Network Effect

This novel is always such a delight to get back to on a reread of the series. My love for ART also carries a lot of my feelings too.

I wasn't sure how Murderbot was going to stand up to the longer length the first time I read this, but I like that there's more space for side stories to develop; in particular, we get to see flashbacks to Murderbot and Amena back on Preservation, we get to see Arada grow as a leader, and we get to see Murderbot 2.0.

This novel also reprises previous parts of the series in a really satisfying way. Even more ART (and more ART snark). We get more about Mensah handling trauma. Murderbot 2.0 is an explicit parallel to Miki's death. The ending of this novel escalates the end of Exit Strategy where Murderbot doesn't know how to feel about everybody feeling protective about it or wanting to save it.

It's all just so good.

As other reviews here have noted, this is the first murderbot installment that's long, qualifying it for space opera designation (is that an award category?), so it's the first one that I had to, I don't want to say slog, but put some muscle into finishing. It's no thousand-page Ken Liu steampunk novel, but long enough that the publishers didn't bundle it in a two-book volume, so it comes between books 3-4 in Volume 2 and 6-7 in Volume 3 (I wonder if the author wrote a long one just to mess them up).

But I kept at it because still, it's murderbot, and the action never stops, except when it does stop and murderbot thinks about its (their?) feelings, which, percentage-wise compared to the other books, isn't that much time (still a fraction of the time spent watching Sanctuary Moon and other titles from future netflixes). I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say there's more of everything here, and I've lost track of all the humans (do they even have names?). Bad murderbot!

The 5th book in Murderbot's series, and the first full length novel, it tells the story of Murderbot getting kidnapped by ART, who we first met in book 2, Artificial Condition. Murderbot's relationship certainly veers all over the place, but it is always funny. Murderbot helps rescue ART's crew and maybe begins more adventures with ART.

I have to admit finding it a bit harder than usual getting thru this book. Maybe the novella length is perfect for Murderbot. It seemed like about the same amount of things happened in this full novel as happened in the previous novellas, but it just took longer for things to happen. Don't get me wrong, Murderbot was still pretty damn funny. Their observations of human interactions, and their growing disgust at their own, are truly inspiring. And coming across (creating?) another "rogue" SecUnit is pretty fun too.

But there were a lot of characters and too much boring interaction. I really enjoyed Murderbot's exchanges with Amena, a teenager they really don't understand, and they are precious. So it is definitely worth the read, but just not as snappy as previous installments. 3.5 out of 4, but I gotta go with the higher rating.