There's a New 'Murderbot Diaries' Coming & I'm Playing Catch Up

Audiobook Reviews of The Murderbot Diaries #5 and #6

Author

Steve's Book Stuff
November 07, 2023

If you’re a fan of science fiction you are no doubt familiar with Martha Wells and her series The Murderbot Diaries. Wells has won several awards for the series as a whole and for individual books within the series.

I read and reviewed the audiobook versions of the original four novellas last November. (You can find that review here.) I loved the books - they are full of gadgetry and fast paced action. I was also a huge fan of the audio narration by Kevin R. Free.

Fast forward to now and there is a seventh Murderbot book coming out next week. Luckily I snagged an advance copy on NetGalley, and I’ll be reviewing the new book (called System Collapse) next Tuesday.

But of course, I couldn’t read and review book #7 in the series without going back and completing the two books I missed - Network Effect and Fugitive Telemetry. Off to the Libby app I went to borrow both audiobooks so I could catch up.

Network Effect was the fifth book in the series published by Wells, but Fugitive Telemetry (book #6) actually takes place before the fifth book.

A bit about the title character - Murderbot is a rouge “sec unit”, short for security unit, a “construct” of mostly inorganic parts, though with some cloned organic parts as well, including brain parts. Whether that’s a full brain is not entirely clear, though it doesn’t seem that way. Regardless, it’s augmented with impressive artificial intelligence and computing ability.

Sec units are rented by “the Company” to provide security on dangerous missions. Murderbot is a rouge sec unit because he has figured out how to shut off his “governor module”, which is the means by which the Company controls its sec units.

Author Martha Wells (photo by Igor Kragulac)

As with the first four novellas I loved both of these books. Once again Kevin R. Free does a fantastic job with narration. After listening to him through these six audiobooks he IS the voice of Murderbot - he inhabits the character so well!

Fugitive Telemetry is a novella like the original four, but this one is a murder mystery. The story combines tropes from classic mystery stories with the world of Murderbot, where bots of all kinds are autonomous and a very few are accepted as people.

Murderbot plays the part of the private eye, who isn’t trusted by the cops, but ends up using his superior reasoning ability to find clues and solve the murder before they can, gaining their grudging respect.

It’s a great meshing of genres - Murderbot’s cranky, cynical and sarcastic tone and dry sense of humor is the perfect match for that of the down-on-their-luck gumshoes of classic private eye stories. This is without a doubt my favorite Murderbot story.

Network Effect is the first novel in the Murderbot Diaries series. In this story we find Murderbot with his old team on Preservation Station, from which they set off on a planetary survey mission. But something goes wrong and the mission is hijacked and taken through a wormhole by mysterious gray humans who may or may not be contaminated by alien artifacts. (Alien artifacts are things not to be trifled with in the world of Murderbot.)

Murderbot finds himself aboard the transport vessel previously piloted by ART, the acronym he applied to the “Asshole Research Transport”, a bot pilot with a vast artificial intelligence and a very high degree of sarcasm. ART played a big role in the second book, helping Murderbot to modify his appearance so he could pass for human. But now ART appears to have been destroyed and replaced by a rudimentary system installed by the gray humans. Murderbot is very much affected by what appears to be ART’s “death”, but eventually figures out how to revive ART and is reunited with his “friend”.

The pace of the action is slower, likely because of the novel length of the story. But that makes room for the emotional growth and maturing of Murderbot, and for his relationship (he hates that word) with ART - those form the heart of this story.

RATING: These are both Five Star books ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating Comment: If you are a science fiction fan and have somehow not yet read any of the Murderbot books, then my advice is to immediately do so. You’ve got some catching up to do.

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Borrow or Buy Fugitive Telemetry here:

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Borrow or Buy Network Effect here:

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📚 Visit my Bookshop.org shop to see all my reviewed books. 

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