This book has been on my TBR pile since my first Flights of Foundry con; it seemed like every panelist was recommending the book. I finally purchased it a few months ago and I was in the mood for a shorter, quicker read after all the space opera epics I’ve been reading. Wow, it was a lot of fun and i am so happy that there are apparently 5 more novellas and 2 more novels in the series. I am classifying this one as hard SF. The book doesn’t really get into the technology involved. At one point is sort of just mentions “a wormhole” as their FTL conceit, and the main character (which, if you didn’t pick up on from the jacket, you find out on the first page) is a cyborg… one step beyond an augmented human (of which there are at least one we see). But the story isn’t about the tech, it is about the self-named “murderbot,” and its relationship with its human partners.
The story is told in first person, and it really works for this story. We spend a lot of time in the Bot’s head, and all it really wants to do is sit in its recharging port and watch soap operas that it has illegally downloaded from the net. But, of course, it doesn’t get to do that, and it has to save its charges and its own self from unknown planetary “fauna” (chapter one) as well as a larger more mysterious threat (the rest of the book).
The bot has such a good sense of humor. It really … just doesn’t care about humans. It says so at multiple points and in multiple ways. I found myself reading sections out to my wife that brought me to out loud laughter this afternoon as I read it. The story was very tightly constructed, felt very “real,” and I enjoyed getting to know the side characters through the lens of the bot who really, like I said before, just wants to sit at home and watch its stories.
I will definitely be reading the rest of this series.