The Murderbot Diaries: Books 1 – 3

I’m not a natural science fiction reader, but in the last year or so, I’ve gotten more into sci fi. Last year, I managed to read the entire Wayfarer’s quartet, by Becky Chambers and I absolutely loved them. My husband is a sci fi fan, so when we had a trip planned that was going to be about a 4 hour drive, I used an Audible credit to buy All Systems Red.

I was surprised at how much I loved this first entry. Murderbot is a Security Unit – or SecUnit – which is an AI construct. Genderless, I am going to use “he/him” for reference, because that’s how I imagine him, although I have no idea why. I could use “it,” but he feels more like a “he” than an “it.”

Wells drops the reader directly into her world, without much in the way of exposition. You’re just on planet with the survey team, and meet the characters really organically. The first several Murderbot books are novellas, so the action commences pretty much right away and doesn’t really stop until the end.

The intriguing thing about this series is being inside of the head of Murderbot, a self-aware construct that has hacked his own governor module, but that has so internalized his job of providing security to humans that it continues to do just that, even though he doesn’t really have to. He becomes attached to his humans, and wants to keep them from harm. Rather reluctantly, he likes them. At the same time, he is deeply conflicted because, as he tells himself, he is a ruthless killing machine, which is why he has named himself Murderbot.

This novella sets up the central conflict between Murderbot & the humans he wants to protect, and the soulless corporation, GrayCris, which is the major villain.

In the continuing adventures of Murderbot, he has slipped away from Dr. Mensah and left Port FreeCommerce to try to get to the bottom of the events of Ganaka Pit on RaviHyral, which culminated in the death of a whole bunch of humans at his hands. He ends up on an unmanned transport that he names ART, and they become co-conspirators.

I found this to be the most confusing of the novellas, and am still trying to process exactly what happened on RaviHyral. I went back and reread it, and I’m still not sure that I understand. But Murderbot continues to develop relationships with humans, and, as well, with ART (aka Asshole Research Transport) a bot driven transport with a massive processing capacity.

We listened to this third book on a drive to the Oregon coast on Wednesday and then home on Friday. I also really liked it – Murderbot is determined to find evidence against GrayCris to assist Dr. Mensah in proving the case against them, so he scams his way onto a research team at a far outpost on the Corporation Rim to do his own investigation into what is probably more bad behavior by the villainous corporation.

Of course, things get FUBAR’d beyond all recognition because GrayCris is, indeed, pure evil. Murderbot throws a giant wrench into their plans, and saves a bunch of humans, while becoming emotionally attached to a human shaped and somewhat innocently child-like bot named Miki. Oh, my sweet Miki.

I love this series and would read on if I didn’t know that my husband would be super annoyed with me. The next entry is another novella, called Exit Strategy, and then book 5 is a full-length novel. I need to plan a road trip.