Good further continuation. ( )

With this story, we leave introductions behind and make a start on some serious business; although this story can still be seen as a preparation for the next one.

Murderbot goes on a mission on its own initiative to gather evidence against GrayCris. During the mission, it gets involved with another group of vulnerable humans whom it feels obliged to protect.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the Murderbot story that I like least. The quality of writing is up to the usual standard, and the action is quite exciting, but the underlying plot is not very interesting, the human characters are just names, or little more than names, and there’s less humour than usual.

I reread it only because it’s part of the series, and another chunk of Murderbot’s life. It’s not a story that I actively enjoy. ( )

"Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that's how they treated it.
I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private."

Murderbot returns for a third and autumnal installment. 'Bot is a little more experienced, but honestly is making some familiar mistakes. As we all do, really, but I guess I expect more from a heartless killing machine. In this installment, 'Bot is heading to a "terraforming" installation abandoned by the corporation GrayCris, hoping to find data for the fight between GrayCris and Dr. Mensah. Unfortunately, it means integrating itself into an exploration team that already includes an A.I.:

"When I called it a pet robot, I honestly thought I was exaggerating. This was going to be even more annoying than I had anticipated, and I had anticipated a pretty high level of annoyance, maybe as high as 85 percent. Now I was looking at 90 percent, possibly 95 percent."

I enjoyed it, but I don't know that it covered much new ground. The situation gave Murderbot insight into another kind of AI-human relationship, but plotting felt fairly familiar. I'm still not convinced of 'Bot's logic circuits (mild mid-plot spoiler: didn't 'Bot ever watch serials were people double-crossed?? even when limited to security concerns, but do think 'Bot is a much better A.I. than other characterizations (thinking of [b:Sea of Rust|32617610|Sea of Rust (Sea of Rust, #1)|C. Robert Cargill|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1476602158l/32617610._SY75_.jpg|53204799] here). I also felt questions raised about the amount of processing 'Bot was doing at certain points. All that said, I really enjoyed it, and it held up to a second read quite well.

Wells always manages to tap me in the feels along with engaging the brain-pan. She's good like that. I'm glad she's finally getting some long-overdue popular recognition (as opposed to her early Hugo-Neb nominated works), because I'd like to see her financially secure enough to keep dreaming up worlds.

If you like 'Bot and bots, you may also enjoy [b:A Closed and Common Orbit|29475447|A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)|Becky Chambers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1457598923l/29475447._SY75_.jpg|48620653] (it really does stand alone), another A.I. book. If you think you enjoy Wells, I highly encourage you to give her other books a try, except she's a tricky one, and many of her books are very, very different from one another from the vaguely neo-Edwardian England [b:The Death of the Necromancer|321357|The Death of the Necromancer (Ile-Rien, #2)|Martha Wells|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1287846738l/321357._SY75_.jpg|2510225] to the matriarchal fantasy world of the Raksura. Find one that appeals and go with that.

Re-read July 2019: Still good. Reading the books more closely together, I get the emotional changes in Murderbot over time, and appreciate the Miki storyline better. I had to laugh out loud at 'Bot's response to it, a couple of times, though: "Fuck me." Bot's been watching too many trashy serials.

Love the 'Bot and want to join a re/read? Discuss the upcoming release? Nataliya and I lead a group:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1160809-murderbot-diaries ( )

A murderbot three star is like an average author five ( )

Plot and science lacking, but characterization spell-binding (as in, I will keep reading these despite the flaws that restrict my ratings to three stars).

I liked two observations Murderbot made about entertainment media:

"... there's the right kind of unrealistic and the wrong kind of unrealistic."

" I didn't want to see helpless humans. I'd rather see smart ones rescuing each other." ( )