The first four Murderbot books make a complete story arc, so this one in a lot of ways felt like a satisfying wrap up to the series, even though of course there are other books. I strongly suspect that Martha Wells wrote these with the intent of self-publishing them, but her traditional publisher gave her such a good deal that she went with them instead. The way it’s split into four short books instead of one long novel feels a lot more like an indie published series.
With this one, Murderbot comes full circle and finds itself in a situation where it has to rescue the friends it made in the first book. It all takes place in the grand capital of the corporate rim, and the things we learned in the first three books have raised the stakes considerably. The villains are ruthless, and more importantly, quite smart, so Murderbot definitely has its hands full. But as always, the real challenge for Murderbot is overcoming its extreme social anxieties and the general awkwardness of actually having friends.
This was a really solid Murderbot book. If you love the first book, you will probably love this one too. If you haven’t read any Murderbot yet, definitely start with the first one, because reading them out of order would be as terrible as watching something like Breaking Bad out of order. The first four books really are one single book, told in four semi-autonomous parts.
And that is my one major critique of this book. While I enjoyed the satisfaction of finishing a bite sized novella in only a few sittings, I think the story would have been stronger if it had all been woven together into a single book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great story, but if it were all combined together I think it would be more than the sum of its parts. I definitely felt that was the case with the fifth book, though apparently my opinion is in the minority as most people prefer the first four books to the fifth. But hey, I also thought Serenity was better than Firefly, so YMMV.
Great book!