User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
2021 is looking to be a pretty special year. No, I don’t mean the vaccine, although that’s pretty amazing. No, I mean Murderbot is back in a solid novella. While I’m contractually bound to not repeat the approximately 80 highlights I made while reading, I can assure you that it is filled with ‘Bot’s trademark sarcastic thoughts on humans, slow thought processes, and complicated facial expressions.
"Oh good, maybe the security level would go from barely adequate to mostly adequate. I didn't make an expression because I knew Indah would be more annoyed by me not reacting than by me reacting."In Fugitive Telemetry, ‘Bot is on Preservation Station and has recently discovered a dead–cough,
deceased–human. This is odd, because they appear murdered on a station with a threat assessment of 7%
“(to make it drop lower than that we’d have to be on an uninhabited planet.)” ‘Bot jumps right into the investigation, spurred on by concern that GrayCris might be involved. In this case, it’s somewhat constrained from using full capabilities due to general unfriendliness of the human Station Security team and its honor system. It has some new humans to work with, although a few of our familiar friends make an appearance. In timeline terms, it takes place before
Network Effect.
I received notice of my ARC approval after a marathon day vaccinating people (10 stations, 573 people, thank you all very much for getting shots), and while fulfilled, was quite exhausted. I waged a brief debate with myself: do I crash in bed? Do I save it as a reward after I write my two other reviews and finish my two other less-interesting books? Or do I go for it?
I think you know what I did.
While I read, my day fell away, page by page, replaced by sarcastic observations and extremely dry wit. ‘Bot, how I’ve missed you.
“I hadn’t had as much relevant experience in that time. But what I did have were thousands of hours of category mystery media, so I had a lot of theoretical knowledge that was possibly anywhere from 60 to 70 percent inaccurate shit.”
The only real question was how long until I re-read all the novellas?
Endless thanks to Netgalley and Tor/Forge Books for an ebook ARC. All thoughts are mine (although if you like, we can have a philosophical debate on that one) and all quotes are subject to change.
Rating: really liked it
Murder on the Preservation Express New Murderbot novella, now on sale! And good news: Martha Wells has signed a contract with Tor to write three more! Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com (along with my co-reviewer Jana's excellent review):
Martha Wells continues her popular and highly-acclaimed MURDERBOT DIARIES series with another novella,
Fugitive Telemetry, which actually takes place before the only novel in the series so far, Network Effect. (So you could read this one before that novel, but you do need to read books 1-4 first.) At this point in time Murderbot, the introverted and snarky cyborg who is the narrator and the heart of this series, is a fairly new resident on Preservation, a planet outside of the callously capitalistic Corporate Rim. Murderbot is a companion to and protector of Dr. Mensah, one of the few humans Murderbot has gradually learned to trust. Although Preservation society isn’t entirely accepting of security bots (especially rogue ones like Murderbot that aren’t subject to human controls), it’s generally a very peaceful and progressive place.
So it’s a shock to everyone when the body of an unknown person is found in an isolated passageway of Preservation Station, the space station above the planet, clearly murdered. Station Security is charged with the investigation, with Senior Officer Indah in charge, but Mensah prevails on them to let Murderbot help, since it knows a lot more about murder than the local security force, and they want to make sure that GrayCris isn’t involved. Indah is annoyed (“but then she always looked like that when I was around”) and distrustful of working with a SecUnit. But when things get complicated, Murderbot is undeniably useful to have around.
Fugitive Telemetry is an engaging and enjoyable entry in the MURDERBOT DIARIES series, with a plot that stirs a murder mystery in with the regular science fiction adventure plot. As always, Murderbot’s snarky narration (liberally scattered with parenthetical remarks, which I love because I’m—obviously—partial to them myself) is one of the highlights. Sometimes there are even parentheses inside of parentheses:
(When we had first discussed the idea of me getting jobs as a way to encourage the Preservation Council to grant me permanent refugee status, I didn’t know very much about the kind of contract in which I was actually an active participant. (My previous contracts were rental contracts with the company, where I was just a piece of equipment.) Pin-Lee had promised, “Don’t worry, I’ll preserve your right to wander off like an asshole anytime you like.”)
(I said, “It takes one to know one.”)
I won’t say more about the mystery that drives the story, to avoid spoilers, but it’s a solid one, with a resolution that was both logical and a complete surprise, at least to me.
Fugitive Telemetry doesn’t really move the overall story arc forward in the way that most of the other books have, partly because it’s a prequel to the preceding novel and partly because Murderbot’s interactions with the initially hostile Indah have a been-there-done-that kind of feel. These are relatively minor complaints, though. Murderbot, though still a media-watching introvert, has come a long way from the SecUnit that had near-crippling social anxiety in All Systems Red. It interacts much better with humans now and even finds itself (somewhat begrudgingly) appreciative of its relationships with them, though its eye-rolling at humans’ logical inadequacies will probably never disappear … and that’s a good thing. We all could use a Murderbot in our lives to remind us of our shortcomings and protect us against corporate evils and other threats. Any new MURDERBOT DIARIES book shoots immediately to the top of my reading list — and it should yours as well!
Update #3: So my brother, another Murderbot fan, was coming into town about a week ago and let me know that he was VERY anxious to read Murderbot's next adventure. I thought, well, I can reread my ARC of
Fugitive Telemetry and write my review for it and then loan him the book. Excellent plan! I'm on it!
The rereading part went great. The actual writing of the review ... not so much. So my brother left town, sadly, without the book, which is still sitting here on my coffee table.
Update #2: I just finished! Another fun Murderbot adventure! Review to come!
Update #1: AAAHHH, the ARC of this book just landed on my doorstep! I am SO EXCITED for a new Murderbot adventure!!
Initial post: More Murderbot coming! How awesome is that? Can we make 2021 come any sooner? I think we're all over and done with 2020 anyway...
Rating: really liked it
This was exactly what I needed just now to set my life right. I mean, who knew that a pessimistic and grumpy android would end up being such a ray of sunshine that restores my belief in humanity? (Kidding, of course I knew.) (That’s why it seems that every other sentence out of my mouth for the last year somehow included the word “Murderbot” in it.)
As I said before, M-Bot is my soul-sibling. “All I wanted to do was watch media and not exist.”
And this novella did not disappoint, solid and snappy and wonderful. It’s a locked
room space station mystery solved by Murderbot. (Which is simply logical.)
“I had archives of everything that had happened since I hacked my governor module, but I hadn’t had as much relevant experience in that time. But what I did have were thousands of hours of category mystery media, so I had a lot of theoretical knowledge that was possibly anywhere from 60 to 70 percent inaccurate shit.”
Fugitive Telemetry is chronologically set right after the events of the four original novellas and before the events of Network Effect. In it, our favorite pessimistically misanthropic grumpy SecUnit -
“a construct made of cloned human tissue, augments, anxiety, depression, and unfocused rage, a killing machine for whichever humans rented me, until I made a mistake and got my brain destroyed by my governor module” - is on the Preservation Station now, the home of Mensah and the rest of the Preservation survey gang. But although it left Corporate Rim - where, true to the name, corporations rule everything - and is in the place where technically it’s not property,
it’s still faced with prejudice, fear and mistrust, as it’s still viewed by most as a murderous tool to be avoided and feared. “There was a big huge deal about it, and Security was all “but what if it takes over the station’s systems and kills everybody” and Pin-Lee told them “if it wanted to do that it would have done it by now,” which in hindsight was probably not the best response.”
And then Station Security happens across a dead human - an unusual occurrence in a place where your chances of being murdered are on par with those on an uninhabited planet.
And M-Bot finds itself smack in the middle of murder investigation — and that’s quite good as without our Bot I’d be amazed if any humans managed to survive unscathed even for the time it takes to watch a single episode of
Sanctuary Moon.
“Oh good, maybe the security level would go from barely adequate to mostly adequate. I didn't make an expression because I knew Indah would be more annoyed by me not reacting than by me reacting.”
We have been following Murderbot ever since its escape from corporate slavery, and in this novella we get to see yet another glimpse of this abhorrent practice, as the murder and corporate slavery are very much entangled here. And what I love is that Martha Wells never gets didactic in getting her point across, but knows how to use subtlety and good storytelling to achieve the necessary emotional
(ick) response.
As usual in her Murderbot novellas, Wells gets the pacing just right. It’s fast when it needs to be, slows down when we need to be treated to longer bits of priceless wry inner monologue, and has action scenes that make perfect sense. Seriously, I’ve read plenty of stories where my eyes just glaze over any time an action scene is on page as descriptions of those can range from dull to incomprehensible — but Wells does those right, easy to follow and actually interesting. And her worldbuilding is excellent — she deliberately gives us what we need to feel comfortable in this world without divulging too much, never overpowering or showing off.
(Oh, and did I mention how much I love all the parenthetical asides?) If seeing endless parenthetical asides gets you irritated, you should step away from this book quite quickly. Me - I love them, and paragraphs like this one make me feel all full of warm fluffy feelings
(double ick):
“The weapons scanner (which I was not allowed to hack, and which I wasn’t hacking) alerted on me, but it had my body scan ID on the weapons-allowed list so it didn’t set off an alarm. (I have energy weapons in my arms and it’s not like I can leave them behind in the hotel room.) (I mean, my arms are detachable so theoretically I could leave them behind if I had a little help but as a longterm solution it was really inconvenient.)”
What I found very well-done is that even seemingly idyllic Preservation society is not an easy place for Murderbot. Yes, Bot is no longer property — but even there humans are conditioned to see it not as a person but a feared murder-machine. And Murderbot by now is really starting to chafe against that because it finally is learning to view itself as a person instead of a disposable feared tool.
Nonhuman and dehumanized by societal perceptions — but a person nevertheless. The prejudices it encounters are quite painful, and it keeps coating its pain in sarcastic annoyance — and all together it makes for a pretty powerful and serious effect even when hidden in snarky comebacks. (view spoiler)
[And it’s terrible to read how it’s shot in the back by people he just rescued from a certain death — all because they realized what it is, and it overpowered any common sense or gratitude or decency. (hide spoiler)] “Aylen looked me over again in that way humans do when they’re trying to intimidate you and they fail to understand you’ve spent the entire length of your previous existence being treated like a thing and so one more impersonal once-over is not exactly going to impress you.”
Oh yeah, and if you ever wondered if Murderbot hangs out with Ratthi — yeah, they juuuust may watch some musical theater together. Which made me grin so happily.
Ah Murderbot, you made some friends even if you don’t quite use that word. Friends who see you as a person, respect you, give you space when you need it and help you work through the layers of emotional trauma that your whole existence had been until the events of
All Systems Red. And it’s simply wonderful, the found family that it did not even realize it needed.
Eyeing me, Indah said, “How would you dispose of a body so it wouldn’t be found?”
I’m not the public library feed, Senior Officer, go do your own research. I said, “If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I’ve already disposed of.”
“It’s joking.” Ratthi managed to sound like he completely believed that. “That’s how it looks when it’s joking.” He sent me on the feed, Stop joking.”
I really hope that Wells keeps writing these, as together they form a wonderful series of episodes of Murderbot Diaries — which I’m as addicted to as M-Bot is to
Sanctuary Moon. I need these for my inner balance and reminders of the goodness, integrity and hope that exist in the world. Dear Martha Wells, please never stop adding to this series.
“I know a ‘fuck off’ when I hear one. So, I fucked off.”
5 stars. Obviously.
Rating: really liked it
Check out my YouTube channel where I show my instant reactions upon finishing reading fantasy books. The exact same formula as the previous books, but much more blandUnpopular opinion time! By the time readers have made it to this book, they have either dropped off due to not liking it, or loved it and continued this far. But I decided to power through even though this series lost it's magic for me a few books ago. Unfortunately, this book was a noticeable step down from previous books, and as such I couldn't bring myself to even finish it.
The plot was dull from the get-go, and while that's usually the case for these books, it just never picked up steam like previous ones did. There was no rich emotional journey, there was no developing of these characters, it just felt like the exact same formula but less inspired.
Quite honestly, this book is just a run of the mill mystery story that involves Murderbot - while lacking the fun interaction between characters and the bonding that occurs between Murderbot and his supporting cast. It also didn't advance the overall story at all - if you were wondering what is going on with GreyCris, what happened with SecUnit 3, what happened with ART, you are going to have to keep on wondering because absolutely none of that is touched upon. This book is just a boring side quest.
I'm also disappointed that Murderbot has developed over the past couple books into a character that is trying to be "too cool". Apparently it's his new thing to say "fuck" every other sentence and feel superior to everyone. I miss the kinder, shyer murderbot who had his insecurities from the earlier books.
I'm not going to completely give up on this series, as I quite liked the previous entry which was the first full length novel. But I am probably going to give up reading any future novellas.
Rating: really liked it
Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries #6)
by Martha Wells, Kevin R. Free (Narrator)
This Murderbot Diary story takes us to a time before the previous book, when Murderbot is providing protection for Dr. Mensah, despite the reservations of some who are aware that it was a rogue Sec Unit. A body has been found on Preservation Station and the person has been murdered. Rarely are there murders on this station and Preservation's station security needs all the help they can get, despite their reluctance to admit it. So MB is back to having to appease suspicious, unfriendly (but who needs friends), non really up to the task of investigating murders security team.
As usual, MB is snarky, funny, and more sympathetic than it'd ever want to admit. Its disdain for all the food crumbs that humans leave in their wake is evident every time it enters a place that humans have been. How is MB going to solve this crime with all the restrictions that humans put on it? Sure, it can get around them but it's made a promise to humans and MB always (maybe, kinda, sorta) keeps its promises.
Published April 27th 2021
Rating: really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best science fiction 2021! WHAT WILL HAPPEN LET’S FIND OUT!All I wanted to do was watch media and not exist.murderbot always hits the spot. i was cranky and depressed, staring at my bookshelves for something to entertain me out of my mood, when it hit me—you know who
else is cranky and depressed and uses entertainment as self-care? MURRRRDERRRRBOOOOOT!
this one's maybe not my favorite in the series; my flawed brain had to blah-blah a lot of the logistics and tech-stuff, but murderbot + locked-room mystery is the french fry in my frosty, so there's a lot to love here.
as always, a tight plot that resolves itself in a satisfying and unexpected way, with plenty of m-bot's signature wry commentary on the proceedings as they endure the suspicion and prejudice that comes with being a rogue secunit amongst humans.
Aylen looked me over again in that way humans do when they're trying to intimidate you and they fail to understand you've spent the entire length of your previous existence being treated like a thing and so one more impersonal once-over is not exactly going to impress you.
this time, murderbot overcomes their antipathy towards these human skeptics and becomes a reluctant hero...JK that's what murderbot ALWAYS does, but it never gets old, because their (figurative) eye-rolling disgust and sleuthing ingenuity is such a BALM to my SOUL, as is their learning curve when it comes to "trying not to freak out the humans it's meant to be helping."
Aylen was watching me intently. "I don't like having private security with its own agenda aboard this station."
Oh wait, she thought it was GrayCris. That maybe I had found out Lutran was a GrayCris agent and killed him, and now I was trying to lead the investigation along a specific path, using my two oblivious human friends as cover.
So, the problem was, that wasn't an unlikely idea at all. It was something I might have to do if I did find a GrayCris operative on the station. which meant I had to answer very carefully.
There were a lot of humans lying to each other on The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, and I knew outright angry denials tended to sound incredibly guilty, even though they were often an innocent human's first impulse. You wouldn't think lying would be a problem for me, after 35,000 plus hours lying about not being a rogue SecUnit while on company contracts, then the whole lying about not being an augmented human and lying about being a non-rogue SecUnit with a fake human supervisor. But the last two hadn't exactly been failure-free; what worked best was misdirection and not letting myself get caught in the wrong place at the right time, and making sure no humans ever thought about asking the wrong questions.
Misdirection, let's try that. "I would have either disposed of the body so it was never found, or made it look like an accident."
Indah frowned, and Aylen's brow creased, and they exchanged a look. Eyeing me, Indah said, "How would you dispose of a body so it wouldn't be found?"
I'm not the public library feed, Senior Officer, go do your own research. I said, "If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I've already disposed of."
"It's joking." Ratthi managed to sound like he completely believed that. "That's how it looks when it's joking."
He sent me on the feed, Stop joking.
Gurathin sighed and rubbed his face and looked off into the distance, like he regretted all his life choices that had led to him standing here right now. On our private feed connection, he sent, Or you could just show them where you were when this person was being killed.
(Yeah, on reflection I think I misdirected in the wrong direction. It was the kind of thing a human or augmented human could get away with saying, not a rogue SecUnit. Even if they knew I was just being an asshole, I'd made them wonder, I'd put the idea in their heads.)
(And now if I did have to kill some GrayCris agents, I'd have to be really careful about what I did with the bodies.)
(It was probably better to make it look like an accident.)
murderbot—winning hearts and minds and complaining about it all the way...
thank you for your service. i would hug you if you'd let me.
****************************************
i was told by the murderbotters among you to read book 6 BEFORE book 5 and, like murderbot, i am learning how to trust humans, so i hope i don’t regret this crazy backwards-seeming choice and end up having to launch a drone into anyone’s face (okay, so i MAY have read the first few pages of Network Effect before giving in to murderbot-fan advice and saw the part about launching drones into annoying human faces)
fingers crossed! for the sake of your collective faces.
come to my blog!
Rating: really liked it
I can’t wait to get the hardback for my collection. I love Murderbot and I always feel sorry for him/her. 😕. I wish MB was my real life friend 😫
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
Rating: really liked it
[4.5/5 stars] I’ll be the first to admit that I love Murderbot so much that anything published in the series immediately gets a baseline rating of three stars… anything I find particularly amusing above and beyond expectation launches it up from there. The full-length novel (book #5) had all the Murderbot attributes but, after some distance from my initial impressions (and review), I don’t think the extended plot did the story any favors. It was a bit repetitive and could’ve benefitted from a more generous edit. Coming home to another novella in Fugitive Telemetry was exactly what the series needed to refresh itself back absolutely superb rather than just merely awesome.
I loved this one. Probably my second favorite after Rogue Protocol. As always, Murderbot was a scream (the humor kind), but what struck me in this one was how much the character has grown. It’s definitely still an antisocial introvert, but you can now read between the lines to see that it actually is finding a bit of begrudging comfort out of its “relationships” and gets a little butt-hurt whenever someone snubs it over a prejudice. My favorite scenes here were the ones involving it trying to work with the humans on their very inefficient terms. Hysterical.
The mystery was very satisfying and the pacing was spot-on. I had to stop myself from devouring too fast because who knows when we’ll get another one. Martha Wells has truly created a unique voice that is as memorable as it is funny.
Recommendations: I’m a huge fan of everything about this series and plan to continue recommending it as often as I can. Murderbot is my spirit animal. I don’t care how much I read, I’ll never get tired of his sardonic nature. The series is especially recommendable because the installments are so short – they give people a chance to try them out without a huge time commitment. I don’t know about everyone else, but I was sold on the very first line of book 1…
Via The Obsessive Bookseller at www.NikiHawkes.com
Other books you might like:
Rating: really liked it
WINNER OF THE 2022 LOCUS AWARD—BEST NOVELLA! Watch the award ceremony here.
WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!#Murderbot fans! Does it get better than this? Knowing that we are mighty & got Author Wells onto the NYT Bestseller list...at #4...*happy dance* Go get one now!
Real Rating: 4.75* of five, rounded up in spite of the dull thud of a dropped plot-point that I needed more of
What Murderbot needed it gotThis is a locked-room murder mystery with Twelve Years a Slave overtones. Much much good action and some serious character development. Don't start here, but don't let the door hit you standing around waiting for it to go on sale before reading it.
When we come onto Preservation Station, we're greeted by a world that...doesn't work like the one you and I are used to:
(Preservation had two economies, one a complicated barter system for planetary residents and one currency-based for visitors and for dealing with other polities. Most of the humans here didn’t really understand how important hard currency was in the Corporation Rim but the council did, and Mensah said the port took in enough in various fees to keep the station from being a drain on the planet’s resources.)
Thus Author Wells makes plain that Preservation Station and Alliance doesn't exist on the Corporate Rim's terms...it interfaces with them, but doesn't make their system its own. I'd wondered about that. I'm very grateful she took the time to say out loud (well, in parenthesis, where Murderbot says a lot of important stuff) what I'd been trying to figure out.
What isn't hard to figure out is what Murderbot's appeal is to us unaugmenteds:
...the humans on the Station wouldn’t have to think about what I was, a construct made of cloned human tissue, augments, anxiety, depression, and unfocused rage, a killing machine for whichever humans rented me, until I made a mistake and got my brain destroyed by my governor module.
–and–
(I don’t know why bot behaviors that are useless except to comfort humans annoy me so much.) (Okay, maybe I do. They built us, right? So didn’t they know how this type of bot took in visual data? It’s not like sensors and scanners just popped up randomly on its body without humans putting them there.)
There's nothing more fun than hearing your inner monologue made outer by a belovèd character speaking it in words. I, too, find the stupid soothing behaviors necessary to interact as frictionlessly as possible with people I don't like very irritating...especially when they get in the way of accomplishing stuff that needs doing, now.
What makes the series especially appealing to me, apart from Murderbot, is the grace notes that Author Wells give us. Murderbot came close to getting a sidekick bot this installment, and something suggests to me that it could still happen. A bot working in the hotel where Murderbot has traced our murder victim to is **eager** to help with the investigation. Murderbot isn't eager to be helped once it has what it needs. "(The bot’s name is Tellus. They name themselves and hearing about it is exhausting.)" thinks Murderbot of the poor basic bot. Now go look at the layers in this simple throw-away here. "Hearing about is exhausting" doesn't even *begin*, Murderbot! But what a lovely easter-egg for the restlessly curious.
Then there's Murderbot's ongoing quest to discover what its origins mean. The corporate entities out after Murderbot and its chosen family (Dr. Mensah and her folk) have occupied Murderbot's threat-assessment module and its tactical programs for so long that it hasn't seen how very human it's becoming:
Maybe I’d been waiting too long for GrayCris to show up and try to kill us all. I was thinking like a CombatUnit, or, for fuck’s sake, like a CombatBot.
–and–
I pulled the schematic from the instructions and found the transponder was buried in the sealed drive unit.
Oh, you have to be kidding me. I’d be pissed off at the humans but I had brought this thing up here without checking.
–and–
This meant no bot pilot that I could get information from. That was depressing. I had no idea what else I was supposed to do as a member of this group and just following humans around listening to them talk felt a lot like just being a SecUnit again. I mean, I am a SecUnit, but … You know what I mean.
Yes, Murderbot, we all know what you mean. It's the way many of us feel a lot of the time, too. You'd be amazed how human you really are.
And don't stalk off all offended. You're really the best of us, not just the rest of us. Not Festivus for you.
Rating: really liked it
Socially distancing Muderbot? Check
Despairing about other's security systems? Check
Murder?
Oh, wait, our murder bot is SOLVING A MURDER that she didn't actually commit. Ah. Check.
This novella is quite in line with the previous ones. Light loner humor, mystery, and comp-talk. This is definitely for fans of the rest of the series, but I should mention that there's nothing really new about it. I admit I liked the full-length novel more, (and the timeline suggests that this novella comes before that).
Rating: really liked it
Murderbot is back and lands right in the middle of what amounts to a locked room mystery, but on a space station. If it's Murderbot, I'm in!
Preservation Station becomes the scene of a crime and our favorite SecUnit is hired on as a consultant to station security to help solve it. Between trying to overcome flat out racism, (or er, SecUnitism), trying to protect its charges on the station and trying to solve the mystery of a dead traveler, Murderbot has its hands full and would rather just relax and watch more episodes of Sanctuary Moon. Will Murderbot be able to solve the mystery and go back to watching its feeds? You'll have to read this to find out!
I admit to being a bit confused at first because last I knew Murderbot was supposed to be working with ART. Because of that it took me a little while to get into this story, and to be honest, this felt more like an earlier Murderbot tale, now being told out of place.
Even though I enjoyed this entry in the series, it felt more like filler than the previous books. I was looking forward to the relationship between ART and our SecUnit being filled out more, but here if felt like we were looking back instead.
Even so, this was an entertaining read, because Murderbot is full of sarcasm and wit, and seems more and more human every time I read more about it. I'll be continuing the series, but I just didn't come out of this read as excited as I was going into it.
*Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the e-ARC of this novella in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*
Rating: really liked it
Murderbot, enough said. Delightful as ever.
Rating: really liked it
“Yeah, good luck with that. Trying to get humans not to touch dangerous things was a full-time job.”
When I picked up Martha Wells'
Fugitive Telemetry (Muderbot #6), I hadn't realized I had skipped Murderbot #5. It didn't matter as
Fugitive Telemetry is a very satisfying standalone murder mystery. Don't get me wrong. Having read the first four installments in the Murderbot Series let me appreciate the context of this case playing out on Preservation Station as well as the humor and personality of Murderbot. As an added bonus, I get to go back and read Network Effect (Murderbot #5). 4.25 stars
“All I wanted to do was watch media and not exist. I said, You know I don’t like fun.”“(I guess the feed isn’t adequate for all forms of communication, particularly those that involve a lot of glaring.)”
Rating: really liked it
In which Murderbot discovers a dead body and has to assist security personnel in discovering the murderer. A sci fi murder mystery with Murderbot in it. Bliss!
If like me you are a Murderbot tragic then you already know how it will go. Lots of sarky comments about humans in general, plenty of humorous moments and some dangerous ones too where Murderbot fights its way out of tight corners. I loved the way it constantly talked itself into how to deal with the people it was working with. There are some big personality changes since the first books.
This book is short and concise with plenty of action. Martha Wells has developed the perfect anti hero in this character. Long may she keep writing this series!
Rating: really liked it
Murderbot investigating an actual murder? Murderbot in a murder mystery??? Yes, please, thank. you. The snark was particularly dialed up in this one (which, hey, I'm not mad at), and special snaps to Pin-Lee and Indah as the stand out side characters this time around. All in all, a very fun novella that quenches (at least for today) my never ending thirst for all things Murderbot
