A great Murderbot novel that shows Murderbot continues to mature as an organism with free will and learning to deal with his emotions with his 'clients' while discovering new things about them and what they are willing to do for him.

The novel starts with Murderbot doing what it does best: protecting its clients. But this turns out to be a prelude to the start of a situation where Murderbot gets kidnapped along with his clients and ends up with a situation involving a former bot friend and possible alien technology contamination at a forgotten colony world. Of course he has to get out of it, with his clients intact.

But more than just the 'pew-pew' stuff (which Murderbot is obviously good at), this is also a detective story as he has to figure out the reason why it and his clients were kidnapped, how the alien contamination occurred, how to save his bot friend (and clients) and how to overcome his opponents. But along the way, he will discover new things about himself, and also about what his clients really think about him and what they are really willing to do for him.