BoMay reviewed System Collapse by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
Murderbot Dreams
3 stars
A little slower to get going than some of the other episodes but still left me hoping Wells isn’t done with Murderbot.
eBook, 248 pages
English language
Published Nov. 13, 2023 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.
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.
A little slower to get going than some of the other episodes but still left me hoping Wells isn’t done with Murderbot.
... and I'm not satisfied and now keep waiting for a new book in this series. What is so fun is the always hard strategical thinking Murderbot and ART and their humans have to do, which always happens because they are always in dire straits because of buccaneering megalarge companies doing their power grabs over humans, other companies, even planets.
Also, because it's fun because Murderbot got rid of its governor module, so it can be free. But the governor module also manages anger, and since it's down, the anger is always up. Beware of ART, who is much bigger than Murderbot, and so he's got much bigger amounts of anger, you know.
And also because it feels like Murderbot is freeing lots of other SecBots everywhere and this might lead to a full stop revolution of SecBots and larger bots as well.
This was largely enjoyable, although the turn from Murderbot feeling alienated from everyone to Murderbot feeling cringey about how much its humans care for it is a little less engaging. This story largely focused on Murderbot's trauma response to Network Effect - Martha Wells and its relationship with ART and the humans. Didn't really play out any of the threads about alien contamination from Network Effect, which is feeling like kind of a big tease at this point.
Not quite as good as Network Effect, perhaps because ART is less involved this time. The first couple of chapters also confused me a bit -- I felt like I'd been dropped into the middle of a book and had missed the build-up -- but once I got past that it was a ton of fun.
System Collapse, the seventh book in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, picks up right where Network Effect left off. As a direct sequel, this volume is the second full-length novel in the series and is the least stand-alone of them all. If you’re thinking of jumping in fresh here, think again—you'll want to start at the beginning to fully appreciate the depth and development of the story and characters.
Murderbot has endured a lot, from violent battles and betrayals to emotional hardships. It has witnessed filthy-rich corporations committing heinous crimes with no regard for human life. As Murderbot slowly becomes more "human-like" and grapples with emotions it would rather ignore, it’s about to face one of the most human experiences of all: trauma.
A few months after the events of Network Effect, Murderbot and ART's crews are still stuck, waiting for reinforcements to fix ART's hyperspace drive. Meanwhile, Perihelion's crew works …
System Collapse, the seventh book in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, picks up right where Network Effect left off. As a direct sequel, this volume is the second full-length novel in the series and is the least stand-alone of them all. If you’re thinking of jumping in fresh here, think again—you'll want to start at the beginning to fully appreciate the depth and development of the story and characters.
Murderbot has endured a lot, from violent battles and betrayals to emotional hardships. It has witnessed filthy-rich corporations committing heinous crimes with no regard for human life. As Murderbot slowly becomes more "human-like" and grapples with emotions it would rather ignore, it’s about to face one of the most human experiences of all: trauma.
A few months after the events of Network Effect, Murderbot and ART's crews are still stuck, waiting for reinforcements to fix ART's hyperspace drive. Meanwhile, Perihelion's crew works tirelessly to thwart Barish-Estranza's (B-E) attempts to sign the population into corporate slavery.
A mysterious, redacted past event has Murderbot stressed out, making it hard to perform its usual security tasks. Despite its desire to seclude itself in one of ART's closets, B-E's increasingly aggressive efforts demand Murderbot’s reluctant attention.
Murderbot’s journey continues to be a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human. Its development as a character is marked by a blend of dry humor, reluctant heroism, and poignant introspection. Wells expertly balances action and emotional depth, making this latest installment as compelling as its predecessors.
The plot is fast-paced and filled with tension as Murderbot navigates the challenges thrown its way. The interactions between Murderbot and the crew members are as engaging as ever, highlighting Wells' talent for creating rich, relatable characters.
If you’ve been following the series, System Collapse is a must-read that will keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s a brilliant continuation of Murderbot’s story, blending action, emotion, and humor in a way that only Martha Wells can deliver.
So good.
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.
Though a good book it's the weakest from the series, only by the end it starts getting exciting
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!