The first full-length novel in Martha Wells' New York Times and USA Today bestselling Murderbot Diaries series. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.WINNER of the 2021 Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards! I think the audiobook is quite well done, it even manages not to make Murderbot sound definitively male or female. I’ll be back for more as soon as it’s available. I had an exciting ride, a lot of action, good mystery and I got to watch Murderbot grow up. Then the Network Effect kicks in: we have multiple non-human intelligences connected to each other making Murderbot’s situation less unique while making his value higher and pushing him to define who he is and what he wants to do next. Creating a 2.0 copy of himself, for reasons I won’t share here, and using his memories to persuade another SecUnit to hack its own governor unit, again help Murdrbot to reflect on its identity. Seeing the relationship between ART and its humans gives Murderbot a lot to think about. Except this time Murderbot has to rescue both ART and ART’s humans. Then she builds a plot that brings Murderbot back into contact with ART, the sarcastic, extremely bright, apparently working on covert missions transport ship that sheltered Murderbot earlier. SPOLER ALERT : SKIP THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHSįirstly she lets Murderbot itself slowly figure out that that is a question that deserves to be answered. Martha Wells’ answer to that is inspired. So, if Murderbot is going to continue to associate with humans and commit itself to protecting some of them, but isn’t, doesn’t want to be and can’t become human, how does it develop to become more than a SecUnit that’s hacked its governor unit so it can spend more time watching TV? Nevertheless, Murderbot is attached to its humans pretty much in the way you or I might be attached to our Labradors. Humans are messy and often reckless, shouldn’t be trusted with weapons, are inappropriately optimistic for creatures that are both fragile and slow. Murderbot isn’t, doesn’t want to be and can’t become, human. The mystery continued to become more complex and the actions scenes continued to pile on and they were all fun and very well done but what I liked most about the book was the way in which Murderbot developed. I managed to pace myself and consumed the book over three days rather than one.

There’s never a dull moment and it took some self-control for me to do anything else today.’ Reading ‘ Network Effect’ is like falling through a cascade of action sequences while working on a big picture to make sense of everything. MurderBot remains its compelling self but being freed from the novella format means that the plot structure is more complicated and the puzzle that needs to be solved has more twists in it.

Murderbot network effect