Jensi 🏴🚩 • he/him reviewed System Collapse by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
Once more, a nice adventure
5 stars
... and somehow many more characters than in the past. Or feels like it. Still fun, tho.
Hardcover, 256 pages
English language
Published Nov. 14, 2023 by Tordotcom.
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!
Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!
Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.
... and somehow many more characters than in the past. Or feels like it. Still fun, tho.
Took me a second to get back into murderbot after a short break in those stories and because this one picks up where Network Effect left off, not Fugitive Telemetry. It was absolutely worth the little confusion though, because I really enjoyed this one once more, seeing beloved SecUnit deal with emotions and [redacted] in that weird neurotissue thing was a nice little change of pace to the earlier, very confident stories. Highly recommend this one to everyone who got this deep into the Murderbot Diaries in the first place!
Yes. It is just more Murderbot. And that is a good thing.