Synopsis:
Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment in Martha Wells’ bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.
Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.
Having volunteered to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realises that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know.
Including human children. Ugh.
This may well call for… eye contact!
(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)
Review:
And we’re back with another little foray into the mind of our favorite SecUnit, this time as it is on a rescue mission on a torus-shaped space station around a planet. While the more recent Murderbot entries have done a lot of work expanding the universe and giving them more characters to interact with, in some ways Platform Decay is bringing the series back to the basics in some ways. There is little in the way of dialogue between SecUnit and the humans they are rescuing, and a lot in terms of their mental state. I found it a worthy entry into The Murderbot Diaries series and just wish there was more time with one of the most compelling characters in modern sci-fi.
Let’s pause and do a little comparison. Platform Decay released on May 5 and is the 8th entry into Martha Wells’ series. On the other hand, in just a few days, on May 12, we’ll get another 8th entry into a series — A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman, our 8th novel with Dungeon Crawler Carl. The two authors have taken a wildly different approach to these works. Most of the Murderbot books are novellas or short novels, including Platform Decay. Meanwhile Dinniman seems to keep expanding the word count on his novels, indicating that the next book after A Parade of Horribles will even be split into two parts. Both have managed to capture the public’s interest, but with vastly different characters. Carl and Princess Donut are often very over-the-top, perhaps symbolizing what we would secretly love to do — just blow stuff up. Murderbot, on the other hand, is grappling with the messy human side of themselves, like emotions and touching other people, but is a great analog for the introverted reader. And…in Platform Decay, SecUnit visits a TORUS-shaped station. A torus is a donut shape…Princess Donut? Anyone? Anyone???
Regardless of the comparisons and contrasts, it’s perfectly okay to love both of these series.
In Platform Decay, SecUnit reveals up-front that they’ve installed a mental health module in themselves and we see that play out throughout the book as a sometimes serious, sometimes running gag “Emotion Check.” But for the bot that was oftentime accused of being depressed in the early books, this is a clear mark of growth. They don’t want to work through their emotions, but to properly work with their humans and be friends with them, they’ve begrudgingly decided to work on it.
Most of the characters besides SecUnit are new in this book, but are very much related to our other humans we’ve come to get attached to in the previous works. SecUnit is also dealing with the consequences of awakening another SecUnit named Three and all the issues that come with it. Giving them freedom, but still having a modicum of control over them is an issue they grapple with. And for Murderbot, they struggle enough with the emotions of the humans, but in the course of the rescue, they are blessed with also dealing with human children.
I did not go back and do a re-read of the series prior to digging into Platform Decay, and I was able to adjust fairly easily back into Wells’ futuristic corporate universe. However, I do wish I’d gone back and at least re-read the last book or two prior to getting back into Murderbot’s adventures. If nothing else, I would have felt a little more fulfilled in the end.
Ultimately the complaint is the length. I’d really love there to be more. The story is complete, don’t get me wrong, but the novellas really leave you wanting more when you get to the end, which I suppose is a compliment to Wells’ writing and characterization of our beloved SecUnit. If my main issue is that I wanted more, I supposed it isn’t much of a complaint in the end.
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