like?
LOL it’s like we’ve all been conditioned to use the same language! I’ve been doing this a lot lately; agreeing with a comment and accidentally typing (nearly) the same thing!
…and don’t worry- three stars means I am ready to jump in and enjoy it more in the future! I think the lack of stars was due to my own distraction (maybe it WAS the audio!) and not due to the content of the book : D
You do miss a lot of subtle things with Murderbot if you’re not fully paying attention, because a lot of the narrative is self-denial or unreliability.
LOL not Free’s narration, but Murderbot itself sounds a lot like my husband; another robot (engineer) taught to be human through soap operas (THE OC!)