Ateli-weird

Books 1-6

The Murderbot Diaries is a series of novels and novellas following Murderbot, a sentient bot who has hacked its governor chip.

I loved this series. Most of the novellas are relatively short, and easy reading. Despite that, each one manages a good amount of depth in terms of character, and Murderbot’s point of view is distinctive and fun to read.

System Collapse
(3.5/5)
On the whole, I enjoyed this. Admittedly, it felt a lot weaker than the previous books. I’m not sure exactly what caused it, but it was at least in part due to the fact that for some reason the author felt the need to temper all Murderbot’s impressions and mentions of pronouns with some kind of justification as to why they were included. This felt a little weird, given that it was the norm in previous books. I’m not sure whether it was to do with the reception for previous books, but it felt like it was compensating for something and that didn’t really sit well with me.
It picked up a bit again about halfway through, though. It was just lacking some of the panache that made the previous books so fun to read.