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.
If you liked the first one you’ll like them all! Murderbot was such a fun read all the way through.
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 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.
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.
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!
The second novella involves a protracted conversation with a shipboard AI who is even more detatched from humanity than Sec-Unit. Keep going.