Monthly Keyword 26: Decay
Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on May 5th, 2026.
Murderbot (who has installed a mental health module now, and keeps doing Emotion checks on itself) is on a rescue mission on a large artificial planet controlled mostly by Barish-Estranza. What starts out as needing to find and escort three people from the hostile territory becomes a lot more complicated when Murderbot is forced to agree to locate and rescue an additional group of people, some of whom are juveniles (I love how Murderbot refers to children) as well. As you can imagine, Murderbot, who is deeply uncomfortable with most people, is especially discomforted by children.
I don’t really want to go into further details about the plot of this one, because it’s much better if you don’t know too many specifics. As is often the case with new instalments of The Murderbot Diaries, this book starts very abruptly, and it takes a few chapters to understand what is really going on. And that’s part of the joy of it. I won’t reveal who Murderbot has been sent to rescue, and it would be a major plot spoiler to reveal who is in the second group.
