Audiobook
English language
Published Oct. 12, 2023
It has a dark past - one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself Murderbot. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a research transport vessal named ART (you don't want to know what the A stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks...
Same interesting narrative voice but nothing interesting was done with it in this second volume. The first book was novel enough to impress me but the second entry revealed an author with interests very different from mine. I might go back to this series of I'm in the mood for some fluff but probably not.
The second 'Murderbot' story, this one has it going back to where it all began, a mine where it went 'rogue' and killed its clients, forcing it to disable its governor, so it wouldn't happen again. But memory, especially mostly erased memory, is a tricky thing. It isn't sure if it was the governor that made it go rogue, or it disabled its governor to go rogue. Either way, it has to know.
But getting to the mine on a distant planet won't be easy. On the journey, it finds an uneasy ally in the transport ship which happens to be an on-loan research vessel with a hugely powerful bot in charge of it, but is rather emotional over entertainment shows (provided by Murderbot) featuring research vessels whose crew dies from misadventures and needs some 'hand holding'.
On the planet itself, it hires itself off to a small team going …
The second 'Murderbot' story, this one has it going back to where it all began, a mine where it went 'rogue' and killed its clients, forcing it to disable its governor, so it wouldn't happen again. But memory, especially mostly erased memory, is a tricky thing. It isn't sure if it was the governor that made it go rogue, or it disabled its governor to go rogue. Either way, it has to know.
But getting to the mine on a distant planet won't be easy. On the journey, it finds an uneasy ally in the transport ship which happens to be an on-loan research vessel with a hugely powerful bot in charge of it, but is rather emotional over entertainment shows (provided by Murderbot) featuring research vessels whose crew dies from misadventures and needs some 'hand holding'.
On the planet itself, it hires itself off to a small team going to the planet to meet a company person holding the team's data hostage. An attempted sabotage raises the stakes as Murderbot now has to protect his clients and get them safely off the planet again before going off to find the mine. When he does this, the truth he discovers is not what he remembers. But he now has to go save his clients again before deciding what to do now he knows just what happened at the mine.
Murderbot and ART, a true partnership ♥️
I get it now: this is autistic Jack Reacher in space. I'm glad the books eventually get longer as I suspect that's what is keeping me back from the fifth star, and I'm certainly intrigued to see where the series goes. This one is a tight little adventure that feels like a bridge towards something more substantial, but it's fun on it's own terms.
4.5
this series is shaping up to be pretty episodic (appropriate i guess given its protagonist's love of serial fiction) and this volume feels like it's leading up to a more major plot point. still i don't have any complaints about it though, it is a very good episode 2
Loving this series so much. It's impressive to me that in such a short book, Martha Wells is able to immerse me fully in Murderbot's world.
So fast to read! These are very short books and I don't mind at all.
It doesn't add much to the first book. But all the things that made the first book fun continue. Funny lines, all characters are good people, action all the time (except a bit of lull at the start). A bit of light is shed on the mystery of Murderbot's dark past.
wow ok I. LOVE. MURDERBOT.
Finished 2024-01-06
Was better this time around (Graphic Audio version).
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Second try: january 6 2024. Reading the Graphic Audio version now, and that is more palatable. I think I can get through this, this time.
Segunda entrega del Matabot, y aquí toca ver un poco lo que pasó antes de su liberación.
Solo con la presentación del nuevo personaje ya habría merecido la pena leer esto.
A sweet and genuine origin story, chronicling the platonic affection between a murderous cyborg and a transport ship (it’s much more poignant than it sounds). With all the wisecracks and shoot-em-up space plots, Murderbot might be easily dismissed as a clever gimmick, but Wells writes with genuine heart and a fun examination of the emotional experience of artificial intelligence. The books are joyous, quick, and charming.
Head and shoulders above the first novella, which wasn't even that bad, this story shows real growth with what the author is trying to do with this world and the characters in it. Genuinely heartwarming and interesting, the ending surprised me more than the ending of the first book, even though that was arguably a twist and this one wasn't. The main character's development over the story, a development they're clearly not very aware of, came as a huge and very comforting, engaginge shock to me.
Oh gods, this series makes me so happy.
Later: Who's got a comfort series? I've got a comfort series.
After multiple rounds of abandoning my intended to-read, I decided that the only way to get to COVID was to read like I was a teenager again: back-to-back science fiction and fantasy, preferably in serial form. Good news: in the two decades that have passed, spec fic has gotten super high-brow. Murderbot carried me through all of July. In this, second outing, despite it's best intentions, Murderbot keeps making friends. ART, arguably Murderbot's best friend, is my favorite character. Fresh off of its first human friendships (and unwilling to acknowledge them as such), Murderbot needs another bot to be friends with. And ART is not human, although charmingly a bit arrogant, and definitely more than a bit pedantic, ART is a beautiful foil to the sardonic and asocial Murderbot.
The second book in the series spools out some of the backstory hinted at in the first, but the central focus …
After multiple rounds of abandoning my intended to-read, I decided that the only way to get to COVID was to read like I was a teenager again: back-to-back science fiction and fantasy, preferably in serial form. Good news: in the two decades that have passed, spec fic has gotten super high-brow. Murderbot carried me through all of July. In this, second outing, despite it's best intentions, Murderbot keeps making friends. ART, arguably Murderbot's best friend, is my favorite character. Fresh off of its first human friendships (and unwilling to acknowledge them as such), Murderbot needs another bot to be friends with. And ART is not human, although charmingly a bit arrogant, and definitely more than a bit pedantic, ART is a beautiful foil to the sardonic and asocial Murderbot.
The second book in the series spools out some of the backstory hinted at in the first, but the central focus is exploring what makes a bot itself and not just any generic construct. I loved this: I think it had a lot to say about people, growth and relationships.
