Network Effectby Kevin R. Free (narrator), Martha Wells
Rating: ★★★½
Series: The Murderbot Diaries #5
Publication Date: May 1, 2020
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Recorded Books
You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you’re a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you’re Murderbot.
Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century. I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are. When Murderbot’s human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then.
What can I say? I didn’t like this one, the first full-length novel, as much as I liked the short stories. Part of that was the length, part of it was all the focus on the spacey stuff (wormholes, alien artefacts, blobs on the drive engine, blah, blah, blah), and yeah, part of it was ART. Now, I like ART, but he was rather pathological until the very end, and at one point I was totally ok with someone wiping his kernel and zero’ing it out, just for good measure. I felt like the schtick being played out regarding Murderbot’s ‘relationship’ with ART had potential for some big humor, but it never really got to that point, simply hovering in the mildly amusing range.
But the story picked up considerably – for me – once Murderbot got stuck on the planet and the killware came into play. Unfortunately, by that time there was very little story left, and I thought it all ended rather abruptly.
Still, this reader-who-doesn’t-enjoy-scifi kept listening, and I definitely thought it was worth the 3.5 stars. I just prefer murderbot’s diary entries to be shorter, I think. Or less spacey.