Bookish Thoughts

 Murderbot might be one of the best fictional characters out there. Its desire to just sit in a closet and watch tv is at constant war with its compulsion to protect all the humans around it, and it makes for a wonderfully grumpy and relatable hero. I was so excited to finally get a full length novel in this series (and was just a little disappointed to learn that the next book - Fugitive Telemetry - is back to novella size). In the fifth book, Murderbot reunite with ART, which is all I've wanted since I finished the second book. The two team up to save a bunch of humans from weird alien remnants. They fight and make up and learn how to have a relationship. Murderbot's actually starting to get pretty good at relationships. Well, halfway decent. This was a really fun book with lots of action and snarky humor. I can't wait to get my hands on the next one. I hope Martha Wells never stops writing this series.

The fourth and final Murderbot novella brings the story back full circle. Murderbot reunites with the team from the first story, saving their leader and delivering some much needed information about their enemies. This book ends in nearly the same place as the first book, but now Murderbot is a little more knowledgable and a little more hopeful about what the future holds. I think I may have read this series too quickly, because by this book I was a little bit bored by the formula. I should have spaced them out a little more. But I've been eager to start Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy, which is similar enough to this series that I was having trouble reading them at the same time. So I sped through this one in an effort to finish it and ended up tainting my enjoyment a little bit. The story was still fun and fast-paced, and it was nice to see some familiar faces again. I just generally need a little more variety in what I read. That said, I am really excited to read the nov...

The third installment in Murderbot's story has Murderbot slowly discovering that robots can be friends. Friends with each other and friends with humans. But when I say slowly, I mean slowly. Murderbot isn't ready to put all the pieces together yet, even by the end of the story. But the reader can start to see how this is all falling into place. This was another thrilling adventure that circled back to some of the unanswered questions from the first book. I really like the way Wells is structuring this series, and I could honestly see it working really well as a television show. Things are building on each other well while everything remains exciting and fast-paced.

In the second book, Murderbot has finally fled from it's life as a SecUnit and is going digging in its past. Some time ago a job went really wrong, and the company did their best to erase Murderbot's memory. That's an imperfect process, and it's what pushed Murderbot to break free. But now it's time to find answers. Along the way, Murderbot meets an incredibly powerful ship named ART who may or may not become a friend. It's hard to tell since neither of them has ever had a friend before. It also takes on a job as a security consultant for a group of humans and slowly starts to learn that not all humans are as cruel as the ones it has always worked with. ART is a great addition, and I really hope it shows up in future stories.

I've been meaning to read Murderbot for a long time. And then tor.com provided a free download of all four novellas in anticipation of the release of the first full-length novel. So I finally got my chance to binge these incredible books, and I'm so happy I did. Murderbot is a security unit who is rented out by her company to protect humans on dangerous jobs. Some time ago, it hacked itself so that the company could no longer control its every move. But since all it really wants to do is watch media, and it has plenty of time to do that on the job, the rebellion pretty much stopped there. Murderbot still pretends to be a fully functioning, fully compliant SecUnit. Until the latest job goes sideways and the humans figure out its secret. I love Murderbot so much. It's incredibly awkward and weirdly relatable for a robotic killing machine. The shorter form of the novella keeps the story moving at an impressive clip, and I'm excited to see what the next adventure is.