eBook, 352 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2020 by Tor.com.
I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.
When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.
Drastic action it is, then.
This series gets more addicting with each installment. The first four books were almost too short, and reading this one felt like I was finally really getting to dig in to the world of Murderbot. Consider me thoroughly hooked!
A great Murderbot novel that shows Murderbot continues to mature as an organism with free will and learning to deal with his emotions with his 'clients' while discovering new things about them and what they are willing to do for him.
The novel starts with Murderbot doing what it does best: protecting its clients. But this turns out to be a prelude to the start of a situation where Murderbot gets kidnapped along with his clients and ends up with a situation involving a former bot friend and possible alien technology contamination at a forgotten colony world. Of course he has to get out of it, with his clients intact.
But more than just the 'pew-pew' stuff (which Murderbot is obviously good at), this is also a detective story as he has to figure out the reason why it and his clients were kidnapped, how the alien contamination occurred, how …
A great Murderbot novel that shows Murderbot continues to mature as an organism with free will and learning to deal with his emotions with his 'clients' while discovering new things about them and what they are willing to do for him.
The novel starts with Murderbot doing what it does best: protecting its clients. But this turns out to be a prelude to the start of a situation where Murderbot gets kidnapped along with his clients and ends up with a situation involving a former bot friend and possible alien technology contamination at a forgotten colony world. Of course he has to get out of it, with his clients intact.
But more than just the 'pew-pew' stuff (which Murderbot is obviously good at), this is also a detective story as he has to figure out the reason why it and his clients were kidnapped, how the alien contamination occurred, how to save his bot friend (and clients) and how to overcome his opponents. But along the way, he will discover new things about himself, and also about what his clients really think about him and what they are really willing to do for him.
Enjoyable, but I got bogged down in the middle for a good while: I suspect I prefer this kind of story at novella length.
It turns out I've been up all night finishing off this book, thank Murderbot it's still lockdown.
Was it worth pre-ordering? Yes. Did it blow my expectations? Totally.
Having the three narratives at one point took a tiny bit of adjustment, but for me it genuinely made the action come more to life. I've also noticed that things tend to be described just enough that you're able to set your own visuals along with the series.
I certainly hope there is another Murderbot novel in the works, as I've been sucked in deep to this series
