Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!
Yet another excellent, fun, action packed, deeply thought provoking and funny story about everyone's favourite SecUnit.
I knew I would love this book, I knew it would draw me in, I knew it would make me laugh and I knew it would make me think - so I bought it as soon as I possibly could, then saved it. Sure enough life hit a rough patch and I started reading this. SecUnit watches Media to help him cope with a overload induced shutdown. I read for the same reasons - it helps.
If you know this series you know what to expect. This one has a lot of really, really well written character development (SecUnit has been through a lot). It also has a lot of ART, which I love.
No spoilers - but the ending is just absolutely right.
I deeply enjoyed System Collapse--it was a nice followup book to the events of the previous one and I don't think could stand alone. Murderbot has certainly been through a lot, but the last book was particularly intense and it makes sense that there's lasting effects from it. It felt like a smaller and more internally-focused book with less snark and more trama, but I am here for that.
To me at least, Murderbot and its series feels like the embodiment of vulnerability avoidance: handwaving, the first few books seemed like Murderbot coping with learning it cared and people caring about it; Network Effect was about """relationships"" (with ART and 2 and 3); this book in particular explored the vulnerability of trauma and being partially human (or at the very least having some fleshy parts). I think it helps to better situate Murderbot as a construct--not a bot, not human, …
I deeply enjoyed System Collapse--it was a nice followup book to the events of the previous one and I don't think could stand alone. Murderbot has certainly been through a lot, but the last book was particularly intense and it makes sense that there's lasting effects from it. It felt like a smaller and more internally-focused book with less snark and more trama, but I am here for that.
To me at least, Murderbot and its series feels like the embodiment of vulnerability avoidance: handwaving, the first few books seemed like Murderbot coping with learning it cared and people caring about it; Network Effect was about """relationships"" (with ART and 2 and 3); this book in particular explored the vulnerability of trauma and being partially human (or at the very least having some fleshy parts). I think it helps to better situate Murderbot as a construct--not a bot, not human, but somewhere in between with the problems of both.
On the surface, this certainly looks like a shift in Murderbot's competence. (It's certainly a shift in its self-perceived competence; Murderbot both seemingly does a good job while also beating itself up for not being perfect; it's hard to see past the narrative bias.)
Previous Murderbot dealt with situations and humans out of its control (still does but used to too), but in this book there's an extra struggle of coping with its own [redacted]. Given that it has people around it that care, it also has to deal with the shame of these people covering for it too. Dr. Mensah dealing with her own trauma during the last book felt like a nice foreshadowing here for what Murderbot is going through here.
Bonus joy moments:
* the documentary!
* ART being a jerk to both Iris and Murderbot
* ART and Holism butting heads
System Collapse is the direct sequel to Network Effect (Book 5), therefore, it is highly recommended to review it prior to diving into this one. There is no introductory summary, and initially there are characters aplenty that would make you feel confused if you've totally forgotten the previous story.
Murderbot is having more feels, even if it doesn't like it. It continues bonding with more humans, and consuming digital media on the side to help it cope with everything going on. We still see it analyzing and overcoming the many situations it gets into (or rather dragged into by its humans), but it is struggling as it bears the weight of the recent events.
This new story has a more introspect and trauma-overcoming tone compared to Fugitive Telemetry's murder mystery and the action-focused Network Effect, but the action scenes are still there and still great.
The series has been really relatable to me so …
System Collapse is the direct sequel to Network Effect (Book 5), therefore, it is highly recommended to review it prior to diving into this one. There is no introductory summary, and initially there are characters aplenty that would make you feel confused if you've totally forgotten the previous story.
Murderbot is having more feels, even if it doesn't like it. It continues bonding with more humans, and consuming digital media on the side to help it cope with everything going on. We still see it analyzing and overcoming the many situations it gets into (or rather dragged into by its humans), but it is struggling as it bears the weight of the recent events.
This new story has a more introspect and trauma-overcoming tone compared to Fugitive Telemetry's murder mystery and the action-focused Network Effect, but the action scenes are still there and still great.
The series has been really relatable to me so far, and this is no exception. I continuously see glimpses of my own experiences and inner monologues in Murderbot. This one went a bit deeper though. I also have a diary where I've redacted a traumatic event that I tend to not think or talk about, and I had to learn how to process it. I don't blame Murderbot for not knowing how to process things; I'm human and I don't know how to process 90% of my emotions (yeah, I just had my performance reliability drop by 4 points). This read left me feeling emotions so I'm going to the couch to process them in private.
I'm really glad to have given the whole series a read over the last couple of months 🤖💜
