Hardcover, 256 pages
English language
Published Nov. 14, 2023 by Tordotcom.
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!
Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.
If you've enjoyed the Murderbot saga so far, you'll almost certainly enjoy this one too.
It’s been long enough between books that I looked up a recap of where we last left Murberbot. Glad I did, because then I was able to just enjoy this one. It’s more of the same, which is what it’s felt like for a while with Murderbot, but that’s OK! Very incremental character development on their part, but the character is interesting enough that I’m happy to spend more time with them.
Same Murderbot confusion about how the world works (and emotions), then same gripping action. My palms sweat when the fights start.
I think I'm going to have to binge these again because it takes me half the novella to remember who everybody is. I suppose I have that to look forward to.
Yes. It is just more Murderbot. And that is a good thing.
While the complexity of trauma and self-doubt was a welcome thread here, this felt like a solid novella lost its way in variations.
Content warning Spoilers for some of the middle bits
Robots With Anxiety are my favorite genre; but then there's a part with the intellectual equivalent of an A-Team construction montage, and it's just magnificent.
Murderbot just has near infinite potential as a character. It's multiprocessing nature makes the stories complex but so rich, I feel like starting the whole series again now to pick up the bits I missed.
System Collapse feels like a tightening of the Murderbot Diaries formula that really paid off. Despite some of the same issues that have gotten in the way of my enjoyment of previous installations, I really liked this one and it's reinvigorated my love for the series.
It wouldn't be accurate to say that Murderbot is back at it again, because it hasn't been away from the action in a few books now. We left off on a planet with a few colonies that were being ravaged by a strange alien contaminant that had the ability to jump between humans and artificial systems, making both act erratically. Murderbot, along with a gaggle of "its humans" continue to help the colonists on this planet, but are soon met with a corporate exploration team from the company Barish-Estranza (B-E) who they suspect is scouting the planet to assess whether they can take advantage …
System Collapse feels like a tightening of the Murderbot Diaries formula that really paid off. Despite some of the same issues that have gotten in the way of my enjoyment of previous installations, I really liked this one and it's reinvigorated my love for the series.
It wouldn't be accurate to say that Murderbot is back at it again, because it hasn't been away from the action in a few books now. We left off on a planet with a few colonies that were being ravaged by a strange alien contaminant that had the ability to jump between humans and artificial systems, making both act erratically. Murderbot, along with a gaggle of "its humans" continue to help the colonists on this planet, but are soon met with a corporate exploration team from the company Barish-Estranza (B-E) who they suspect is scouting the planet to assess whether they can take advantage of the rich resources while also conning the unsuspecting colonists into joining B-E as indentured servants. Our Murderbot group learns from the leaders of one of the two primary colonies that there's actually a separatist colony that broke away decades before, living near one of the terraforming stations at one of the poles. They lost contact with them because of the communications interference caused by the station, but if either B-E or the Murderbot group are going to convince the colonists to leave, they need to get that colony on board as well. Hoping to head B-E off, the Murderbot team heads to try to make contact with this elusive colony and typical Murderbot shenanigans ensue including trying to communicated with antiquated systems, trying to communicate with annoying, emotional humans, getting into trouble with the corporations, and lots of action coming to an explosive conclusion.
The Murderbot diaries are kind of hard to review because they are so unique in the space of science fiction. Nearly all of them are novella length and focus on a very small mission or story, but they all pack a massive worldbuilding punch, filled with both blocks of exposition and technical jargon that can sometimes get in the way of the story. I think many people would agree that the first book in the series was the best, both because it was so novel and interesting, but also because it wasn't getting in its own way at that point, with some of these more distracting elements becoming "worse" in subsequent books. But I think System Collapse was a genuine attempt to get back to its roots. It wasn't perfect, but it was a noticeable change.
The story here was fantastic. These books are at their best when they are focused and self contained. The plot here is tight: get to this separatist colony and if they're still there, try to convince them to leave. I'd say most of the book is focused on just that with a healthy dose of interpersonal narratives which are also nice to see. Murderbot is struggling with something similar to PTSD, and it has a very dynamic and interesting relationship with ART which serves as an interesting foil to its relationship with the humans. We continue to see the struggle with Murderbot understanding humans while it also tries to understand why it is so protective of them. I find the author's ability to pack these aspects of very interesting character development into such small books very impressive.
While improved, this book did not abandon some of the aspects that I'd consider weaker, like the poorly integrated exposition and overuse of jargon. In the middle of dialogue or action, the narrative will trail off to give context about how corporations work, or what a bot is designed to do, or how a system interacts with humans. It can be very interesting, but it is almost always jarring and an interruption to the flow of the narrative. I think there could be a healthy amount of editing some of this down. At points I would stop reading entirely and think "why is this being brought up? why is is being brought up now? is this relevant to the plot at all or did the author just have a fun idea about worldbuilding and insist on including it?" and while sometimes these tidbits did later have a narrative purpose, oftentimes they did not.
This felt like a refreshing jump back into what Murderbot was in the beginning and I think it really paid off. I understand the necessity to continually build the universe given that we are 7 books in, so I find that I can forgive some of the weaker aspects of this book. If you feel like you've dropped off of the Murderbot Diaries train, allow me to suggest you get back in for the sake of reading this one!
I was excited to hear more about other SecUnits with hacked governor modules.
I continue to love the Murderbot series. By this point, the action parts have lost impact because there's too much precedent for how they're going to turn out, so I think it's wise of Wells to play that part down a bit in this book, in favour of a story more about persuasion and trust building. And the ongoing saga of Murderbot learning about both its limits and capabilities continues to be one of the most relatable arcs in SF/F.
I'll be honest - I can't remember much from the previous books, especially not any details about the many human characters. But MurderBot is such a fun person to listen to talk, it doesn't really matter.
This seventh Murderbot story is a direct sequel, a part 2 even, to Network Effect, which was not actually the previous book published. So if it's been a couple years since you read Network Effect, it's worth doing a quick reread before starting this one as there are a lot of references to the events in that book which will be hard to keep track of unless it's fairly fresh in your memory. Or at least read a plot summary somewhere.
That said, Network Effect did seem to leave a lot of questions unanswered at the end, so getting a part 2 is wonderful and learning a bit more about ART and the organization ART is part of were an extra treat. I ended this book wanting an entire side series about Three and where they end up. Another satisfying Murderbot treat!
The continuation of the story from Network Effect but handled poorly. You probably need to reread NE just before starting this because there's absolutely no explanation or context for anything. Also this book brings nothing new to the table.
This one picked up right where the last one left off. I always enjoy Martha Wells, this one is no different.
I defs needed that deadpanned Murderbot wittiness in a detailed world build... It's what keeps me reading this series!
Content warning Mild hint at the story's outcome
Took me a bit to get back into the storyline, since there is no built-in recap of what happened before. But then the action starts and it's good old Murderbot saving his humans again, who seem to have grown on him even more. And ART of course. What's not to love.
