Murderbot is back in Fugitive Telemetry, the sixth book in
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. After the previous book, I assumed the
life of the rogue SecUnit would take a new turn, but instead the latest book steps
back in time and takes place between Exit Strategy and Network Effect.
Murderbot has settled—sort of—on Preservation space station,
a safe haven for all refuges from the Corporate Rim, even for security
constructs (part organic, part cyborg) and bots. It fills its days trying to
prevent its favourite human, Dr Mensah, the leader of Preservation from being
killed by GrayCris Corporation, watching its shows, and getting annoyed by
humans who fear it for being a SecUnit. When a murdered body is found, Murderbot
is convinced GrayCris is responsible and gets involved in the investigation.
Fugitive Telemetry is a surprisingly traditional whodunit. Murderbot
follows the clues, in its own way, which leads it to a different mystery
entirely than it had assumed. But since it’s taken to solve the mystery, it’ll
see it through, even though it doesn’t have anything to do with Dr Mensah.
There aren’t nearly as much explosions, hacking on-the-fly, and fight scenes
than in these books usually, but the mystery is interesting and the identity of
the culprit surprising. And Murderbot manages to make new friendlies (not friends—never
friends) in the process too.
If you haven’t read Network Effect yet, it’s perfectly
possible to read this one first. It’s maybe even better if you do. It’s a good
book, but I do hope the next one will pick up where Network Effect left
Murderbot. Maybe in another full-length book even.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an
honest review.
Network Effect is the fifth book in Martha Wells’ The Murderbot
Diaries sci-fi series of a rogue security construct, SecUnit (part organic, part
mechanical, all sarcastic). It’s also the first full-length one.
I was really eager to read a longer Murderbot book, and it
didn’t disappoint. Murderbot, the SecUnit who has freed itself
from its governor module that can kill it, finds itself—for the first time—in a
fairly good place. The threat to Dr. Mensah by GrayCris Corporation is
practically over and it can choose what it wants to do. It wants to provide
security for a science expedition by its favourite humans and Dr. Mensah’s
daughter Amena.
Everything is going fairly well, when they’re attacked by a ship
Murderbot knows very well, the one powered by ART (asshole research transport),
as Murderbot calls the AI. ART has been compromised by alien looking creatures
and is effectively dead. So Murderbot sets out to save ART—not its friend, no
matter what Amena says—whilst keeping its humans safe.
The plot is constant action and involves abandoned colonies,
hostile corporations, cyber-attacks, and explosions. But for the first time,
there’s also a lot of room for Murderbot to reflect its existence, concept of
friendship, and what it wants to do with its freedom. It does all this in a
very Murderbot fashion by denying everything and being grumpy and sarcastic.
But it also grows a lot as a person.
The book ends at a crossroads for Murderbot. But instead of
revealing where it’ll go from here, the next book goes back in time to events before Network Effect. It’s again a shorter one, but hopefully we’ll get
another full-length book after that. Murderbot has a lot to offer us yet.
A Wolf in Duke’s Clothing by Susanna Allen starts Shapeshifters
of the Beau Monde series. It’s a Regency romance with paranormal elements, not
a paranormal romance set in a Regency world. It might seem like a small
difference, but it can mean a lot for readers who like one but not the other
genre. Luckily, I like both.
All the tropes are from Regency romances. We have an orphan
heiress at the mercy of a dastardly guardian, a duke who sweeps in to rescue
her, Ton parties, ball gowns, and a lot of floral language that borders on incomprehensible
as a synonym after another is thrown at the reader.
As a Regency romance, the book works fairly well, but it drags
on far too long after the plot has already ended. Nothing significant happens
after the consummation of the marriage and some storylines are completely
forgotten, like the missing horse. And I don’t think the author understands
what an epilogue means. The ending was positively bizarre.
The weakness of the book is in its paranormal elements. There’s
a lot of mythology, but none of the excitement. The dynamics of the pack are
really off. Everyone shows constant deference to the alpha—Alfred, the romantic
hero—and the moment they aggravate him, he subdues them with his alpha power.
They seem to believe he’s a great man, but I couldn’t help thinking that they
were hostages to his power and said whatever he wished them to. I certainly
wasn’t shown otherwise.
His behaviour is at worst in his dealings with Felicity, the
heroine. First he abducts her. Then he tries his alpha powers on her. It’s bad
enough in an ordinary situation, but then he tries to subdue her with the power
when she refuses sex. The moment she says no, his first instinct is to take her
will away. Not once but several times.
That she’s able to resist him isn’t relevant (it could’ve
been demonstrated in a different situation completely), nor is it relevant that
he was, for the most part, a nice man. The point is that he’s the kind of man
who naturally considers taking a woman’s will away to have his way with her the
moment she resists him. He stops this after a while, but only because he knows
it doesn’t work. That he shouldn’t do it isn’t even addressed.
Not all alphas need to be the same. That would make a boring
read. But all romantic heroes, regardless of the genre, should be strong enough
that their weaknesses don’t manifest as bullying. I was so disgusted with Alfred
that I ended up skipping all the sex scenes. Luckily they were at the end of
the book, which was overlong as it was.
This could’ve been a good book, a fresh take on two genres.
Now it sort of failed both because the hero was such a disappointment. Fans of
Regency romances might find this a refreshing change of pace, if they can
ignore the hero. Fans of paranormal romances might want to give it a pass. However,
I think I’ll read the next book too, if only to find out if it has a better
hero.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The Last Watch is the debut novel of J. S. Dewes. It’s an
intense sci-fi military adventure that begins The Divide series. I received a
free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
At the edge of the universe is the Divide where the
expansion of the universe has stopped. Sentinels are posted to guard the Divide
to make sure that an ancient alien enemy won’t attack humans from there. But everyone
knows that nothing survives the void on the other side of the Divide, and the
post is in fact a punishment for criminals and demoted soldiers.
Their commander is Adequin Rake, a decorated hero of the
latest war with the aliens that ended ten years previously. For the outsiders,
it looks like she’s been promoted to her post, but she knows the placement is a
punishment for something she did at the end of the war. But since she’s
punishing herself for it too, she’s determined to be the best commander the outpost
on Argus, a decommissioned starship that houses the Sentinels, has ever seen.
She’s respected and capable, but then the universe throws a problem at her that
she has no idea how to handle. Namely, the universe.
For some reason the universe has begun to shrink fast and
the closest thing on its path is Argus, with a few hundred soldiers and nothing
to evacuate them with. All communications to the command centre are cut. But
since the only other option is to be devoured by the void, Rake sets out to do
her best to save them.
The book is pretty much action from start to finish.
A problem after a problem is thrown at Rake from evacuating Argus to finding
fuel to establishing communications to fighting aliens to saving the universe. Rake
is indefatigable; I don’t think she eats or sleeps for days. Her physiology is assisted
with Imprints, alien technology inserted under her skin that makes her stronger
and helps her heal faster, but it’s still impressive. She’s fuelled by her duty
and her personal relationship with a fellow officer who has gone missing with
the crew of his repair ship.
The other point of view character is Cavalon Mercer, grandson
of the ruler of the universe and the sole heir. He has a toxic relationship
with his grandfather, which has led to him being banished to the edge of the
universe, hopefully to die there. Privileged and unaccustomed to military life
though he is, he nonetheless manages to make himself an indispensable part of
Rake’s team—mostly because he has several useful degrees from genetics to
astromechanics. He’s a great character, a coward who rises to the occasion time
after time.
This was a wonderfully solid book, with
language that grounded the reader to the world and action with ease. There
was nothing unnecessary; the backstories and the world were given only as much
space as they needed, and it didn’t try to be anything other than it claimed, a sci-fi
adventure. Politics and romance were background noise.
With only two POV characters, I expected the relationship
between Rake and Cavalon to be the driving force of the narrative—whether
antagonist or romantic—but while a friendship of sorts forms between them, they
have their own storylines that only occasionally meet. Even though the
action was almost non-stop, there was time for their personal stories, growth and
grief too. All in all, a great book that instantly made me want to read the
next one too.
Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders
Victories Greater Than Death is a young adult sci-fi novel
by Charlie Jane Anders. I read it as a stand-alone, but it turned out to be the
first book in Universal Expansion trilogy. I received a free copy from
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The sole point of view character is Tina. She’s an American
teenager who knows she’s a clone of an alien spaceship captain, genetically
modified to look like a human and with all her memories. She’s accepted that one
day she’ll leave the earth and become a new person. But it happens more
abruptly than she would’ve wished when Marrat, the enemy who killed the original
captain, finds her first.
During the daring escape, she takes her best friend Rachel
with her on the rescuing spaceship. When it turns out that the spaceship is
short on qualified staff, they pick up four other teenagers from all over the earth
too, all geniuses in their own field. Together they set out on a quest across the
universe to find a stone Marrat wants before him. Clues to what it is and where
to find it are in the memories of the original captain.
But the medical procedure that’s supposed to make Tina the
original captain again doesn’t quite work. She’s left with encyclopaedic knowledge
of space and great new skills, but with her own memories and personality, and with
no traces of the original captain. It triggers an identity crisis in her, which
is the driving theme of the book.
The book starts with a lot of action and then slows down for
a very long middle part. There are episodic scenes of Tina and the earthlings,
as they call themselves, learning new skills and studying the new world they
find themselves in. There’s also a great deal of teenage angst about who they
are or want to be, and who they want to be with.
Teenage drama is what YA books are about, and it’s done
fairly well here; the characters behave like teenagers and not like adults in
teenagers’ bodies. But since it doesn’t really interest me, it made the already
slow middle of the book drag far too long.
Action returns in the last third with the final
confrontation with Marrat. An ancient alien race has gone through the universe
millions of years ago to help humanoids to thrive over creatures that aren’t
based on two legs, arms and eyes. Marrat wants to bring this back, and the
earthlings and their spaceship crew rise to oppose his humanoid supremacy.
Marrat is an evil creature who isn’t easily won, but in a
true YA fashion, the teenagers succeed where the adults fail. The final battle
felt a little off, however. In a first person narrative, I would’ve expected
Tina to be the one who pulls off the impossible, but while it was a team effort, she
was basically left to observe the outcome from the side-lines.
It’s nice, in principle, to give each character equal time
to shine. But from a narrative point of view, it doesn’t work. Especially since
it was done ‘the wrong way round’. It would’ve made a greater dramatic impact, if
Tina had been allowed to act on her original plan, and the last minute solution
had come only after it was almost too late to save her. Now, there was no drama, and the final battle
fell flat.
The ending wasn’t conclusive, which also lessened its
impact, as I believed I was reading a stand-alone. Even knowing there are more
books to come, it doesn’t feel satisfying enough. The last sentence of the book
positively threw me.
But the book isn’t so much about action as it is about
representation. There are gay, bi and transgender characters, black and Asian
ones, and the alien races add their own uniqueness to the mix. Everyone
introduces themselves with their name and preferred pronouns. It was a bit
jarring at first; education for education’s sake. However, most characters are
odd and alien to each other, even on a spaceship, so it was merely
practical to tell these things upfront.
Everyone accepts everyone else just the way they are. Gender
and sexuality issues that would’ve been the main themes in most YA books are given
normalcy and not addressed. The identity issues that Tina and her friends
grapple with aren’t based on who they fall in love with or what they look like
underneath their clothes. It’s about finding their place in the universe as they
are, based on their skills and what they like to do. Tina especially has to
figure out a lot, since she wasn’t miraculously altered to someone else after
all. On the flip-side, the characters—the minor ones especially—became the sum
of their skills, not living, breathing persons.
The book tries to include everyone, respect everyone’s
choices and personal space (consent was asked for every hug), understand
everyone and not to be mean to or dismissive of anyone. It was nice, but it
didn’t offer much character conflict or chance for personal growth for any of
the characters, which are the building blocks of any narrative. The reader wasn’t
given a reason to read beyond the action plot.
I also found it odd that on a spaceship full of aliens the
earthlings only hung around amongst themselves. Without proper interaction with
the aliens on an equal level (mostly they were teachers and commanding officers
who weren’t given backstories), they didn’t really have to question their
humanity.They could’ve been anywhere on
earth, and the book would’ve been pretty much the same.
In the end, I didn’t like the book quite as much as I hoped
I would—or as much as I enjoyed the first few chapters. The odd, dispirited
ending doesn’t really make me want to read the next book either. But I’ll
probably continue with the series anyway, if only to see whether the earthlings
end up where they want to go.
