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System Collapse by Martha Wells
Nov. 18th, 2023 11:59 amSystem Collapse
4/5. Murderbot. A perfectly good long novella/short novel that would have been much better were it not, in fact, the last third of Network Effect lopped off and published three years late. Some bad combo of authorial and publisher decision-making must have happened here. Don’t pick this up without refreshing on Network Effect -- I tried, and had to go back and skim* in order for the emotional resonances, let alone the plot, to work at all.
They do work, given the right context. This series is slowly but inexorably bending towards a more head-on consideration of Murderbot’s trauma. Since these are first person, that has required a whole lot of character development; Murderbot is, seven books in, only occasionally and very grudgingly permitting itself to acknowledge the effects of its enslavement, but that is a huge change. The books play with the unreliability of Murderbot’s narration a lot – it gets called out a few times on literally editing words out of its transcript of a conversation (and thus the book), and this is only the most obvious of the ways its trauma bends reality. It’s a clever effect, and a beautiful story, and I love Murderbot and ART and the whole crew a lot.
This is still not a self-contained novel, though, and also I don’t understand how she could have rushed the end so egregiously given mumble mumble years to work on it.
*Skim except for the bits about machine intelligences having a giant emotional slapfight abou ttheir relationship, that is still A+++, would read again.
4/5. Murderbot. A perfectly good long novella/short novel that would have been much better were it not, in fact, the last third of Network Effect lopped off and published three years late. Some bad combo of authorial and publisher decision-making must have happened here. Don’t pick this up without refreshing on Network Effect -- I tried, and had to go back and skim* in order for the emotional resonances, let alone the plot, to work at all.
They do work, given the right context. This series is slowly but inexorably bending towards a more head-on consideration of Murderbot’s trauma. Since these are first person, that has required a whole lot of character development; Murderbot is, seven books in, only occasionally and very grudgingly permitting itself to acknowledge the effects of its enslavement, but that is a huge change. The books play with the unreliability of Murderbot’s narration a lot – it gets called out a few times on literally editing words out of its transcript of a conversation (and thus the book), and this is only the most obvious of the ways its trauma bends reality. It’s a clever effect, and a beautiful story, and I love Murderbot and ART and the whole crew a lot.
This is still not a self-contained novel, though, and also I don’t understand how she could have rushed the end so egregiously given mumble mumble years to work on it.
*Skim except for the bits about machine intelligences having a giant emotional slapfight abou ttheir relationship, that is still A+++, would read again.
