Murderbot my beloved 😍 

Somebody should give it a vacation

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

Love love loved it. MB was its usual sassy and exasperated-and-annoyed-at-the-humans self. The combat and action scenes are once again well written and the universe keeps on expanding with new bits of lore. Some chapters dragged on a bit but nothing major and nothing to DNF over. Finished it in a couple of sittings over 2 days but I couldn't keep my mind off it during the day. 

CAWPILE - 9 7 8 8 7 7 9 - 7.8 average. 

I've loved the way each of the books in this series has been building off each other, from offhand comments about the governor module to full-blown detail here. The alien remnants coming back at long last was a great premise for the first full-length book! And loved that we got to revisit so many of the original crew.

Of course, the heart of this one is friendship and we are reunited with ART! I love the relationships in these books and we get to spend so much more time on them here. This one also felt more intense than most of the others so far, it starts hot and it feels like there's no time to rest. I wasn't sure how the new length would work when the other books so far felt the perfect length but this was an action-packed ride that never felt overly drawn out. 

There's room for a lot more detail of course, and I am finding it harder to keep track of the many names and locations and events that have been part of this series now but that's mostly a me problem. I think with the length of this one it would definitely help to reread the others as a refresher. I chose to read the 6th book (written after the 5th but occurring before it) before this one and it's very interesting in retrospect as there was no hint at the chaos that would come very soon after.

Overall, very good and I'm very expecting about the new characters we're introduced to in this book.

Fave quote from the book: "Angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?"

The beginning is a little confusing, but that's the experience Murderbot also has: it gets into yet another unfamiliar hostile situation and has to figure out a way to get out of it while keeping it's humans safe. Having so much agency available to itself, Murderbot ends up in an enotional spiral that reveals it might be close to being able to start processing the traumatic events it has been through. At least Murderbot is a little more open to discussing it's thoughts and feelings with the selected few in it's inner circle of... clients/teammates/*gasp*friends.

All the revelations, plot twists, and feelings made me unable to put the book down – I just had to know what happens next and keep reading! The book gets better and better while the plot advances, and I can't describe how elated I am with all the connections Murderbot is finding.

Of course Murderbot is being the familiar sassy, assholeish, introverted SecUnit who keeps going to impossible lengths for the not-friends it won't admit caring for but actually does. Murderbot is slowly starting to admit it has friends, though, and that might help it decide what it wants to do in life. I love Murderbot's personality!

Alongside Murderbot's familiar narrative voice, the narration is splashed with additions of it's memory files and towards the end also pov's

of different SecUnit/Murderbots

. Ahhhh, I almost feel spoiled rotten to get so many new perspectives on Murderbot, but still get to see the original one evolve and yet stay recognizably itself.

I'm intriqued by the first glances we get to the new

SecUnit 03. I wish it could become friends with Murderbot, or at the very least that we'd get updates on it in the future as well

.

–

SecUnit 03

This book is more sweary-y than its shorter counterparts. It's nice to see Murderbot's personality grow as it shifts into a less-sec-unit-exclusive way of living. It was also great to get ART back and learn more about its crew. I should be transparent that I read the first 5 books in the series in a week and I'm batch reviewing them. Some of the contents blends together. It's really interesting to see Amena and Murderbot's relationship develop, and to see how it's come to love and be love as it's able.