Rating: 4.5 stars
CBR15 Bingo: Take the Skies
Murderbot is away from Dr. Mensah, the person it likes the most (although it would never admit this to anyone, or itself), in order to guard a research party (which includes Mensah's daughter). The group is attacked and sucked through a wormhole, and Murderbot is really very annoyed about the sudden upheaval. When it turns out that the abduction may in fact have something to do with an old friend of Murderbot (not that it acknowledges friends, as such), things immediately get more complicated. If Murderbot could choose, it would spend all its time watching videos and not involving itself in anything complicated involving feelings, but when its humans, or the entity it cares the most for in the universe, are threatened, Murderbot will act, with immediate and drastic measures.
It was a long hiatus, but as soon as I picked up this first full-length novel about our favourite misanthropic SecUnit, I wondered why it had taken me so long to return to the world of Murderbot. While this book was a bit slow to start, once the action starts, it pretty much doesn't let up until the end. Murderbot, who is learning to become an individual of its own, has to deal a lot with pesky feelings in this book. While there is a bit of a misunderstanding between Murderbot and Mensah's kid (I could look up the name, but I'm not going to), about how they feel towards one another, Murderbot is clearly very protective, and the teen at one point refers to Murderbot as "Third Mom" - which incidentally totally justifies the feeling I've always had that if Murderbot did have a gender, it would be female. It's in the text, people!
Being abducted by creepy-looking possible aliens and eventually being reunited with ART, and then deciding to assist in recovering ART's missing crew leads to all manner of complications. It feels strange to describe the relationship between a very powerful AI and an android, neither of whom should be able to feel any emotions at all, as romantic, but there were scenes in this that hit me straight in the feels. Murderbot's humans clearly recognise that there is something special between them, and the way both of them are ready to kill the heck out of anyone who threatens the safety of the other is rather swoon-worthy.
I would not recommend anyone start with this novel without having read at least All Systems Red and Artificial Condition to get the necessary backstory (but the other two novellas are also great, so why would you skip them?). It takes a lot for me to like sci-fi, but I absolutely love these. The only reason I'm not rating this 5 stars is that having just read Lessons in Chemistry and Folk med Ångest, both books which made me feel even more, and this doesn't feel like it really reached the same level (I wanted more schmoopy emotions between Murderbot and ART). Upon a re-read, I will probably change the rating to a full 5.
The benefit of having waited as long as I have is that there's only about a month to wait for the release of the next novel, and while I wait, I have another novella (sadly set earlier than this, because I REALLY want to see where this goes next) to comfort myself with.
Judging a book by its cover: The cover is nicely atmospheric, with Murderbot out on either a space station or a spaceship, with another one hovering above it. All the Murderbot stories have excellent covers, this is no exception.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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