Fugitive Telemetry

enne📚 reviewed Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)

3 stars

This isn't a bad Murderbot novella, but it doesn't really move enough forward enough for me to appreciate it as anything more than an action/detective side event in between the much more emotionally impactful Exit Strategy and Network Condition. I think my favorite parts of this book are Murderbot snarkily interacting with Indah and station security, where it's trying to one up them but also do its job and also (mostly) obey the rules that they've given to it.

This novella does get some more into Mensah's trauma (and avoidance) but I'm not sure this story is doing extra on top of what Home or Network Condition is doing, and her trauma is not the thematic focus of this novella either. (Although what that focus is, I'm not sure I could really pin down. Maybe that's part of the problem.)

If Murderbot was going to stick around in Preservation space …

This isn't a bad Murderbot novella, but it doesn't really move enough forward enough for me to appreciate it as anything more than an action/detective side event in between the much more emotionally impactful Exit Strategy and Network Condition. I think my favorite parts of this book are Murderbot snarkily interacting with Indah and station security, where it's trying to one up them but also do its job and also (mostly) obey the rules that they've given to it.

This novella does get some more into Mensah's trauma (and avoidance) but I'm not sure this story is doing extra on top of what Home or Network Condition is doing, and her trauma is not the thematic focus of this novella either. (Although what that focus is, I'm not sure I could really pin down. Maybe that's part of the problem.)

If Murderbot was going to stick around in Preservation space and Indah was going to become a recurring character, or we were going to have ongoing themes of Murderbot trying/failing to fit into Preservation systems and culture, then maybe this could have felt more impactful in retrospect.

I have a spoiler-y offhand comment, so I'll post that separately.

73pctGeek reviewed Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)

Short, sweet and funny

4 stars

The more I read these books, the more I anticipate the upcoming TV series with both glee and apprehension. Can the delightful creature that is Murderbot be adequately portrayed in another format?

A short novella wherein Murderbot turns to detecting! At this point if you don’t like the Murderbot diaries, you probably never will, and if you do like them, you’ll enjoy this book too. This one made me laugh a lot, and fall ever more in love with everybody’s (my) favourite SecUnit.