Recently read: System Collapse by Martha Wells
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All on Mon Nov 27 00:36:10 2023
All right, our favorite snarky SecUnit is back in action.
For those who are unfamiliar with the series, you should start with the beginning and run though those first. However, a brief background:
Murderbot (self-named) is a Security Unit. That is a construct
comprised of cloned humand and bot parts, working as a cohesive entity. Normally, SecUnits are externally controlled through a Govenor unit.
Due to a past incident, from which it drew its name, Murderbot hacked
its Govenor to become a free agent, or "rogue".
Anyway, the last book, Murderbot and its crew from Preservation, along
with its friend ART, an AI operating a research transport ship, and
ART's crew, dealt with a lost colony world. One that is contaminated
with alien remnants material.
This was complicated by a Corporate presence, there to take control of
the colony based on their rights from a long-ago hostile takeover of
the original colonizing company. In the Corporate Rim, takeovers can be
very hostile, sometimes including dead bodies.
In this story, Barish-Estranza has decided that the colony is pretty
worthless, so it would like to harvest the assets. The assets are the colonists, which B-E would like to get under labor contracts so they
can go off to happy new lives as indentured asteroid miners or other
fun occupations.
So it's a showdown of the Corporate and Free Polity groups to win over
the colonists to their side, while the Preservation group is busy
trying "find" (forge) the original colony charter. This is complicated
because Murderbot is suffering some sort of PTSD from the harrowing
events of the previous book.
Then the colonists drop a bomb about a possible breakaway faction
supposedly living near the terraforming equipment at the pole. So a
crew plus Murderbot, and ART-in-a-drone head out to investigate.
I was a bit disappointed when I heard the next book would continue
events on the colony. I was hoping for new adventures in a new locale.
It's best to view this as the second part of a single novel with
Network Effect.
In general, I enjoyed this well enough, although I got the feeling
Wells didn't come up with any great new ideas so just continued along
with this plot. It also seemed a bit padded, even though it was
relatively short for a novel (256 pages in hardback).
There really wasn't all that much action compared to the previous
novel. I think it would have been better in the old novella format, but
I'm sure the publisher would rather have something close to
novel-length.
Brian
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