Artificial Condition

I have a love/hate relationship with novellas in general. Too often, I find them to be criminally short (I’m looking at you Binti!) but it’s also deeply satisfying to finish them in one sitting.

After a long break, I wanted to continue the Murderbot series about a sardonic, sentient combat robot who hacks its own module to free itself from programming. What does it say about me when I have so much in common with a social anxiety-ridden murderbot? This time, Murderbot forms an unlikely bond with a transit ship AI program and together, they work to uncover Murderbot’s mysterious past.

Funny and unencumbered by sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, this series is really hitting the spot for me. And, I’m trilled to learn that soon Murderbot is getting its own, bonafide, full-length novel. Finally. ( )

Murderbot has gone AWOL. Despite its contract being voided and it having been offered a life out from under others' control, it feels it has unfinished business — namely, a necessary investigation into one of its past missions of which its memories have been deleted. The one where it went rogue and killed a bunch of people.

Upon finishing All Systems Red I wasn't certain whether I would continue the series, but I decided to give this second installment a try. (Incidentally, "installment" feels especially appropriate as these novellas remind me of the way books were once serialized and printed piecemeal in newspapers in earlier times.) I like the expectation and subsequent fulfillment of being able to finish them in less than a day. ( )

I do not have enough superlatives for this book. It deserves them all. Murderbot still awesome, ART is awesome, and once again, it's both satisfying as a complete story-line for this plot, and an exciting continuation of the overall arc. :) ( )

How did I fail to review this? It was splendid, and it made me want to continue reading Murderbot's adventures. Love the ambivalence with which it contemplates the human race. ( )

I am really enjoying these. You get the feeling they are going to settle into a formula, but it's a good formula - Murderbot tries to do something they want to do, meets another interesting bot on the way, picks up a group of humans, saves the humans.

In this one, they want to understand about the time they massacred people, they meet the snarky super-research ship ART, and they save some hapless researchers trying to get their data back from the Evil Corporation. ( )