Reviewing a re-read is always a bit of a stumper for me, and even though I’ve been systematically making my way through re-reading the Murderbot books over the past couple of years the idea of trying to have something new to say about Network Effect is a bit daunting. Even though it has been over four and a half years (ouch) since I last read this book it was still fresh in my mind’s eye, there was very little that I didn’t remember from last time. But there were things that flowed much easier for me on this second go round.
I’m also coming to this reading with more information on board. Since I first read Network Effect, I have now also read Fugitive Telemetry (twice), Compulsory, re-read the first four novellas, Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory, and Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy. Which means I have so much more information now than I did then about everyone’s character motivations and idiosyncrasies which heightened my experience. I also am that much more familiar with the way Martha Wells writes.
And I think that made all the difference this time. In my first review of this book, I talk about how the first third of the book sort of dragged on for me. No such problem this time. I was absorbed into the narrative and the characters and eagerly awaiting the next action or emotional beat. I did flip ahead a little to see exactly when ART came back, because I was getting a little impatient, because reading Rapport made me even more invested in that relationship than I was before. And relationships are what this book is all about, as the title hints at.
Murderbot writ large is about personhood, but this chapter of the story feels especially concerned with the complexity of relationships that exist between people. The examples are threaded throughout. Murderbot and Thiago don’t see eye to eye on many things, partly because Thiago doesn’t understand Murderbot’s relationship with his sister, Dr. Mensah. But Murderbot can’t explain because that would violate Mensah’s trust. But it does eventually spill out of Murderbot in a moment of frustration, and ART is the one to stop Murderbot from saying too much. Amena and Murderbot are on uneven footing because Amena assumes that Murderbot’s forays into keeping her secure are at the orders of her second mom Mensah, or that minimally Murderbot is reporting back on her activities and therefore can’t be entirely trusted. But Murderbot is doing what it does and keeping all threats to its humans under control. Murderbot would assert that its interest in Amena’s safety is directly and only related to its relationship with Mensah, but Murderbot’s subsequent actions (and emotions around ART speaking to Amena directly without its inclusion) are counter to that assertion. ART has shared some of its experiences with Murderbot with Iris, which unsettles Murderbot when it finds out, because it was not an action that Murderbot had chosen for itself, as no one from Preservation (including Ratthi) and been informed that there was an entity out in space that Murderbot was so connected to.
These threads and all the rest come to a head because the inciting incident of the main action of the story – that ART sent the Targets to kidnap Murderbot because it was in immediate grave danger and its humans were missing – has ripple effects through all other relationships, not just the one between Murderbot and ART. Because the reader is along for the ride with Murderbot as it reckons with what its relationship with ART is, and what it wants it to be, and what it could be through the course of the book. Only the people who mean a great deal to you can make you angry and hurt in the way that Murderbot is made to feel by ART’s actions. And with that, we also get a romance plotline in the middle of our space mystery and rescue thriller.
I had been intending to re-read Network Effect for the past year and a half, and I finally got to it now, and I’m going to chalk it up to the right book getting to you at the right time. My library copy of System Collapse is in transit for pick-up, and I’m so excited to see where it takes the ever-growing cast of characters in the Murderbot universe.
