Before I get into the reviews, I’m just going to preface this by saying I don’t really remember all the individual books, but Murderbot is one of my favorite characters ever.
All Systems Red (5/5)
“Murderbot” is the self-chosen name of a security android appointed with the task of protecting a team of scientists surveying a planet. It is a rogue SecUnit, however, and has overridden its governor, unbeknownst to everyone else, and wants nothing more than to disengage from the world and watch soap operas. Despite this, Murderbot does have some affinity for it’s job, and does everything it can to keep up appearances and protect its crew for as long as necessary (until it can go back to its shows).
Also – not for nothing – I picture Murderbot as female, even though it’s described as not having a gender. I don’t know why. It just “feels” feminine to me. Maybe because the writer is a woman. I don’t know. I feel like I’m being a dick calling Murderbot “it” – but that’s the pronoun used in the books, so here we are.
Unfortunately, annoyingly, weird things start to happen. Important information that should be available to the crew about their planet’s fauna has been removed. Some sections of their maps are missing, as well. There’s another expedition on the planet, and Murderbot’s team, PreservationAux, loses contact with them. These mysteries pose a threat to the team, so Murderbot isn’t able to watch the shows like it wants to, and instead digs deeper.
The story unfolds from there in a relatively straight-forward manner. The end kind of surprised me, but I felt like the characters behaved in a realistic way, and made choices that were consistent with who they were.
Overall, the joy of the story comes in how Murderbot basically doesn’t want to be doing anything it’s required to do while being hyper-aware of how little everyone wants to be around it, and instead wants to just watch soap operas. It kind of feels like my spirit animal – except for all the, you know, being a badass killing machine stuff.
Artificial Condition (5/5)
After rejecting PreservationAux’s bid to join them and stop being a SecUnit, Murderbot is hitchhiking across the universe by hacking transport ships and stowing away on relatively unintelligent vessels. It’s trying to reach RaviHyral, the mining colony that kicked off Murderbot’s journey of autonomy. It was there that Murderbot hacked its governor, and it was there that it slaughtered 57 people. The only problem is that Murderbot doesn’t really know what happened, or why its memory was erased.
The ship Murderbot uses to take it RaviHyral ends up being a very intelligent AI Murderbot nicknames “ART” (Asshole Research Transport), and their banter makes this book.
This is a very corporatist universe – everything is driven by contracts and companies. So that Murderbot can travel and investigate its past under the guise of legitimacy, it takes a job with another team of scientists meeting the previous employer who screwed them over. The scientists are pretty naive and just want their research. Their employer, however, seems pretty clearly intent on killing them. So Murderbot has to step in and once again save humans before setting out on its own again.
Rogue Protocol (4/5)
Murderbot masks its presence on the planet Milu with a pet-like bot named Miki, and infiltrates the GrayCris (the evil company from the first story) terraforming facility (where Murderbot originally went rogue). There, it rescues Miki’s humans from hostile combat robots and even traitorous members of their own team.
This story felt more like filler to me, and I didn’t find the Murderbot-Miki relationship as charming as Murderbot and ART in the previous story. The story is still advancing, and I still enjoyed the novella immensely, but it didn’t quite click as much as the others.
Exit Strategy (5/5)
After escaping Milu with evidence that GrayCris was engaged in illegal mining activities (amongst other things), Murderbot arrives at HaveRatton Station, but not in the way it expects: the robot ship on which its riding is re-routed to dock near security, where an armed boarding team is waiting. Murderbot’s suspicions confirmed, it abandons the ship before it can be boarded.
Muderbot learns from the news feed that Dr. Mensah – from Artificial Condition – has disappeared, which sets it on the course to find her and rescue her.
It’s pretty amazing how well Martha Wells is able to keep the story fresh. These are almost a paint-by-numbers story. There’s a clear template, here, and it’s pretty simple: Murderbot arrives in a location, wants to watch its shows but is instead drawn into a conflict. Murderbot then flees to another location.
Network Effect (4/5)
I’d like to start off by saying this is a good book. Murderbot is one of my favorite characters, and I’ll read all these stories because it (Murderbot) is just a joy to listen to.
But I lost a lot of steam, here. These stories are all kind of the same, and the cast of characters that round out the world aren’t super engaging (though I always seem to find the AIs pretty damn entertaining). I read the first couple stories in a week, and then it took longer and longer to get back to this series. Looking back (4 months after reading All Systems Red), it’s hard for me to even remember any of the plots to these books. They’re all kind of a lifeless mass.
Which is really weird, because I vividly remember loving Murderbot and its interactions with ART and Miki, the bot that ends up dying back in Rogue Protocol. And I generally enjoy Murderbot’s interactions with the various humans it comes into contact with, but they are largely mashed together in my brain as some faceless and generic human-shaped blob. I can’t, for the life of me, tell you the difference between Thiago and Pin-Lee.
So I didn’t love this as much as the previous installments in the series – but it was still a thoroughly enjoyable read, and fast-paced.
