Murderbot the movie. This is my favorite book in this series, a certifiable event. It pays off so many plot threads and calls back the best jokes. Honestly this is Murderbot at its best, and even in my mind it felt like the high budget movie made at the end of a limited mini series

Hooray for another Murderbot entry, this one long enough to feel like a double feature! That's the structure for sure, two huge action set pieces separated by a strategic planning session bridge. This was quite satisfying with the return of some past favorite characters, and the length of the story felt necessary to fully explore the plot and character conflicts introduced. Again, the themes of artificial/neurodivergent intelligence, what constitutes personhood, human+ rights, corporate vs. humanistic society, etc. were really well examined here. The further development and maturation of several key relationships exemplified the joy of what a series can do better than a standalone novel. I was particularly intrigued by the investigation of the central mystery's technological and organic material hybrid (

the alien remnant takeover of human-built technology epitomized by Target Control System, and that poor colonist

). The visual descriptions of what Murderbot finds in the bottom of that tunnel system were so visceral and memorable, truly a great, creepy image that will stick with me, no matter how great a filmmaker captures it someday in the eventual adaptation of this book. 

I liked the proper story element of this one, I much prefer it over the shorter story. Unfortunately, it was still a slog to get through, and I think it's because of two things: 1) there is too much tech/science details included and 2) because murderbot can think quickly and think a lot of things at once, the writing reflects this but it is hard to follow and you just need a lot of concentration to read these books, and I don't have a lot to spare 😅

I am still thoroughly enjoying the Murderbot Diaries. However, this book seemed harder to get through, for me. It may have something to do with the fact that this volume is at least twice as long as the previous four books, which were all less than 200 pages (or at least close to that). There were parts of this one that seemed to drag a little bit for me.

Nevertheless, by the end, it was still a great book. My star rating kind of averages out my feelings on the book, as a whole. But the last hundred pages or so were pretty intense.

In this story, Murderbot (aka "SecUnit") and some of its friends are hijacked by a ship that attacks them. This ship turns out to be a familiar vessel, a transport ship piloted by a bot-pilot which Murderbot "affectionately" calls ART, who has appeared in a pervious book. But there is something wrong. ART does not appear to be present on the ship. There is some kind of alien remnant technology that has hijacked ART's ship and has possibly deleted ART altogether.

This sets a rather bizarre sequence of events into motion that involves Murderbot and, eventually, all of its friends. 

The usual sardonic humor is fully present in this book. Hardly a page goes by where I didn't laugh out loud at something that the neurotic bot thinks or says. The book, as usual, is written in first person from the POV of Murderbot, and it continuously adds "asides" in parentheses, by way of explanation, or sometimes disclaimer, and sometimes even contradicting itself directly. Did I mention that Murderbot is neurotic? It experiences emotions and feelings and really hates that it does so. It also really doesn't like interactions with humans (except for Dr. Mensah, whom it really likes). It also has some pretty strong feelings toward ART, the bot-pilot who appears to have been deleted from its ship.

I highlighted a few quotes from the book that represent the way the bot thinks/feels.

"Overconfident humans who don't listen to anybody else scare the hell out of me." I think we might all be able to identify with that one.

At one point, one of the humans says, "Just remember you're not alone here." To which the bot thinks, "I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90 plus percent of my problems are." Now that I think about it, I might be able to identify with that, too.

And then one that doesn't directly involve Murderbot: "Iris: 'Peri, you can't bomb the colony.' Perihelion: 'You are incorrect, Iris, I can bomb the colony." Read that with emphasis on the word "can," for the real effect, there. By the way, Perihelion is the name of the transport ship piloted by ART.

As far as I know, there are two more Murderbot books, and a couple of short stories (which I purchased today from Amazon), and I will be reading all of them. I will also look into some of Ms. Wells's other books, as well.

I recommend this for fans of hard science fiction, as well as fans of Murderbot who have not yet gotten this far in the journey.