What an enjoyable cozy scifi adventure! The story centers around a security bot with a self-hacked governor module, who refers to itself privately as “Murderbot” and likes to watch serials and movies surreptitiously in it’s free time. The socially awkward bot repeatedly assures us that it definitely does not care about humans. When the team of scientists which have hired Murderbot are confronted by life threatening situations, it goes out of it’s way to save their lives if only just so it is not labelled as an incompetent. Over the course of the story we observe how it’s relationship with the humans in the group develops and changes. Murderbot’s at times hilarious internal monologues concerning “her humans” were my favourite parts of the book. So those of you who have read the book, how did you like it? How are the rest of the books in the series?
I loved the rest of the books, think it really picked up in the second and third and is great by the current one. I found it laugh out loud funny in places .I would highly recommend you continue with the series as they just get better and better .
Murderbot’s relationship with ART is great. Those were some pretty great laugh out loud moments.
Chiming in to agree; they get even better.
That sounds good!
Ive read the first few so far. The next book on my list looks to be a full length novel.
I find your reference of “her humans” is interesting. I never thought of muderbot as a her. Perhaps I missed an important line somewhere in the story?
I think your review is right on. You captured exactly what it’s like. I look forward to reading the next book.
I think Martha Wells really tried to make SecUnit genderless, but because the books are written in the first person by a female author, SecUnit ends up sounding pretty female to me.
I never thought of Murderbot as a her, either. Possibly this is because I listened to All Systems Red as an audiobook, and the narrator was male, but even without that, it just seems a little more masculine to me. (It? Seems weird to call it an it. Maybe a they instead)
Not that it matters, of course. I just find people’s projections fascinating, is all!
Murderbot does have a conversation in one of the later books, and states that it prefers to be referred to as “sec-unit” as a name, dropping “the” from before the word.
The rest of the characters typically refers to sec-unit, as sec-unit, from that point on.
I thought of muderbot as a “her” as well. I think at some point it’s described as having a female appearance without its armor on.
It’s never explicitly stated what Murderbot’s gender presentation is. I do visualize it as feminine presenting personally, but I just finished a reread and it is never stated anywhere. A character calls it “third mom” at one point but it’s unclear if this is because it looks feminine or because it was smothering her as her extant mothers do.
Coming to think of it, I am not absolutely sure that “her” is specifically mentioned. I probably thought of Murderbot as “her” in my head. But what I found funny was the slight possessive sense with which they/it referred to their “humans”.
I never noticed that I also thought of “her”. I read the book a while ago, so I don’t remember your reference, but I remember finding it refreshing to find a robot that was “obviously female” instead of undefined therefore male.
It could be that I listened to them on audiobook but I kinda pictured an Arnold/Terminator kinda person.
If you liked the first one you’ll like them all! Murderbot was such a fun read all the way through.
The second novella involves a protracted conversation with a shipboard AI who is even more detatched from humanity than Sec-Unit. Keep going.
This is my favorite series. I also liked the various other books as they’re all different “mini-stories” but do connect. And the audiobooks are also pretty good, the narrator does a great job!
I read it because it is pretty high up on the Good Reads Sci-Fi list. It was a short and interesting read, the premise feels fresh. The writing was good, I did enjoy sarcastic remarks by the murderbot. But I was not super excited to continue reading the series. Somehow, the premise of a murderbot felt like glorifying social awkwardness and isolation and that did not resonate with me. Probably not the most popular opinion, but that’s how the book made feel, anyway.
Such a great series! I just finished a reread of it; totally worth it.
The only misstep in the series, in my opinion, is the novel-length Network Effect. I think the perfect format for Murderbot is novellas. Wells’ longer form felt like a couple Murderbot stories mashed together and didn’t work as well for me.
